"Fundamentalist" is shorthand for my ignorance, of course, as is "evangelical." Not that I have a desire to know firsthand what it's like to attend a small enveloping community dominated by a cult leader with enough money to rent a space, which is how I think of the galaxy of Southern churches out of which the support for Trump and Moore emerges naturally. It's a little ridiculous for those of us without any inclination to Christianity to go after the lax moral framework of such folk (though much less ridiculous for those who still practice mainstream forms of Christianity or other God-fearing faiths), in my opinion, because so much of their practice and preaching has to do with the salvation of undeserving sinners, and so little of it with the responsibilities of probity, let alone charity. And that offered salvation might be what draws the angry, the despairing and the depressed to those who will accept them as they are, so we, who fear not the Lord and are happy with our lives as they are, are not very likely to turn them in any other direction. Does that matter for our ability to persuade them politically? I think it does. Accordingly, I've pretty much given up on that way out of the hell they and their president are creating, have created.
By that subject heading, I really mean to posit the question: what would it mean for our evaluation of the current political inferno if it were really about the Russians? I am supposing first of all that the involvement and attempts to interfere of the Russian government in the American presidential election of 2016 was real; moreover, I believe the Trump administration, including Donald J. Trump himself, colluded knowingly with the Russians. But even taking all that as given, and taking as given that it's a good thing for the legal process to be set loose on these events because they may provide the most straightforward path to the impeachment of Trump, the question remains: is it really about the Russians? Assuming full culpability of both the Russians and the Trump campaign, it would still remain the case that the interference and collusion consisted in obtaining and promulgating garbage about Hillary Clinton, and messing with people's heads on social media. ...
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