By Josh Moon
Alabama Political Reporter
According to an email that Roy Moore’s campaign sent out to supporters and the media, more than $70,000 has been raised over the last week from donations for Moore’s “election integrity fund.”
Think about that.
Think some more about that.
Now, be angry.
For all of the cheering and congratulating and pontificating that has gone on since Doug Jones won Alabama’s U.S. Senate seat, there has been one glaring fact that has gone largely unmentioned: The worst candidate in years, operating in a campaign that could have been better run by field mice, nearly won.
Yes, Jones’ win was meaningful. And it did signify a monumental change in Alabama politics — minority voters were organized and motivated in a way that must scare the absolute hell out of a party that believed as recently as last year that there was more political capital in racist Civil War statues than in minority outreach.
But let’s not be fooled: we still have a gullibility problem in Alabama.
Too many Alabama voters are suckered in by the same old tired tactics of race, religion and fear.
Republicans can slap whatever fake slogans they’d like on their 2018 platform, but their real platform will always be some version of this:
The blacks want to take your money. The Atheists/Muslims/Jews want to take your religious freedoms. Somebody who doesn’t look or act like you is coming to kill you and your family and your way of life.
They just sub out the boogeymen and the stakes.
And y’all just keep on buying it, to the detriment of yourselves.
Example A: Roy Moore’s fundraising.
Why, why, why are y’all sending money to a career politician who has done nothing but waste your tax dollars in a self-serving and never-ending effort to enrich and glorify himself?
Answer: Because Moore has promised to protect your religion from the boogeymen.
But see, here’s the hard truth — the one our founders knew when they drew up the laws of this place and made sure that there would never be a preferred religion in America: The only way to truly protect your religion is to protect all faiths and no faith at all, and guarantee that the right to true religious freedom is protected in America.
Moore knows this, despite his continued claims that America is a Christian nation and that the Constitution only protects the rights of Christians.
But saying so doesn’t get the hard-Christian Right to mail a check to pay Moore’s light bill in his 4,300-square-foot home and fill his seven-car garage.
It also doesn’t pay the tab for the constant onslaught of braindead attorneys filing laughable lawsuits or mouth-breathing spokespeople embarrassing anyone with a southern accent by giving the most goober-ific interviews in the history of TV news.
The fact that your support has allowed this band of political panhandlers to receive pay for generally being the gunk at the bottom of the political cesspool should be motivation enough to rethink your ways and check your gullibility.
But it’s not the main reason.
The main reason is that it’s killing you.
This constant war you’ve been convinced you have to wage to preserve your religion, your family, your way of life and your soul is, to put it bluntly, stupid.
You’re safer than ever before in America. The rest of us have figured out that black people, Hispanics, Atheists, Muslims and Jews are generally pretty decent folk, who merely want the same things we do: a decent job, a solid roof, a nice car, some happy kids. And poor people just want to stop being poor.
It’s time to stop this nonsense and recognize that the same politicians, ideals and interests that will help the poor and middle class black man will also help the poor and middle class white man. It’s time to rely on facts and research instead of feelings and fear. It’s time to shun those politicians who promise you safety in your isolation and embrace those who promise to protect the rights of all people.
And most of all, it’s time, in this age of readily available and easily accessible information, to stop being so damn gullible.
