In her most recent post historian Heather Cox Richardson said that:

“In their 2018 book How Democracies Die, political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt noted that democracies depend on members of each party recognizing the legitimacy of their partisan rivals. Even if they disagree with each other, each recognizes the others’ members as loyal to the nation and accepts their legitimacy as lawmakers if voters elect them. Democracy also depends on parties refusing to use the tools of government to destroy the ability of their partisan opponents to win elections.”

Senator Shane Massey said essentially the same thing in his eloquent floor speech before voting against adding redistricting to the legislature’s agenda following the regular session. This is a fundamental democratic principle that is not just at risk, but lost, if South Carolina’s General Assembly is successful in the leadership’s stated purpose of redistricting for the purpose of ensuring that the interests of about 40% of the population are not represented in Congress. Heck, it is at risk anyway, has been chipped away at for several decades, but this would be the tombstone.

It is unlikely to RIP. Some have intentionally amplified our divisions for decades to make their preferred authoritarian government possible. (Honestly, who thought trans kids required legal control until given a constant drumbeat of that message?) This brings us back to Abraham Lincoln. A nation divided against itself cannot stand.

Even as a child, growing up in Jim Crow South Carolina the racial divide simply felt wrong. It felt like a fracture in the fabric of the little world I lived in. It was embarrassing to see kids like me in everything but color have to drink from separate water fountains and go to a different restroom in public buildings. (Not schools of course, they weren’t there in my schools.)

All these years laters it had felt like healing was well underway. That is not what it feels like now. It is as if a terrible virus lay dormant for years and is back to try to kill us. Or, more accurately, trying to turn us into a one party authoritarian state dominated by only one segment of our people.

It is not the case, as Chief Justice John Roberts claims to believe, that we will solve racial divisions through a legal pretense that they don’t exist. This makes no more sense than saying that a bacterial infection is best healed by ignoring it. No, the infection will surely make the patient very sick, and may kill them.

We are in a sad place as a state and as a nation. Friday the General Assembly begins a special session called by the Governor for the purpose of redrawing our congressional districts and sending our primary elections into chaos to reflect the change. This will be a heartbreaking exercise for anyone who cares for all of our state’s people and for our nation’s highest ideals.