No Moore Stupid Candidates!
I’m just now coming down from the euphoria of Roy Moore’s defeat in the U.S. Senate race. I am so grateful to the women who dredged up the memories of being stalked in their teens by the old (over 30) man. I am grateful to the true Republicans whose stomachs churned at the thought of someone like Moore as their standard-bearer. But that’s not why he deserved to lose. There are so many reasons why this guy shouldn’t be elected dogcatcher, let alone U.S. Senator, but I’ll name only two.
1. At a September campaign rally, Moore gave this response to a black man’s question about the last time America was great: “I think it was great at the time when families were united–even though we had slavery–they cared for one another….Our families were strong, our country had a direction.”
From the form of the statement, you’d think he was referring to a minor inconvenience, as in: “I really loved growing up on a farm–even though it meant getting up at five in the morning–it was such a pleasure working with the cows and horses.”
Early rising is a minor inconvenience; slavery was anything but. The institution–which was dividing our nation even before we became a nation–was a tragedy, the greatest stain upon our national character. Slavery was a life of unpaid, coerced labor, performed amid the constant fear that your spouse or children would be sold away from you, that you or someone you loved would be raped with impunity.
For Moore to make such a statement shows that he still doesn’t get it. For him to make such a statement to potential black voters instead of a gathering of the KKK shows him to be totally clueless. As a result, the blacks of Alabama rose up to deliver the seat to the Democrats, electing Doug Jones, the prosecutor who brought the KKK church bombers to justice.
2. Back in 2011, Moore told a radio host that the U.S. would be greatly improved if they’d get rid of all the amendments after the original ten known as the Bill of Rights. Well, that would certainly have made him the next senator from Alabama. It would have eliminated Amendment 13, which ended slavery; Amendment 14, which made the freed slaves citizens of the United States; Amendment 15, which guaranteed them the right to vote; and Amendment 19, which gave women the right to vote. Yeah, he’d like that, since 96 percent of the blacks voted against him, and there was also an erosion of support among white women, many of whom were indignant about his erstwhile fondness for pubescent girls.
So, does Moore really long for the days when women were barefoot, pregnant, and powerless, and when blacks were no more than property and counted as 3/5th of a man for the purpose of swelling the congressional vote of the southern states? I hate to believe that of anybody. And indeed, I think it more likely that the statement was made not so much from bigotry as gross ignorance. It is quite likely that he spoke without any understanding of what the Constitution or the Amendments actually say, without any understanding of the painful history that made those additional Amendments so necessary.
It does beg the question of why nearly half the state would want to be represented by someone that dumb.