Dan Bishop may be the most reprehensible figure North Carolina has elected to Washington since the late, and reviled, Jesse Helms. A showman and a provocateur through and through, Bishop conceives of his public purpose in terms of creating spectacle. That spectacle consists of himself.
Before derailing his own party’s choice of a new U.S. House Speaker, Bishop’s most recent antic was a Twitter performance in which he ridiculed an essential spending bill Congress passed to avert a government shutdown. Bishop, far from a stupid person, put on this exhibition to attract the attention of right-wingers in other red states. If you doubt this, consider that Bishop scored an invitation to Tucker Carlson’s nightly festival of TV hatred. The Charlotte-region congressman entertained Carlson to the point at which Fox News’s leading propagandist was unmistakably smitten with this most bigoted North Carolinian.
People are also reading…
Dan Bishop has always loved the spotlight, and hated the oppressed. He has, indeed, contributed to cultural oppression. As a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives, Bishop authored the infamous HB 2, a vicious — and infamous — piece of legislation that our state will never forget. A wealthy attorney, Bishop also invested $500 in the openly white supremacist social media platform Gab, later denying involvement in the company with a wolfish grin and a wink.
Indeed, the lupine is Bishop’s preferred public presentation. There is a certain gleeful villainy in this man’s image, and he wears the black hat with panache. While it’s perhaps a bit refreshing to see an American politician dispense with the standard affectations of virtue when his behavior tends toward vice, it is also, in the Trump era, boring. Cruelty and flagrant violations of the civic code draw admirers in today’s MAGA-fied GOP.
In his open bigotry, Dan Bishop represents the degraded soul of modern conservatism. The few remaining Republicans with a conscience may deny what their party has become, but Trumpism dominates nearly all the cultural space within the party that these dissenters cling to, and that Bishop has come to epitomize. This is exactly what he wants.
And a state that will not stop giving dubious political gifts to a nation that won’t stop accepting them should hang its head in shame till Bishop finally leaves the public square.
Alexander H. Jones is a policy analyst with Carolina Forward. He lives in Chapel Hill. Reach him at alex@carolinaforward.org.
Credit: Source link
