Liberals should lighten up.

The pure and sanctimonious liberals kill off their friends.

Some liberal voices call for him to resign.

Their Imperfect friends are easier targets than their sworn enemies.

Some of the comments in Facebook groups and among my college classmates urge Al Franken to resign.  What he did was inexcusable.

Here is an example:  

"Shouldn’t we be clamoring for his resignation?  I saw a tweet today from someone arguing that because of his progressive views (I’m paraphrasing here) that “we” need to stick by our allies, but, c’mon. Harassment is harassment. Liberal, conservative, intelligentsia, moron, it’s all the same, is it not?  If we try to parse this stuff we are doomed, methinks.  If there was ever a time for a bright line test it is here and now.  Senator, step down." 

This point of view is widespread and it has a logic to it.  Don't be a hypocrite.  We cannot condemn bad behavior if we tolerate imperfection within our own team.  After all, the political right has triumphed using "What-About-ism".  Trump colluded with Russia, well, what about Hillary and Benghazi?   Trump groped women, well, what about Bill Clinton?

A stupid joke.

Al Franken is guilty of making a sophomoric joke.  As this blog wrote yesterday, the supposed "smoking gun" photograph is the posed photograph of a joke, not documentation of a sexual assault.  Look at the shadows under his hands.  Look at his face.   He is posing. It is absolutely fair for someone to say the joke is tasteless and abusive and they don't like it, but this is disapproval of a sophomoric joke.  Indeed, by treating the performance of a joke to a room of people as similar to a rape or forceful assault devalues the meaning of women who experienced much worse.

For their own political self interest, liberals need to lighten up.

Liberal sanctimony does not frighten the political right.  They understand that it serves their purposes of scaring off the general public.  They call it crazy political correctness.  Liberal sanctimony does frighten the liberals.   It has even their allies and supporters  walking on eggshells.

Joke about a woman asleep being vulnerable to groping?  Offensive! Some things must not be joked about. Resign from the senate.  Jokes on this promotes “rape culture.”

Joke about older guys needing a long time to pee?  Offensive!  It insults older men and they are offended.  It validates "ageism culture."

Joke about PMS or menopause or what it is like to be married to a woman who experiences those?  Offensive!  No man can do it, never, ever.  It insults women, and projects the notion that women have unique problems and weaknesses. It validates “misogyny culture.”  

I am growing more and more concerned that this country will re-elect Donald Trump.  One bad presidential election was not a sufficient lesson and liberals may need a second. 

 Leftist moralism and values-purity is perceived out in red-state-flyover-regular America (that place with a majority of electoral votes) as burdensome and scolding. People don’t like to be scolded.  They don’t like being told that they are racist, misogynist, or should feel guilty about having white privilege. They don’t like being fearful, wondering how they will be condemned for being who they are.

The solution is not to purify our own.  There is no one pure enough for people of sanctimonious character.  This is politics.  There will always be critics.  There will always be some former staff person, or some constituent for the next hero (Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders) eager to come forward and say that this hero was condescending, or tasteless, or offensive, or failed to listen, or had a spouse whose college lost money, or some other sin. 

Everything offends somebody.

The answer for liberals is not better purity.  The answer is to lighten up.  

My liberal progressive friends don’t just condemn real racists and and real sexual assaulters; they condemn the careless misdemeanants, people like Al Franken.  They condemn the people who make stupid jokes, the people who stumble over the pronouns for a transexual, the people who actually think that “ALL lives matter” was a pretty good slogan. 

They condemn the imperfect and round them up with the genuinely bad.  The political result is that a vast body of people think liberal judgment is unrealistic, and they are tired of the sanctimony.  

So they vote for Trump.  At least Trump won’t call them a rapist for telling a stupid joke.