The Alabama Legislature’s Late Gothic period

A partial view of the roof of the Milan Cathedral in Milan Italy as seen in Ooctober 2021. The cathedral shows elements of the late Gothic style, which emphasized elaborate decorative motifs and was traditionally considered a sign that the earlier Gothic style had run out of ideas. A month into its legislative session, the Alabama Legislature also appears stuck in the past and out of ideas. (Juana Mari Moya/Getty Images)

GI can’t go to Goat Hill lately without feeling déjà vu.

It started with Gov. Kay Ivey’s State of the State address on Feb. 6. There was the trite invocation of the “Gulf of America.” The vicious attacks on transgender Alabamians. And the constant talk about job creation and business investment that never seems to dent Alabama’s high rates of poverty or low rates of workforce participation.

Go after immigrants. Back The Blue. Make vague commitments to broaden a potentially catastrophic voucher program in the Education Trust Fund.

It’s all been done.

There were a few departures from the theme. Like parental leave; a Glock switch ban and the Second Chance Act. But those variations underlined the roteness of the performance.

You’ll never lose money betting that a Republican politician will talk about crime until you think America is the latest installment of the Fallout franchise. But the time to tackle that was four years ago during the pandemic. Not when crime rates as a whole are on the way down.

The craven attacks on immigrants, a small and vulnerable group? They’re in line with the priorities of the GOP nationwide. But we already did this with HB 56, the 2011 state law that authorized legal harassment of the foreign-born and the people, organizations and churches that provide them aid.

HB 56 was a disaster for immigrants in the state and businesses that counted on their work. You think we’d have learned not to throw Alabama’s workforce into chaos in a moment of financial uncertainty, in an aging state that desperately needs young workers.

But we have not.

Nor have we made any efforts to address the state’s actual problems. Alabama House leadership has already ruled out Medicaid expansion this year. So our rural health care crisis will continue. And for all the stated concerns for public safety, the Legislature is rejecting modest bills to address our appalling rate of gun deaths.

There are a few ways to look at this.

Republicans around the nation are engaged in Donald Trump cosplay, and are far more interested in his needs than the voters’. Ivey and the Alabama Legislature are not alone in parroting whatever lumpy batter of nouns and superlatives come out of the president’s mouth.

The state budgets appear to be less flush than they were in the past three years, when we had COVID relief money — from the bad, bad federal government — pouring into the Treasury. Lawmakers are understandably wary about rolling out new initiatives. Playing the hits is easier.

But it also seems that our political class is out of ideas. Worse, they’re trapped in politics that lead them to reject obvious solutions.

The governor and the Legislature tell us how important it is to improve the state’s workforce participation rate. You know one really effective way to do that? Encourage immigration. It creates jobs and expands the workforce.

You want to tackle crime in Alabama? Make it harder to obtain a firearm. A Glock switch ban would be a good start; requiring gun owners to lock up their weapons would be better; restoring the concealed carry permit requirement would be better still.

But our legislators are stumbling through an ideological rut, where new ideas are absent and old ones just trap us deeper in the mire.

If  ever you took an art class, you might have learned that in the Middle Ages, there was a Romanesque style of cathedral construction that emphasized heavy, solid forms. Then came the Gothic style, which brought light and height into the sanctuaries.

And what came after that? Late Gothic. Which, in the traditional telling, made the old form more elaborate. Artists didn’t look for innovative ways to raise walls or ceilings or inspire the faithful. They just caked the standard forms with saints and monsters and gaudy sculptures.

It was an endpoint. Artists couldn’t do anything more with the old style but couldn’t think of anything new.

It was, of course, more complicated than that. But that traditional picture seems to reflect where our not divinely-inspired state government is.

A month into the 2025 legislative session, we have no focus; no overarching theme; nothing new worth exploring. We have a political class enthralled to a distant figure who wants to act like a king. And a government that seems more interested in catching his attention than serving the people who live in Alabama.

We are stuck in the past. And putting a misguided faith in forms, ideas and structures that no longer have the ability to inspire. If they ever did.

Maybe some issue will break through in the next few weeks that shakes off the exhaustion and brings innovation and new approaches forward.

But for now, legislators don’t seem interested in building something inspirational. They want to use the arches straining to support the state as canvases for the monsters inside their heads.