Mr. Moore Went to Washington

I have no idea whether Roy Moore had improper relationships with young girls. What I am distressed about is the Salem like frenzy which has accompanied accusations against him, other politicians on both sides of the aisle, and a bevy of entertainment industry characters who have been served to the public as a salacious spectacle. Some of the cornered have admitted, to greater or lesser extents, their follies--often known about for years and years by those who no longer find them useful or concluded their taint might touch them now that it's all in the public square.  Others, like Mr. Moore, have declined to confess, and horror of horrors, have actually dared to say they are innocent. He could well be a narcissistic liar. In my old career, as a prosecutor of ethics violations by attorneys, I certainly saw my share of those. But what, Friends, Americans, Countrymen, if he is innocent? It is of some interest to me, though obviously not dispositive, that one of the very prominent accuser's lawyers, Ms. Allred, has gone deadly quiet after Mr. Moore asked for the Yearbook to have evaluated for its authenticity. In my time as an attorney, when you asked for substantiation of an allegation, if the response did not come, there was reasonable grounds to be concerned it did not exist. But, the main issue remains for me, as I say again, what if it turns out that beyond the timing of the accusations, they were not true?

I was put in mind of a good old movie, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington".  It was in the cornucopia of terrific classic films made in 1939. A bunch of jaded, ugly politicians (wow, nothing changes eh?) want to fill a vacated junior senatorial spot of a certain state with someone who they hope and anticipate won't have enough smarts, experience or gumption, to get in the way of a boondoggle they have conjured up to build a dam rather than a boys camp in a particular location. The senior senator suggests the son of a late, crusading journalist whom he knew, an innocent, a man who believes in the American dream, the objectiveness of governing principles, who thinks that he is joining an institution of honor. He becomes well known and beloved by the people of his town and beyond. He is a paragon of virtue. But his mentor (who appears to be a paragon, but alas, is not) has to intercept his naive protege and cannot do it by words of persuasion. So, he and the political machine that rules and instructs him set about planting stories and manufactured evidence of the young senator's malfeasance. He is told to step down. He is sent letter upon letter (the day's social media) attacking his character. In the senate itself, he is held up to ridicule for acts he has never committed. The young man stages a filibuster in an effort to get his voice heard about his bill, about its worth, and about that thing that is so often swallowed up, the truth. His mentor develops a huge case of guilt and tries to shoot himself and confesses the set up. All ends relatively happily. And, of course, he even gets the girl, a tough reporter who backs her Knight of Truth through the no man's land of evil.

I thought, even as a kid, that this was a lovely tale, but the part where the old Senator confessed in guilt would never happen.  In today's world, and truthfully, I think even back in ye old Twentieth Century, young Jefferson Smith (yes, that was the character's name) would have found himself excoriated to career and emotional oblivion.

But the movie did posit that he was found to be innocent. In old Hollywood, everything goes back to normal. But in the real world, once such accusations are out there (I'm thinking of another movie, "Doubt") no matter whether the person was innocent, the die is cast and the person is forever carrying a humanly imposed Mark of Cain that he or she does not deserve. 

But in the case of Mr. Moore, he proclaims his innocence (and again I have no idea whether he is or not) and all around him, he is told there are consequences. There should be consequences only IF he did indeed commit the act. But he, and others similarly situated, are suffering the consequences before the evidence has been adduced, and before that evidence is assessed. (Jeremy Piven, an actor, just lost his television show over accusations, accusations only, even though he took and passed a lie detector test.)

If Mr. Moore is elected before the evidence is developed, and it turns out he did that of which he was accused, then indeed there should be consequences, and if he is guilty, to be drummed out of the Senate rather than to withdraw now seems an odd bit of masochism even for a lying narcissist.

Americans think they are so much above those foolish men and women who engaged in things like, say, slavery, or, for that matter, burning "witches". But they, we, all human beings are exactly as they always have been. Not only has human nature remained the same, it has eradicated God and Natural Law as its guide. So, now there is an inclination toward evil without any kind of objective regulation.

