by Lynn Mandaville

In the land of hyperbole, Doug Jones, in a landslide victory, was victorious over Roy Moore to clinch the coveted senate seat in Alabama Tuesday, a seat made vacant when Jeff Sessions accepted appointment to the cabinet position of Attorney General for the Trump administration.

In truth, however, this highly controversial election was won by a very narrow margin.

What the pundits will make of this I have no idea. But, as I write this in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, to many of us this victory signals a ray of hope that, even if Republican legislators don’t put country before party, the voters of Alabama do. The good people of Alabama worked exceedingly hard to get out the vote in favor of high moral standards over partisan politics.

These good people said, in essence, that the word of young girls was to be believed when spoken by their adult selves at a time when a long-awaited cultural shift was occurring in America regarding attitudes toward and practices of unwanted sexual behavior.

To be truthful, I did not expect a Doug Jones victory to be the outcome of this election. I had expected that I would be writing that the continued victimization of the less powerful among us would continue to be America’s normal. Instead, I have the opportunity to cheer what I hope to see become the resurrection of real morality, the restoration of true respect, and the heightened level of participatory democracy in America.

In my not-so-humble opinion, I think, as a nation, we have become too quick to anger, too quick to judge, and too fast to shoot off our mouths. I think that our hypocrisy has blossomed as quickly as a red tide to the point that some of us proclaim our Christianity with voices loud and shrill while in our hearts we think that kindness and compassion are for suckers and saps.

I have observed for a long time (decades, in fact), that we, men and women alike, have allowed ourselves to become a nation of victims. We have become so emotionally needy and self-centered that we have become weaker rather than stronger. I view the emergence of #MeToo as a shift away from that victimhood, at least for women who have experienced sexual harassment and kept it silent for much too long.

If you read my piece last week, you know I shared my own stories of the inappropriate behavior of two men toward me when I was a girl. I never thought of myself as a victim of anything. I thought of myself as having figured out how to protect myself from similar behavior in my future, and as having put it behind myself so as to move forward.

Now, with the preponderance of stories like my own, I have a sense that women are speaking up now, not as victims, per se, but as significant statistics to support our fight for equality, equity, and justice.

We all know that the Alabama election does not mark an end to this chapter in our social history. In coming weeks we will continue to see more prominent men outed for acting on their baser impulses. We will have to grapple with ambiguous feelings toward men whom we have admired and respected on one hand, and now are repulsed by on the other. We will have to try to become reconciled with the seeming unfair application of punishment imposed by the court of public opinion in the absence of due process.

In the airing of all this cultural dirty laundry, many new questions have arisen regarding how we will move forward and morally higher. In the area of news casting and reporting, who will replace the fallen men? Will the face of morning news shows be female for a while? Will future male morning show performers have to be vetted as to their moral standing? Will there now be a new form of background checks for men?

Besides clearing them from immoral conduct with children, as in school or daycare settings, will they have to be subjected to clearing of immoral conduct with women? (Or men, as this type of behavior certainly isn’t isolated to the treatment of women by men, but of men by men.) Will we now have perverted office pools where people bet on which man will be outed next, in what industry he will be employed, and of what type of offense he will be accused?

For me, one unsettling thing remains. I watch the news shows and view popular culture with a sense of dread, not that there will be more men accused, but that the men accused will be more of those I admire. Will it be long-respected Lester Holt, or squeaky clean John Dickerson? Will Scott Simon of NPR be tarnished? Will a renowned chef or actor or author or intellectual turn out to be scum? Will it be someone in my local government or on my school board? A neighbor? A relative? It’s almost enough to turn a wide-eyed optimist into a jaded misanthrope.

I say almost because I remain Pollyanna in many ways. I believe we have it within us to rise above the fever dream that envelops us. I believe that within us lies dormant the lesson we learned as children, either in church or school or at our parents’ feet. Do unto others what you would have them do unto you. We just need to rouse it from its sleep.