Opinion

Amid all the craziness surrounding Roy Moore’s race for the US Senate and the seeming willingness of Alabama’s likely voters to send a man of such dubious merit and morality to Capitol Hill (where, admittedly, the bar already is pretty damned low), I keep thinking of a line from the Randy Newman song “Rednecks.”

Delusion, and lots of it, is pretty much a prerequisite for dictators. The New Yorker's David Remnick notes that Finnish autocrat Urho Kekkonen reportedly opened his public orations with the line, “If I die…” Ugandan dictator Idi Amin decreed his official title was "His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.” Saparmurat Niyazov, the insane strongman of Turkmenistan whose prolific lunacy demanded an astonishing number of gold statues be erected in his image, once conceded “there are too many portraits, pictures and monuments [of me],” and claimed that while he did not “find any pleasure” in the ubiquity of his visage, benevolently allowed for it because “the people demand it,” as Paul Theroux noted. Ferdinand Marcos, whose 20-year rule of the Philippines was marked by terror, corruption and brutality, repeated his public lies in his private journals, which biographer William C. Rempel has written were “riddled with falsehoods and self-serving fictions” and “blatant, bald-faced, and occasionally comical” untruths. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi told journalists that there were “no demonstrations at all” even as protesters crowded the streets of Tripoli and cities around the country calling for the end of his regime. “All my people love me,” Gaddafi insisted in a 2011 interview. “They would die to protect me.”

In 2008, Hana Williams was adopted from an orphanage in Ethiopia and brought to the United States where she died at the hands of her Bible-believing American parents. Their notion of Christian discipline required breaking her will, a remarkably common belief among conservative Evangelicals. To that end, they frequently beat her, shut her in a closet, and denied her meals. Ultimately, she was left outside where she died of hypothermia exacerbated by malnutrition. They were convicted of manslaughter this month.

The media, politicians, celebrities, athletes and other groups have questioned the fitness and mental health of the president, but one group has largely refrained: mental health professionals.

Welcome to What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s new roundup of stories that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or were at least under-reported – due to the daily firehose of political prank falls, unhinged tweet storms and threats of nuclear annihilation coming out of the current White House.   

On Nov. 29, President Trump retweeted a series of videos that purported to depict violence committed by Muslims. They had originated from the account of a far-right British ultranationalist who had been convicted for harassing a Muslim. The backlash was swift, with British Prime Minister Theresa May saying “the President is wrong to have done this.”

The lightning-fast ascent and political invincibility of Donald Trump has left many experts baffled and wondering, “How did we get here?” Any accurate and sufficient answer to that question must not only focus on Trump himself, but also on his uniquely loyal supporters. Given their extreme devotion and unwavering admiration for their highly unpredictable and often inflammatory leader, some have turned to the field of psychology for scientific explanations based on precise quantitative data and established theoretical frameworks.

But the ones who are, are swine. And let’s stop pretending that we didn’t know.

If a majority of voters in Alabama’s upcoming election for Senate vote for an accused child molesting, theocratic, twice disgraced and ousted judge Roy Moore he will have a strong rival for the title of worst senator ever from the state in post-Civil War era. The current holder of that dubious title for the moment remains Thomas Heflin, who was Alabama’s senator from 1920 to 1930.

Republicans seem to be operating under the assumption that if the details of their tax “reform” plan are aired for too long, the whole thing might fall apart.

Much as artists, musicians and writers are influenced by the world around them, so too are fashion designers. The fashion industry has a long history of finding inspiration in the work of other designers and modifying them. But they also seek out creative ideas elsewhere, and often incorporate elements of cultures from around the world.