From the “Lost My Faith in Humanity” file
Why I think it’s a fait accompli on the day of Roy Moore’s Senate Race
By the time you read this, Roy Moore will probably be a senator for the state of Alabama. Not because it is good, or just or wise. But because it is the worst thing that can happen. In the era of Trump, that seems par for the course.
I have no faith the red state of Alabama, the state of my mother’s birth, will make a decision contrary to its underlying premise of racism, bigotry and ultra-conservatism. The very fact Roy Moore is considered an acceptable, nay leading candidate is a sad statement. The same sad statement as the bigot he is replacing, Jeff Sessions, whose rise to the office of Attorney General was as terrible a decision as any made since the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president.
Am I surprised to see this races being as close as it is? Are the people of Alabama, who are some of the poorest, most under-educated, most imprisoned, most dependent up the kindness of governmental subsidies, so uninformed to believe that conservatism, such as it is, has ever done anything for the state?
Or is it more, and I am resigning myself to accept the inevitable national reality of this viewpoint: Racism is still one of the leading issues on the American landscape and fear of diversity (even though very little of it has come to the leadership of the reddest states in the nation) is still one of the hot-button issues used to direct voting power to the Republican party or as they have been called the GOP. (Short for Grand Old Perverts in the modern parlance.)
Ranked 47th in median household and per capita income, Alabama is one of the poorest states in the nation, ranking only above Arkansas, West Virginia and Mississippi, also bastions of ultra-redness and ultra-poverty on the national map.
Alabama’s dependence on the idea of “trickle-down economics,” their fundamentalism, their belief in the racial superiority or their misinformed perspective as “currently disenfranchised millionaires” has contributed to the state’s role as little more than a placeholder on a map which says:
“This here is Alabama. It might have been something once. It may have even been a state — no one can remember anymore. Now it’s just a bastion of rednecks (people who drive trucks with ports on the back of those trucks which allow their necks to become sunburned…) illiterates (Alabama isn’t known for its high educational standards, ranked #47 out of 50) and reprobates (See: Ron Moore) who believe electing bigots is the fastest way to achieve economic success, despite the fact, not a one of them has ever managed to do a single thing to help the people of the former state of Alabama to accomplish anything of note in the last century.”
When your state is known mostly for its participation in the last major race riots (1963) in the United States, which was an active participation in the subjugation of people of color; when your state is the one of the most likely to imprison its Black citizens who make up 26% of state’s population but 54% of the inmate population, with only four other states who imprison more people per capita…
When your prisons are known for being some of the worst in the nation, that inmates would kill themselves while in prison, when their goal should be to get OUT of prison, what can that say about the quality of life for your citizens as a whole? Your state isn’t a place where people are flocking to participate in your kind of down-home hospitality, for which the Deep South was supposedly known for.
I believe the Senate candidate Doug Jones (whom I knew very little about, admittedly) is a better fit for the Senate than former Chief Justice, Roy Moore, whom I now know too much about, isn’t a question for debate in my mind. What is foremost in my mind is the quality of candidates being chosen by the people and this administration seems counter-intuitive; often directly opposite their’s and our best interests.
If Alabama were a state where people were missing half the teeth in their head, this is a state that would shun a dentist, if he were a Democrat.
When your cognitive bias prevents you from doing even a little good for yourself, when it prevents you from looking into the future to recognize you need to change how you live, in order to HAVE a future, how long before your state descends into anarchy and economic dissolution? When you keep backing piss poor candidates selling the snake-oil of trickle-down economics and tax-breaks for the rich, how long before you are unable to do anything of note for anyone in your state, Black or White?
Let’s ask Kansas. Words like ‘economic disaster’ and ‘spectacular failure’ come to mind whenever their ‘Republican miracle of tax cutting for fun and profit’ is mentioned by responsible adults. Giving the rich tax incentives left the state unable to pay its bills but with happily tax-reduced corporations laughing all the way to the bank. No. Don’t take my word for it. Read about it right here…
They followed this Republican plan to its logical conclusion and are now struggling with the looming threat of bankruptcy while its tax-relieved businesses are eying a new state to move to.
Hey boys, Alabama is looking ripe for plunder. Come get some of this penal-industrial complex. These people believe the hype. See, it sounds nasty when I say it…
I say you fleece ’em while they’re electing Roy Moore for Senate. Once you’re done with them, Senator Moore will show you how to do it at the national level, if there is a nation left by the time the Republican ‘tax reform’ is done with it.
By the time you read this, Roy Moore will either be adding one more Republican nail to the Making America Great Coffin Donald Trump is building or the citizens of Alabama have decided they want a future worth having and Doug Jones is in the Senate.
Either way, our nation is in for the fight of its life. Good luck, Doug. You’re gonna need it.
Things certainly couldn’t get any worse, right?
Okay, wrong again…
Thaddeus Howze is the lead writer of the Cognitive Dissident, a publication challenging the status quo because it only makes sense to do so when no one seems clear on the concept of making a better future.
