[addabox]

I dunno man, if they vote him in we may need to write it off, the good graces of NASA and myself notwithstanding.

I mean, I'm seeing people say that they'd vote for him even if it's all true, because liberals are worse.

So that's where we're at. The rightwing outrage machine has made of liberals such a black hole of evil that the target demographic would vote for a pedophile over one of "them." Openly and proudly. I wonder what else they'd be willing to tolerate? Serial killer?

OTOH there's been a fascinating discussion of why Moore's behavior hasn't been met with more outrage in certain quarters: the homeschooling "quiverfull" wing of evangelical Christianity openly advocates for marrying girls off as young as 13, since that allows the safe passage of the sacred vessel of womenhood from paternal custody to spousal custody without a chance for the devil to get in there and fuck shit up. In their parlance, girls are like "apple trees" which the farmer (dad) has a duty and obligation to care for until the apples are beginning to "ripen", at which point he may distribute said apples to anyone he deems worthy or needful. Can't let those apples just hang there on the tree, and of course all the apples don't ripen at once so get while the getting is good.

All of which is entirely nauseating, but within these closed communities girls have no agency whatsoever beyond being groomed for wifely duties, so apparently as long as everybody is godly it's all good.

Hey, remember the Duck Dynasty patriarch? He figures 15 is a good age for a wife. Same dude who's buds with the extremely godly Mike Huckabee, among other right wing figures. You have to figure there's at least tacit aproval of this shit across the evangelical community. Should be interesting to see if Moore's troubles provoke an outing of the whole rotten system. They'll all cry religious freedom and persecution of "christians", of course.

I feel like we're living through some genuine transformation. The constant drumbeat of revelation re sexual harassment, abuse and rape from now dozens of public figures, the panoply of people elected last Tuesday (including the trans women who outsed the guy who wrote the bathroom bill, in one of the sweetest moments of karmic justice I've seen in a while), now the Moore thing... like the lid is coming off.

And it cuts both ways-- elements of the right that are frankly medieval in their outlook are obliged to stand up be counted, to drop the carefully coded language and yell "damn right women are cunts and chattel, damn right niggers are violent and stupid, damn right democracy is useless to us and damn right give us our authoritarin white theocracy right now." Like the jig is up and there's no more point in equivocating.

Despite Trump's election and continuing support from what looks to be about 30% of the country, I don't think we're necessarily that. Trump won because the dems didn't give their constituencies enough to vote for, whereas he gave his the kind of blood and thunder, take no prisoners nonsense that stirs the belly while it dulls the mind. This talk of "working class white people" who apparently are to be considered the only true Americans is beside the point. The majority of Americans who voted for Clinton aren't some kind of occupying army, they're Americans as well. Normal Americans. And it is, in fact, racist to frame all of this as if the long suffering people of the heartland, plucked from a Grant Wood painting, have somehow an exclusive claim to grievance and authenticity. I mean, look at how the "opioid epidemic" (white) has been framed compared to "drug addicts" (black) if you doubt that white supremacy is alive and well. The former, a medical crisis that has tragically afflicted normal Americans, especially those self-same "working class whites", requiring compassion and investment. The latter, a manifest expression of low character and criminality, requring arrest and imprisonment.

But change is afoot. The dems are getting better candidates. They too, are moved to speak more clearly as to their values, here in these vexed times. And just like overt racism or sexism or authoritarianism may drive certain voters to the polls, a candidate that's willing to stand up and be counted for unapologeticly progressive values is going to tap a perhaps heretofore undervalued constituancy. And the savage, brutal nature of the current Republican party is definitely pushing those candidates to run. Of the 15 seats the Dems flipped in the Virginia election, 11 were woman. Kind of instructive.

There really is such a thing as liberal populism, but it isn't predicated on appealing to the lesser nature of working class whites by implying that their woes arise out of "those people" getting all the breaks, or "liberal elites" consipring to humiliate them. It starts by weaning itself off the corporate money that distorts any hope of genuine ecomonic reform, it instists on diversity as a asset, not a power grab, and it alligns the plight of pretty much everybody but the top 10% with concrete legislation to alleviate the insane decoupling of the wealthy few from the ever more burdened many. The Republican Party is already well on its way towards being totally dismantled in favor of an angry, nativist, paranoid minority of aggrieved whites who are literally beyond the reach of argument and who despise the foundational structures of the United States as corrupt and contemptable. They respond only to rhetoric that feeds into the belief that every aspect of a functioning democracy-- the courts, a free media, the electoral system, informed expertise, verifiable truth, the government itself-- is to be swept aside in favor of whatever a bellicose strongman deems to be necessary to "restore order." Incipient fascism, in other words.

But the severity of this crisis means that the Democratic Party can undergo just as sweeping a transformation, one that emphasizes inclusion, economic justice, fact and science based decision making, and an overt championing of our shared values and institutions. That doesn't mean they'll have all the answers or usher in a golden age, but it does mean we might just have a chance yet of wresting our country from the forces that would make of us a banana republic.