Summary: the Democrats have once again demonstrated that they have the courage of all the wrong convictions. Faced with what is increasingly obviously a Roger Stone/Kremlin ratfucking operation designed to eviscerate the Democratic leadership in the United States Congress, the Democrats have fallen into the usual “they go low we go high “posture of unconditional and abject surrender. The first target of the Stone/Kremlin operation was outgoing Minnesota Senator Al Franken. The second target of the Stone/Kremlin operation was the Father of the House, Michigan’s John Conyers. Democrats should realize that these are preemptive strikes intended to protect Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. But Democrats, sadly true to form, reacted in their typically puritanical fashion, rushing to judgment and establishing a lynch mob. It is certainly suspicious that Democratic ire should fall on a Jew and on a person of color. We have been played like a Stradivarius, our hypocrisy is plain for all to see, and behind the scenes, Roger Stone and Donald Trump are laughing their asses off. Democrats have a reputation for political cowardice, and they earned it again, in full measure, during the last 10 days.
The other day, embattled Minnesota Senator Al Franken announced that he would be resigning “in the coming weeks.” Last week, Michigan’s John Conyers, the longest-serving representative in Congress, the Father of the House, also resigned.
Both men were caught up in an emergent moral panic of ostensible sexual harassment that appears to be targeting the careers of a number of lawmakers. Let’s shame the devil, told the truth, and admit that the lawmakers in question come from both parties. Arizona Republican Trent Franks, who had planned to leave at the end of January, 2018, announced today that he has moved up his departure and is leaving now. Texas Republican Blake Farenthold is currently under ethics investigation by the House of Representatives, and is expected to call it quits fairly shortly.
Nevertheless, the moral panic in Washington is just a little bit too convenient, and its Democratic targets just a little bit too prominent, to be taken at face value. When Roger Stone tweeted, almost immediately after the Franken “scandal” broke, with information which suggested that Stone had some kind of pre-knowledge of Leeann Tweeden’s allegations, that should have been an indicator to Democrats that this particular moral panic might be something rather more nefarious, that this “moral panic” might in fact be part of a campaign of “active measures,” or dezinformatsiya trafficking in dubious kompromat designed to cause as much harm to prominent Democratic officeholders and to the Democratic Party as possible.
Unfortunately, instead of doing due diligence, which might well have discovered the existence of a coordinated campaign of active measures of dezinformatsiya and kompromat, a whole raft of Democratic officeholders trooped to various microphones and piously declared that they believed in their entirety all of the allegations against Franken and Conyers, no matter how stale, how far-fetched, or how remote in time.
Worse, this lynch mob of Democratic officeholders was not interested in hearing any defense from either Sen. Franken or Rep. Conyers, but was instead determined to see the two men’s metaphorical heads on pikes being led out of the Capitol. Instead of a careful review of the veracity of the allegations, the Democrats climbed onto a puritanical bandwagon of “zero tolerance” and made it clear to both Senator Franken and Congressman Conyers that they were not disposed to do due diligence before hustling the senator and the Congressman straight to the Tarpeian Rock and hurling them to the bottom.
The conduct of the Democratic officeholders who made speed to hurl Senator Franken and Congressman Conyers from the Tarpeian Rock spoke to everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party. It spoke to the puritanical, schoolmarmish tendency of the Democratic Party to buy into the notion that one who is accused of anything at all must be considered guilty until proven innocent. It also spoke to the unfortunate Democratic tendency to be unable to distinguish true moral high ground from a hill on which to undertake an abject surrender.
Democratic protestations that it is somehow important to make an example of Senator Franken and Congressman Conyers fail on two counts.
First, the desire to make an example of these two lawmakers so that we may “establish a clear moral contrast with the Republicans” is worse than feckless. It assumes that the Republican Party and the American electorate possess a moral compass. There is absolutely no evidence to support the proposition that either the Republican Party or the American electorate possess anything even resembling a moral compass. Given this lack of any evidentiary support for the proposition that either the GOP or the American electorate even has a moral compass, democratic invocation of some sort of “moral high ground” starts to look less like a principled stand and more like an unprincipled hunt for a hill upon which to engage in the traditional Democratic tendency toward abject and unconditional surrender.
Second, we should take a look at the targets of this campaign of active measures, dezinformatsiya, and kompromat. For while the Republicans are rallying around a serial outrager of girls and young women in the person of quondam Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, the Democrats have been pursuing two members of their own party who, by definition, are Other. Senator Franken is Jewish; Congressman Conyers is black. And yet the Democratic Party doesn’t seem to have had the good common sense of optics to realize that the lynch mob set in train against both men might very well appear, notwithstanding minority participation therein, like a boneheaded maneuver intended to cast to prominent Others out of the halls of Congress.
Queerfolk observing this phenomenon should consider themselves on notice; the moral panic can be, and will be, extended to include claims of queer sexual misconduct as well as claims of straight sexual misconduct. And when that happens, the Democratic Party, that masterpiece of American cowardice, cannot be expected to rally to the defense of any queer officeholder. What will happen when someone with a queer ax to grind targets California Congressman Mark Takano (D-Riverside) the only gay, Asian member of the House of Representatives? What will happen if Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin, the only open lesbian in the upper Chamber, is targeted?
It is easy to predict what will happen. Democrats, who practically wet themselves trying to get on the bandwagon to condemn Al Franken, the Jew, and John Conyers, the African-American, will find it even easier to fan the flames of moral panic against the strange, exotic, queerfolk in their midst. And people like Roger Stone, Donald Trump, and the Russian intelligence apparat with which they have so obviously and notoriously coordinated, will be happy to provide kompromat and to undertake Active Measures and spread dezinformatsiya intended to drive queer Democrats from office. And, Goddammit, stupid Democrats will be more than happy to help them do it.
In my previous post, I sounded the alarm bell that this kind of moral panic, stirred up by Republicans to ratfuck the Democratic Party, would be something the Democrats would fall for, hook, line, and sinker. I was right.
We should have had the courage of our Democratic convictions. We should have done our due diligence before jumping on the moral panic bandwagon. We should not have allowed ourselves to become part of a lynch mob. We should have stood with Al Franken and John Conyers.
Our Democratic failure to stand with Al Franken and John Conyers is a failure of our moral compass and our respect for the rule of law. Our eagerness to rush them to the Tarpeian rock and hurl them over it is a nasty revelation of our own internalized anti-Semitism, our own internalized racism, and our own internal unwillingness to do the kind of due diligence we should have done.
When they pulled a knife, we should have pulled a gun. When they sent one of ours the hospital, we should have sent one of theirs to the morgue. Instead, we scrambled up on a spurious piece of “moral high ground” and once there, we ran up the white flag.
The Democratic reputation for political cowardice has never been better deserved that it has been in the last 10 days.
