Judge Roy Moore, gettng offended over nothing, and a FB rant

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Roy Moore. I can't stand him. For those of you who don't know who he is, he's the guy who threw a fit over being made to remove a plaque of the ten commandments in his courtroom and turned it into a huge deal and made it into something that it wasn't. <This> is about him and will explain it.

I had been talking on FB with someone and she brought up the "under God" thing in the pledge and I told her my mothers generation said it without it, but nobody really pays enough attention to it when you are that age in school, for it to really matter and we both agreed that it was silly to get offended over it being in there and I also said it's silly to get offended over it not being in there, but I think it's perfectly ok to get offended over the constant amount of offense that is taken by Americans daily and usually over very small things that while important to the person are really nothing that has enough impact to turn into a big deal.

I posted this to her and I liked it so much that I copied and pasted it before she had a chance to delete it. I wanted to post it here and ask for feedback. Here it is! I get the feeling from the tone of lots of her posts that she's probably an Ole Roy fan.

I don't have a problem with what others choose to do in their personal lives or decisions or beliefs or even personal ethics as long as they uphold society's standards and don't harm others, but the frequent whining about being offended by everything is about to drive me crazy.

Look at that Roy Moore debacle. First off, I don't see why there was a law that said he can't have whatever decoration he wants in his court room. As far as I'm concerned he can put up dogs playing poker, the Nine Satanic Sins, a velvet Elvis, a Lottie Moon collage, the entire catechism of the Catholic Church, the Five Pillars of Islam, or even one of the more divisive personal statements - something that shows his preference for either Alabama or Auburn. It's just decoration and nothing more.

So, he had I think a little wood burned plaque of the Ten Commandments. Well, everybody knows what they are even if they don't believe in the religions the Commandments are used by, the story of them is even on TV every Passover. It was a harmless symbol of his personal beliefs. Well somebody got offended and asked that he take it down. OK, in a case like that it's just a little plaque but it does bring personal religion into the courtroom which if you stretch it far enough could imply that he was favoring his own religion, which most people do anyway, plaque or no. He should have taken it down, made a few sarcastic and caustic comments to the press and walked away the bigger man. He did not do this.

He began a campaign of embarrassment for the state of Alabama which is right up there in people's minds with George Wallace standing in front of the University touting segregation. Two different topics that have nothing to do with one another, but still both were an embarrassment. Wallace's because of his beliefs and Moore's because of his juvenile behavior.

As a judge, it's assumed that he knows the law and therefore understands that by removing the decorative plaque from his courtroom he is not in any way being forbidden to follow the tenants of his religion, nor is the removing of the décor an attempt to stop every Bible believing Christian in the state of Alabama from "keeping the Ten Commandments". Even a 5th grader would see the lack of logic in that and the huge leap to the grandstand and soap box. While being a self proclaimed Defender of the Faith he worked up crowds and congregations to the point of frenzy by strongly hinting that if they made him remove his little plaque that Alabama would become the next Sodom and Gomorrah overnight. Christianity would be all but outlawed and we would be overrun with lotteries to fund schools, bingo, and possibly the SBC would be forced to endorse dancing.
So he did what he thought would wedge his position into the minds of the faithful and every one else by having a huge granite block carved with the Ten Commandments which he then snuck into the rotunda in the middle of the night. That was basically his expensive and very public version of "So there! You can't make me! Nanny nanny boo boo!" This did nothing except run up legal fees, court costs, time and taxpayers expenses while they tried to get him to act like an adult, but by then the campaign trail and visions of higher office were in his sights and he wasn't about to back down because by this time he was on a Mission From God.

He somehow seemed to convince, probably by more smoke and mirrors and mass hypnosis than David Copperfield ever imagined, almost every Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, and other Fundamentalist Evangelical Christian in the state that they were shortly going to be punished by God for bad decorating and would be forced to worship Ceaser and his gods just as they did in Ancient Rome. The day it was removed, during broad daylight with cameras, speeches, prayer and many photo ops, I'm sure that many in the crowd supporting him actually feared a bolt of lightening from the Heavens because by then Ole Roy had them convinced that their religious freedom was about to be taken away and they just had not fought hard enough to keep it!

Then it was over. Nobody closed all the churches. In fact, the next Sunday things went along as smoothly as ever. Nobody herded the school children into a room and forced them to learn how "we are descended from monkeys". Nothing bad happened. Except somehow or other, we elected him to the supreme court. After that. We publically rewarded him for making a mountain out of a molehill and a martyr out of a media whore. No matter what you feel personally about Roy Moore's plaque, his cause, his antics, and his grandstanding you do have to admit that he took the offense of one person, which could have easily been remedied, and turned it into a three ring circus worthy of Barnum and Baily.

Rather than simply removing a not very well done piece of wall décor, he raised being offended to such a level of hysteria and unfounded fears that others will be sure to follow, and while they whip their supporters into a frenzy of fear for whatever the next thing is, the circus theme is very apropos because as PT Barnum said "There's a sucker born every minute" and the suckers buying into either side of the great offense wll not gain one single thing by it, they will truly be the victims in our society of offended citizens.

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I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
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