Press "Enter" to skip to content

Roy Moore Shows Harmful Extremism of Today’s Republicans

Columnist Charles P. Pierce looks at Alabama’s Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore’s desire to outlaw homosexuality, his Novstrupian peddling of the pants-on-fire lie that Sharia law has taken over American cities, and his theocratic bent (which leads Moore to assert that failing to use government to promote Christianity has induced God to punish us with school shootings and the 9/11 terrorist attacks) and says we need to forget empathizing with Trumpists and call them anti-American extremists:

And, no, when it comes to the people who voted for Moore, I don’t have to “respect their beliefs.” I don’t have to “understand where they’re coming from.” I don’t have to “see it from their side.” These people are preparing to make a lawless theocratic lunatic one of 100 United States Senators, and that means these people are about to inflict him and his medievalism on me, too. If you think that Roy Moore belongs in the Senate, then you are a half-bright goober whose understanding of American government and basic civics probably stops at the left side of your AM radio dial. You have no concept of the national interest and very little concept of your own, unless, as I suspect, you’ve made your own fears, and hating people and hawking loogies in all directions, the sum total of your involvement in self-government. You are killing democracy and you don’t know it or care. If you had any real Christian charity in your hearts, you’d keep Roy Moore in the locked ward of your local politics and not loose him on a nation that deserves so much better than him [Charles P. Pierce, “I’m Out of Empathy. I’m Out of Pity. I’m Out of Patience,” Esquire, 2017.09.27].

The absolutist, exclusionary theocracy preached by Moore (and South Dakota legislators like Al Novstrup, Tim Goodwin, and Neal Tapio), driven by Steve Bannon, and facilitated by a White House busy memory-holing its support for Moore’s primary opponent Luther Strange runs counter to the principles of American pluralistic democracy. It is the ugly gut reaction of mostly white Christian traditionalists unnerved by an America with more people who don’t look the same, pray the same, or act the same as John Wayne and the Beaver told them they should. We need not tolerate reactionary politics that hurt American democracy.

8 Comments

  1. mike from iowa 2017-09-28 07:37

    Have no fear. When it comes time to swear to uphold the constitution, Moore will have perjured himself and wingnuts will have seated him- making the whole damn bunch hypocrites of the fifth essence. Safest bet in town.

  2. Rorschach 2017-09-28 10:38

    Roy Moore is more of the GOP Party reaping what it sowed. Time to pop the popcorn and watch how he and McConnell either:

    1) make lovey dovey like nothing happened after McConnell’s superpac spent millions against Moore calling him unfit for office, or

    2) battle publicly.

    Either way, Democrats benefit in the long run.

    By the way, it was pretty smarmy how Gov. Bentley appointed Attorney General Luther Strange to the senate in Alabama so he could appoint a new attorney general to call off an investigation of Gov. Bentley. Gov. Bentley, a married holier-than-thou bible thumper who was diddling a young married woman he put on his staff at an inflated salary eventually was forced to resign anyway. I’m not sure, but the Alabama GOP Party may just be crazier than the South Carolina GOP Party.

    Roy Moore is just another example in a long string of frauds and hypocrites and whackadoos that the GOP Party is foisting on the country.

  3. buckobear 2017-09-28 16:25

    Roy Moore ids one of the assistant caliphs of Y’all Qaeda.

  4. buckobear 2017-09-28 16:27

    Roy Moore is one of the assistant caliphs of Y’all Qaeda.

  5. Robin 2017-09-30 18:39

    Weak Democrats and piss poor economy all going as predicted in November- Look to Wiemar history to see what comes next.

  6. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-10-01 14:41

    Democrats, now is no time to be weak or accommodating. See also Neville Chamberlain shortly after Weimar.

Comments are closed.