Today we found out the results of the Alabama Special Senate Election over in the USA–the election where the choice was between someone who is a paedophile, and various other appalling things, and someone who is not.
Fortunately the not-paedophile won. Not by much. But by enough.
I’m only really writing this post to mark the fact that I will never quite grasp how far politics has (visibly) fallen in my lifetime, and that there are people who will look past someone being a paedophile and consider that person suitable to occupy one of the most influential positions in the country.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that the right-wing press was screaming hysterically about paedophiles, and that politicians would be forced to resign following the barest whiff of infidelity. Now we’ve reached the point where Donald Trump has sunk the bar so very low that it’s hard to imagine a crime that his supporters wouldn’t forgive.
The ray of hope here is that the people of Alabama got off their arses and resisted. Black voters, in particular, told the Republican party to shove their continuing efforts to take their voting rights away and played the major role in electing a Democrat to serve in the senate. At this point it doesn’t even matter that he was a Democrat; it only matters that he wasn’t a putrid waste of a person. What a choice, eh? Do we vote for absolute garbage? Or do we vote for a regular person? Let. Me. Think.
Anyway, time to go and eat mince pies …