In the rough and tumble realm of politics, it can be a hard call as to whether someone is standing firm on worthwhile principle or simply obstructing out of plain old bullheadedness – perhaps because it plays well among some voters. So let’s consider the example of North Carolina’s legislative leadership and its prickly response to a judge’s order in the epic Leandro school funding case.

A momentous clash between North Carolina’s General Assembly and the state’s judicial system looks to be coming to a head. At stake is the ability of the state’s public schools to meet the needs of all students – specifically, those students who live in communities where the proper financing of schools can be an overwhelming challenge.

The coronavirus – now rekindled in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” – is forcing us yet again to adjust our daily routines and recalibrate our expectations of normalcy. Even people who got their shots early and thought they were in the clear are finding they need to keep their masks handy.

With Republican lawmakers throughout the land making “election integrity” a favorite cause and rallying cry, it likely was just a matter of time before some of their North Carolina counterparts got on board. Lo and behold, along came the sterling piece of legislative statesmanship known as Senate Bill 326, filed on March 18 and entitled the "Election Integrity Act."

Perhaps it’s the pandemic that offers a fitting analogy to the condition of our politics as Americans try to recover from the trauma of Jan. 6 – when we came dangerously close to the onset of an anti-democratic Trump-ocracy. The loss of more than 500,000 of our fellow citizens, their lives snuffed out by COVID-19, has been a cataclysmic shock to the nation, an epic of sorrow and suffering.

Even for those of us who found a measure of joy during the year whose end we now mark – taking delight from a child’s birth, perhaps, or from a marriage, a graduation, success at work – Americans will remember 2020 chiefly as a showcase of conflict and sorrow. It brought of course the rampage of the coronavirus, costing upwards of 330,000 lives with many more in the balance.

North Carolinians who stood against our soon-to-be ex-president’s rancid politics of grievance, contempt and division, fueled by a gusher of falsehoods, are heartened by the nation’s clear choice of Joseph R. Biden Jr. to be our next chief executive. At the same time, Biden’s happy supporters must reckon with this uncomfortable fact: half of the Tar Heel electorate wanted to see Donald Trump occupy the White House for another four years. 

With North Carolinians on track to cast eye-popping numbers of votes in advance of Election Day, Nov. 3, perhaps it’s time to breathe a cautious sigh of relief. A system that could have buckled under the strain of massive early voting, both by mail and in person, amidst the coronavirus pandemic may have creaked and groaned but so far looks to be meeting the challenge.

It’s pretty obvious why the N.C. Council of Churches and its allies on the faith-and-justice spectrum hope to see plenty of like-minded voters turning out for the elections this fall. Much is at stake, from who will serve as the nation’s chief executive during perilous, challenging times to who will decide how public schools are expected to operate while the coronavirus still threatens.

The image of a perfect storm conveys a rueful irony – the storm whose components are so intertwined, so synchronized, so mutually reinforcing as to make it “perfect” in its destructiveness. Perfect storm, meet COVID-19. The overall dynamic is as simple as it is terrible: The coronavirus endangers people who come into contact with others who may be infected. People retreat into their homebound bubbles.