I was still a teenager and I had never felt such pain and emotional trauma as I did when the girl I was in love with-- the hottest girl in the school and a year ahead of me-- told me she didn't want to go out with me any more. I stopped going to classes and descended into a deep dark drug hole fueled by DMT, one of the most horrible drugs known to man (+ heroin). Already generally depressive because of the war against Vietnam, I was on the verge of just giving up. And then I met Chris, also a year ahead of me in school, but someone who was both in school and who had a real life outside of school. She was a model and she seemed way more worldly and sophisticated that anyone I had ever met. She was brilliant and from one of Alabama's most prominent families-- governors, legislators, cabinet members... But it was Chris-- and her roommate-- who dragged me out of that drug hole. Chris taught me to be a man. No one else ever had. I haven't connected to her in 40 years but I think about her often. We took so many acid trips together. We once decided to hitchhike to the North Pole (although we only got as far as Montreal). I wish I had a photo of her to show you. We used to shave our heads together, she so she could wear wigs on shoots, me... because she did. She's the only person I had ever met from Alabama at that time. Her father was the Attorney General (while George Wallace was governor).
Yesterday, Alabama reported 2,000 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the state's total to 210,637-- that's 42,959 cases per million Alabamians, the 10th worst state in the country. The state reported a dozen more deaths yesterday too; there have been 3,213 deaths from COVID reported there to date.
People in Alabama seem to be following Trump's advice, and their Trumpist governor's advice, about how to deal with the pandemic. Many people don't wear masks or follow social distancing protocols. And they turned out in force to show their defiance at the ballot box. Trump beat Biden in Alabama 1,434,159 (62.1%) to 843,473 (36.5%). Of Alabama's 67 counties, Trump won 54. In 2016, Trump had won 1,318,255 votes and the same 54 counties. 729,547 Alabamians (34.6%) had voted for Hillary. Biden did about 2 percent better. Alabama also replaced this Democratic U.S. Senator, Doug Jones, a sensible conservative, with a guy no one knew much about and who stayed away from the media for the entire campaign, Tommy Tuberville, who ran on only one plank: Trump (and that he had been a football coach at Auburn). He beat Jones 60.1% to 39.7%.
Today people are learning a little more about Tommy than how Trumpist he is and how he led Auburn to victory over Alabama's Crimson Tide six consecutive times. People are wondering which committees Moscow Mitch will assign him to since he doesn't seem to know anything about anything (other than football).
Wednesday, Tommy T gave an interview to the Alabama Daily News. Oy! Any reasonably attentive 6th grader knows more about the American government-- and American history-- than he does. The 3 branches of government are the executive, the legislative and the judicial. In his mind the 3 branches are the White House, the Senate and the House. OK, so he missed the first day of civics class. But he apparently missed American history classes too-- lots of them. Asserting how concerned he is that Joe Biden is a socialist, he explained to the reporter how World War II was fought to rid the world of socialism and communism, somehow forgetting about the progenitors of today's Republican Party, fascism and Naziism. In a speech he insisted that his father took part in "liberating Paris from socialism and communism." He repeated his mistake in his interview:
I look at it and I see what country I grew up in and what it’s meant and the direction that we were going, and it’s concerning to me that a guy can run for president of the United States and have an opportunity to win when he leans more to a Socialist type of government … And that’s concerning to me that we’re to the point now where we’ve got almost half the country voting for something that this country wasn’t built on. Very concerning and, you know, as I tell people, my dad fought 76 years ago in Europe to free Europe of Socialism. Today, you look at this election, we have half this country that made some kind of movement, now they might not believe in it 100 percent, but they made some kind of movement toward socialism. So we’re fighting it right here on our own soil. We’ve got to decide, you know, over the years which direction we’re going, and that part’s concerning to me.
He also seems to have as keen an understanding of ethics rules as Trump does.