RE: Ron Carroll Sticks Out His Tongue
Robert adds:
20 Years of the Buster/Willis development cabal, your defeat, the election of Barry Lawson and others, the defeat of Graham Flynt (a once and a lifetime chance for extreme decency in the county) and you refer to Stokes voters as "sophisticated"? Steve, you're letting your guard down!
I guess I should clarify the sophistication part. There is a small cabal of people in Stokes County who believe they control the whole electoral process. They believe the petty details of everyday government are known and understood by a select few. In that they are correct. Where they miss the boat is in believing they control or even understand the electorate.
Poll ten people at the Lowe's Foods in King or ten people at the Food Lion in Walnut Cove. Nine of them couldn't tell you the names of any of their local elected officials. Seven of them couldn't tell you the name of their Congressman and five couldn't name both Senators. This is not a new situation. In the past, voting was controlled through contact with several large families in different parts of the county. There was a matrix of information and key people who actually did control the votes of tens and sometimes hundreds of people. Now, the matrix has gotten too large and the old families have been diluted. People vote more on issues than they did in the past. The vendettas that raged between families and factions in the county are small and largely unknown to the outsiders who have swelled the county's population.
Even if people actually read the Stokes County fishwrap, which they don't, the petty bickering that takes place on the editorial page, which is largely still an offshoot of those old family and factional alliances, won't win or lose a single vote.
On a cosmic scale, that's not really sophistication. But compared to old-style politics in Stokes County, it's positively cosmopolitan.
20 Years of the Buster/Willis development cabal, your defeat, the election of Barry Lawson and others, the defeat of Graham Flynt (a once and a lifetime chance for extreme decency in the county) and you refer to Stokes voters as "sophisticated"? Steve, you're letting your guard down!
I guess I should clarify the sophistication part. There is a small cabal of people in Stokes County who believe they control the whole electoral process. They believe the petty details of everyday government are known and understood by a select few. In that they are correct. Where they miss the boat is in believing they control or even understand the electorate.
Poll ten people at the Lowe's Foods in King or ten people at the Food Lion in Walnut Cove. Nine of them couldn't tell you the names of any of their local elected officials. Seven of them couldn't tell you the name of their Congressman and five couldn't name both Senators. This is not a new situation. In the past, voting was controlled through contact with several large families in different parts of the county. There was a matrix of information and key people who actually did control the votes of tens and sometimes hundreds of people. Now, the matrix has gotten too large and the old families have been diluted. People vote more on issues than they did in the past. The vendettas that raged between families and factions in the county are small and largely unknown to the outsiders who have swelled the county's population.
Even if people actually read the Stokes County fishwrap, which they don't, the petty bickering that takes place on the editorial page, which is largely still an offshoot of those old family and factional alliances, won't win or lose a single vote.
On a cosmic scale, that's not really sophistication. But compared to old-style politics in Stokes County, it's positively cosmopolitan.
posted by Anonymous | 12:48 PM
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