Pickens county in MAGA land

     Kudos to the Post and Courier for shedding a little light on the underbelly of MAGA Land in Pickens County. But its just the tip of the iceberg. These folks are not Republicanss, certainly not Eisenhower, Lincoln and Alabama's Judge Frank Johnson Republican. 

    The following was submitted as an Opinion piece to the Post Courier in the wake of their June issue front page headline article on the MAGA takeover of the Pickens Co. SC GOP

     My maternal grandfather was of that stripe and a hundred years ago ran for school superintendent in NE Alabama and was soundly defeated. The good ole boys in dowtown Collinsville Alabama would brush their lapels when they passed him on the street on Saturdays and say "you can smell it on him, can't you".

     Charlottle Observer's Frye Gaillard and AJC Cynthia Tucker explain how the Dems and GOP flipped in the last 50 years, with an emphasis on Lee Atwater's famous NWord memo.

    The MAGA s are more like the Know Nothing party that Lincoln faced. Look them up on Wiki pedia and for further context read with meditation Jill Lepore's grand recent History of America These Truths.

      There are products of Pickesn Country who I imagine are embarred and ashamed on these Know Nothings who made the front page page of the Post and Courier. Among them Shannon Vickery of NC PBS, Joni Tevis who has written beautifully about the end of the textile era in Easley, Dr. Batson longtime pastor of FBC Pickens, and Dr. Gravely the Wofford grad who wrote the definitive book on the lynching of Willie Earle.

    Sadly Clemson Trustee Nikki Haley has more in common with these Pickens County Retrogrades than she does with David Wilkins brand of Bush family Republicans. Haley embraced Charlie Kirks poisonous brand of MAGA Turning Point USA politics November 29 2022 at Clemson. She had public interview with TPUSA president Taylor Rogers who comes from the Southlake region of the Dallas Suburbs which is subject of the New Book by Hixenbaugh, They Came for Our Schools. Dabo Swinney and Clemson administration ought to call Haley on the carpet for this entanglement.

     In  nearby Wahalla, favorite son Mark Powell, a grad of the Citadel and Yale Divinity School explores the same world as JD Vance but has much more Moral Fiber--see Oh Brother Where Art Thou--not warping his his insights for political expediency.

      Furman recently boasted of its Riley Institutes summer program for teachers to enhance civics education. Pickens County public schools should reach out to them to tour the system and shine the light on Johnelle Raines and her misguided zealots.

     At Furman I was introduced to a great Baptist of the Civil Rights era, Will D. Campbell banned from Ole Miss in the early sixties for playing ping pong with a black exchange student. Now there is a plaza outside the Chaplain's office there in his honor.

     He called the fundamentalist leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention "soul molesters" And that is what this group of MAGA activists are in Pickens County. Lacking moral fiber and shamefully ignorant, they are shallow and should be shown the off ramp.