Alabama's future Senator, Roy Moore, is a classic example of the Bible-humping theocons that populate so much of the Republican party. His act is based on the old script of rot and decay at the heart of the Republic. In Moore's mind, this decay is caused by sexual activity. When you give/get a blow job, Baby Jesus sends a hurricane.
Moore is best understood as a Christianist. If an Islamist is someone who wants to see Islam used as a governing ideology, a Christianist wants the same for Christianity. And not the mellow, "love-thy-neighbor" Christianity either; the fire and brimstone kind.
Trump will go to Alabama to campaign for Luther Strange to try and derail a guy who will likely be a huge embarrassment for the establishment GOP if he gets elected. But Trump and Moore are both products of the same withered stalk: America is a hellscape because X.
Trump's legendary rhetoric about inner cities being dystopian wastelands awash in crime ("Carnage!") is well documented. Moore is pitching the same thing. Trump blames the collapse of Murican civilization on the "blacks and browns" whereas Moore blames it on "teh gheys and atheists."
The central fact that both are wrong on almost all points seems lost. America is not a hellscape. Crime is at the lowest level it's been in decades. Two things, however, give their message resonance. First, the stagnation in working class wages has people worried; second, the opiod epidemic has people terrified. Those things are real.
Crime-racked cities with black people rioting in the streets is not.
I do worry that the constant negative beat of both Fox News and any local news broadcast only reinforces the idea that things are worse than they appear.
Right wing populism and authoritarianism requires a society to believe it is in the process of collapse. Quite a few left wing radicals will echo the idea that society is collapsing. To me this shows a lack of historical literacy or global perspective.
If we don't reverse it, we are doomed.
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