For all my disgust about each new accusation against a public figure, and each new revelation about sexual harassment, abuse, and rape, I think we’re all hopefully wondering if that means we’re changing our attitudes. The news media are reporting women’s claims about sexual harassment and abuse, sometimes in their complete and horrifying detail. And we’re publicly accepting the claims; more people say ‘we believe women’ as if that protects them. Worse, as thin gruel as that claim is in reality, we’re still looking in the wrong place.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m surprisingly gratified to hear Sen. Mitch McConnell say, “I believe the women, yes,” as if it was a great concession. Although he didn’t find that conviction until after Roy Moore’s poll numbers had started to free-fall.The press treated that way as well.
So, what do we have? Five different women detailed in horrifying detail how Roy Moore abused them. They did this in public, under their real names. They all included specific detail, along with evidence and testimony from other people who verified parts of their claims. The adult women told stories that were not coordinated, but were strikingly similar. They had no personal profit for saying this, but the opposite: they’ll almost certainly suffer. Republican operatives inside and outside Alabama began searching for dirt on each woman.
On the other side, there’s one white guy. He has a long history of dishonesty. In this case, he swears that all five women, and the other 30-something people who verified their contemporaneous stories, all of them were lying. His claims are already contradicted by simple evidence. He claims all the physical evidence is forged. He insists the national news media are all conspiring against him, and complicit in fabricating each new accusation.
And somehow, after a different white guy weights Moore’s story against these five women, the 30 corroborating witnesses, the physical evidence, the national media, and then concludes that Moore’s story is marginally less likely, it’s that we’re calling a victory. We’re all almost giddy.
Be still, my heart. Where’s my fainting couch! I may need smelling salts.
But here’s the worst part. This assumes that women weren’t believed by the men in power before this? How many people have said, “Oh, we all knew the stories, but we didn’t know it was that bad!” Is ‘the casting couch’ a cliché? Most people did believe that women were being assaulted. The women all know because they’ve had to survive harassment and abuse all their lives. The men in power knew just as completely. That power was an open part of their world.
The men in power simply didn’t care about women. Abusing women was one of the perks. Even the people who didn’t choose to use it, knew it existed, and that other people would do whatever they could get away with.
And don’t fool yourself now. All the Republicans know these accusations are mostly true. And even now, they still don’t care. They’ve just been caught, and that they care about. And that’s all they care about.
Alabama is likely to elect Roy Moore, a known child molester, to be their new Senator. The Alabama state Republican party still backs Moore with people and money. The National Republican Party announced they were not backing Moore. Except that they’d lied. The RNC was still backing Moore with people on the ground and campaign money. They continued their support until it was reported yesterday in NBC news. By today, the RNC quietly pulled the eleven remaining operatives. And about their lie? They said… nothing.
The RNC lied, and when caught, pretended they weren’t lying. They didn’t care about Roy Moore’s crimes, his moral turpitude, his lies, or even their own lies. Their only obvious regret was that they’d been caught. Nothing else.
So that’s who we have. That’s our Republicans.
