Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, livened up a slow news day when he was found to have not merely posed for racist photos as a medical student, but to have actually put them in his med school yearbook. This has, naturally, set off a race among the the Awoken among us to call for — nay, demand — his resignation.
The yearbook came out in 1984, 35 years ago, when Northam was 25. Because he was a racist dipshit at age 25 — a graduate of Virginia Military Institute, so basically trained to be a dipshit — the past 35 years don’t count. To America’s left-wing moral guardians, there can be no such thing as redemption, except for the cases when there is. I don’t recall too many calls for the retirement of Sen. Robert Byrd, another Democrat, over his past as an actual Klansman.
To pick an example, Mark Joseph Stern at Slate writes, “A man who could take a picture like that and conceal it for decades, then insist it’s not too late to atone when it’s discovered, is not a man who should hold public office.” This rather pointedly ignores the fact that many Republicans, governors included, are still racists today and are working put that philosophy into practice. It also skims over what should embarrass journalists — a photograph that’s been publicly available for 35 years was missed not only by journalists but opposition researchers during Northam’s run for the governorship. Stern’s moralizing aside, Northam had no obligation to tell voters, “Oh, by the way, I was once a dipshit racist, but unlike my opponent, I got over it.”
“No one benefits from his continued service,” Stern writes. Really? What about the people who voted him into office? If you want Northam out, go through the proper procedures for removing him. He has broken no law, and this has no relation to his job performance. Racism, vile as it is, is not only common currency in the U.S., particularly in the states of the Confederacy, it’s the obvious philosophy of the president of the United States. If the citizens of Virginia want Northam out, they’ll let him know. He will have to deal with this in coming days and weeks, and might well decide he can no longer be effective, but nobody’s really in position to judge that yet. The verdict doesn’t go before the trial.
Stern gives away the game when he writes that this was a “national embarrassment.” No it wasn’t. It was an embarrassment for people like Stern, who mistake politics for religion and want to pretend that their party’s shit doesn’t stink. You want him to resign not because you’re offended, but because you’re embarrassed — how can you ever lord your morality over Republicans again?
What folks like this can’t understand is that Republicans think they’re moral and we’re immoral, which ought to demonstrate that in politics, moral suasion only goes so far, because we don’t all share the same morality. Once that saturation point is reached, moralizing does more harm than good. It makes people think you’re a pompous, self-righteous ass.
You want to stand for something? Try standing for fully assessing situations before going off half-cocked. I’d be happier with the Democratic Party if that were how we differed from Republicans.
