There’s a difference between speaking boldly and speaking badly, and in recent years, too many politicians have decided that the latter is more efficient. Vulgarity, insults, and slurs have gone from occasional slip-ups to full-time political branding. Leaders model the behavior, and the public copies it. What used to sound like fringe chatter now echoes across social media, school board meetings, and grocery store parking lots. When insults become the soundtrack of politics, people start to believe that this is simply how democracy works.
That’s exactly what has happened in Stanly County, a place widely portrayed as a right-wing fortress. The reputation gets repeated so confidently that it feels like fact. But the truth is much more strategic than ideological. With right-wing types pushing the county from a district-based voting system into an at-large election model, the area appears far more conservative than it actually is. The right isn’t a massive majority; it’s a loud minority made larger by countywide voting for seats that should be district-specific. The system muffles the left, and the rhetoric finishes the job.
Once political leaders normalized crude communication, the loud minority discovered that noise could substitute for numbers. Calling people libtards, stupid, and more, treating cruelty as courage, it all becomes easier when politicians treat shock-value rhetoric as leadership. The strategy is simple. Keep conversations crude so they stay shallow. Shallow conversations don’t wander into policy failures, accountability, or inconvenient facts. And in a county where gerrymandering props up one side, shallow discourse is a useful tool. It creates the illusion of unanimity and convinces the left they’re outnumbered even when they’re not.
But the cost is steep. When public dialogue devolves into taunts, people tune out. When they tune out, accountability vanishes. Trust erodes as leaders behave more like combatants than representatives. Polarization hardens because insults don’t build bridges, they blow them up. Civic participation drops because no one wants to walk into an arena where hostility feels baked into the walls. The loud minority grows louder, not because they’re gaining supporters, but because everyone else is exhausted by the noise.
Free speech is a right, not an alibi. Yet many now brandish the First Amendment as a shield against criticism rather than a protection for expression. They insist their insults are patriotic and push back against any expectation of decency as “censorship.” But calling out harmful rhetoric is free speech. Expecting leaders to communicate like adults is not oppression, it’s maintenance. Democracy doesn’t require everyone to whisper politely; it just requires us to aim higher than the nearest insult.
Stanly County is not the caricature people claim it is. It is not defined by the volume of its loudest minority or by lines drawn to exaggerate their influence. It’s defined by the far larger group of people who still believe debate should involve facts, solutions, and a hint of respect. A healthier political culture begins when we stop mistaking noise for consensus, and when we refuse to let gerrymandering and vulgarity decide who speaks for us.
Because in the end, democracy works best not when the loudest voices win, but when the clearest and most honest ones are finally heard. Stand up, speak out, and demand better from your leaders. Refuse to let insults, voting systems, and gerrymandered maps define politics.
In Solidarity,
Sarah A. Flanagan