If Alabama voters on Tuesday elect Roy Moore to the Senate,
the Donald Trump-diseased party once known as the Republicans may as well call
themselves Roypublicans.
There will be no way to shake the stench of this homophobic,
Islamophobic, sexist, racist apologist and accused pedophile. He is them, and
they are him. Any pretense of tolerance and egalitarianism, already damaged by
a Republican history of words and deeds, will be completely obliterated.
There will be no way to simply say that Moore is the
abominable outgrowth of Alabama voters’ anger.
Moore has been fully
endorsed by the Republican “president” of the United States, the
leader of his party, and is now fully supported by the Republican National
Committee. Last week, R.N.C. Chairwoman Ronna
McDaniel told CNN: “The president has said we want to keep this seat
Republican. The R.N.C. is the political arm of the White House, and we want to
support the president’s agenda.”
The pre-Trump Republican Party is dead; The zombie Trump
party now lives in its stead, devoid of principle, feasting on fear and rage,
foreign to moral framing.
Trump was the gateway to the Roypublicans.
When supposedly religious conservatives were able to look
past Trump’s bullying, his clear lack of religious conviction, his appearance
in pornos, his lying, his provocations to violence, his adultery, his three
marriages and his professed — taped — propensity for sexual assault, they
became blind to bawdiness. That was when the hands that toted the Bibles
stopped toeing its line.
Now, unmoored from any fundamental morality, Republicans
have a situation where a professed horndog is boosting an accused pied piper.
Republicans have surrendered the moral high ground they
thought they held, and have dived face-first into the sewer.
The Trump agenda is the Republican agenda: hostility to
women and minorities, white supremacy and white nationalism, xenophobia, protectionist
trade policies, tax policies that punish the poor and working class and people
living in blue states.
Trump is a white man on a white stallion fighting to
preserve white culture and white power. People who support this point of view
and cheer the Trump charade forgave his failings because they believed so
deeply in his mission.
Even the orchestration of Trump’s weekend appearances was
replete with the symbolism of racial disdain.
Does Trump not believe that observers register the
compounding offense of showing
up to deliver a speechat the opening of a civil rights museum — already
offensive because of Trump’s history, rhetoric and policies — a day after
holding a political rally for a man who holds forth the days of slavery as
halcyon days?
When asked by one of the only African-Americans in attendance
at a September
campaign event in Florence, Ala., what Trump means when he says, “Make
America Great Again,” Moore responded in part:
“I think it was great at the time when families were united,
even though we had slavery, they cared for one another. People were strong in
the family.”
Yes, that’s an actual quote.
United, strong families in which people cared for one
another, huh?
As one Southerner to another, Roy Moore, let me tell it to you
the way the old folks used to tell it to me: Let me learn you something.
Slavery was no respecter of the family. Mothers were
frequently, and without warning, sold away from children and vice versa. When
marriage among slaves was allowed it only existed at the so-called masters’
discretion, as partners could easily be sold away from each other.
And sexual harassment, sexual assault and even rape were
routine acts of horror visited upon the bodies of enslaved women and girls,
often by the so-called masters who were married.
See folks, this is how racism’s reasoning works: It requires
a revisionist view of history, with stains removed and facts twisted. It strips
away ancestral horror so that the legend of the lineage can be told as
hagiography.
The sheer audacity of this historical lie, the depth of the
deceit, is galling and yet it is clear that fabulists and folklorists have so
thoroughly and consistently assaulted the actual truth, that this bastard truth
has replaced it for those searching for an easy way out of racial
responsibility.
If you can’t deal with it, lie about it.
Slavery was unfortunate, but tolerable. It was brutal, but
people were happy. Enslavers were wrong, but their families were strong. These
are all lies racists tell.
The same thing is happening with Roy Moore. These
Republicans are willing to sacrifice Moore’s then-teenage accusers, because
they believe in his fundamentalist zealotry.
That is a defining feature of these modern Republicans:
contorted moral rationalization.
Polls in Alabama are
tight, but Moore
is seen to have momentum. The Republican Party is approaching a moment of
reckoning, which traditional Republicans are dreading. Other Republican voters
remain defiant.
If Roy Moore is elected to the United States Senate, Trump
will solidify his position as the author of the rewritten conservative. He will
have led to the rise of the Roypublicans.
_____
De THE NEW YORK TIMES, 11/12/2017
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