Sometimes I think that if Jesus Himself was standing before the harlot in today's society, and said, "Let He who is without sin cast the first stone," there would be stones hurled with a gleeful lack of introspection.

A Lifetime Ago that Feels Like Yesterday

Even in California, November brings a change of season. At least right now, it is a little cooler at night. I still try to sit outside as the hummingbirds get their last fill of nectar before the early darkness requires them to go into a tree stasis, but often I need a sweatshirt to be comfortable. Early darkness indeed for November by virtue of the turning back of the clock to shorten the day. Thanksgiving is only two weeks away. The Christmas Tree is already up in the Grove and advertising is geared to the yearly merchandising that has marginal, if any, relation to the event that gives it impetus, the birth of Christ.

While I am faithful to, even at times passionate, about the religious dimensions of this time of year, the period from now until very close to the Spring, has always been a bit difficult for me. I am, by nature, as are so many people, in need of extended sunlight. My moods simply are better from Spring through to the descending of the Fall. Then there is the fact, which I say truly without rancor, that my experience of the holiday season, as a child, was not particularly joy filled. No one's fault, really. It was the stuff of the normal dysfunction of any family, to which I was probably unduly sensitive. Alcohol filled Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with my parents and their in laws, my aunts and uncles, evoked usually buried hurts, causing untoward, sometimes angry repartee and sarcasm. To the degree my father contributed to these dialogues, while my mother watched quietly and icily at the gathering, was the degree of tension and concomitant retribution later when we clambered back over the roof to our third of the tripartite building where most of my mother's family lived. My mother managed to make her silence toward my father a shout which he could not tolerate. My father's effort to discuss whatever verbal, as he called it, "lese majeste" he had committed via a comment directed towards one of her sisters came to naught until he blew, threw a few things and left for the night with the yearly mention of a divorce that he opined should have occurred long ago. My mother did not seem particularly moved by his emotion. As to reassuring me, who could not miss the proceedings in a one bedroom apartment, I don't recall that was part of her repertoire. But the next day, sometime, he'd be back and somehow we would return to the state of peaceful co-existence. So the holiday season had a second strike against it. And then the third.

When I was 18 at the same time of the year, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  She died of it 14 months later. It was a cold dark early evening on the ides of November, when I got the call from my Dad while I was at school that I needed to get to the hospital to which he had taken her. She remained in a coma for the next ten days and never regained consciousness. She died just before Thanksgiving Day. I am grateful that in the preceding months, in some paradoxical way that will never be explainable to me in this life, she went from difficult and cold to soft and warm toward not only me, but everyone in her life. But still, November and the approaching holidays cast a pall even when I am not deliberately thinking of the past or of its losses. And as the things of those days replay in my mind, unbidden, that they were some 40 and 50 years ago seems impossible. The memories and the feelings are as fresh as yesterday's.

You know how people say they dream of their dead relatives, mothers, fathers, all the time? Well, I have only had one dream about my mother, and it was maybe 20 years ago. I am at a large party. It is hard to see anything much beyond the standing figures, talking, and drinking and laughing.  I am walking between the figures, on my way to another room. As the crowd breaks around me, almost in the exact middle of the scene, in that room to which I am directing myself is a woman sitting on a chair or a couch, dressed perfectly, though it is too hazy for me to say what exactly she is wearing. Her legs are crossed in perfect Barbizon model style. I know this woman, but how can I? She is older perhaps 70. Her hair is gray, in a longer short cut, brushed back. She smiles at me. It is my mother, but not the woman who died at 48, but the one she might have been had she lived.  That dream has held me all these years. Perhaps she did approve of me. Perhaps, freed of purgatory (for I feel she had purgatory on earth with whatever emotional thing weighed her down), she is finally happy, which to me means she is with God. Perhaps she and my father--he gone now nearly ten years-- realize how foolish were their human grudges and demands of the universe that could never be molded into a perfection reserved only for God's Heaven. And now, perhaps, as I realize they are safe in God's Hands, I am less discomfited by the time of year and willing to engage in all of the celebrations of the season with a soupcon of joy.