" He's a moral degenerate...he's a pathetic, empty guy who postures in a way that's kind of repulsive. There are 330 million Americans, and there are 100 Senators, We can't have a decent human being in those hundred? We have to settle for this?"
--David Brooks, PBS Newshour June 6, 2026
Oh, it never gets resolved. It never got looked at, sorted out, so we moved passed it, and as if possessed by some sort of Freudian ghost lurking in our subconscious, the Democratic Party keeps jumping off a roof, or swims upstream, drawn by some inexorable force to spawn, turn brilliant scarlet and go belly up in the shallow waters.
Let us do a sort of Rorschach test: Think of these men, and women who I'll group deliberatively:
1/ Justice Clarence Thomas. Anita Hill. Justice Brett Cavanaugh. Christine Blasey Ford.
2/ Harvey Weinstein. Bill Cosby. O.J. Simpson.
3/ Willy Horton. George H.W. Bush. Michael Dukakis.
4/ United States Senator Al Franken.
5/ John F. Kennedy. Marilyn Monroe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvoqK6aLE2E
6/ Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Lucy Mercer Rutherford.
7/ Frank Underwood. Zoe Barnes.
8/ Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Jefferson.
9/ Teddy Roosevelt and his son, Quentin Roosevelt.
10/ U.S. Senator Susan Collins.
11/ U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell
12 /Donald Trump
So here are some of the charges by women against Graham Platner:
1/ "One former girlfriend alleged he was physically forceful, claiming he twisted her arm and held her in a room during an argument." NYT, Google AI
2/ "Sending sexually explicit text messages to women who were not his wife while he was married." Google AI. Source, his wife.
3/ Reddit posts dating back a decade. In these posts he made inflammatory remarks that used homophobic slurs, mocked law enforcement, insulted a Purple Heart reciipent and suggested women bear responsibility for being raped." Google AI.
So how do we resolve the difficulties we face with our choice now?
And let's be clear, our choice is to vote for Susan Collins, or to not vote against her (which is the same thing) or to vote for Graham Platner.
Are we going to settle our arguments about the dirty dozen on the Rorschach test above with this vote?
Quite definitely not.
It might be an opportunity to, once again, discuss all the things we want to say about this dirty dozen of American history and public figures, and surely Mad Dog could devote a blog post (and may well, once he cycles back into his manic phase) but for now, the choice is between Platner, who is not the moral paragon David Brooks would like to see, claim the United States Senate seat for Maine, but, undeniably, he is not Susan Collins, who wears a lapel pin with the Ukraine and American flags crossed, while voting 99% of the time for the man who ambushed President of Ukraine Zelensky in the Oval Office, to whom she has shown almost complete obeisance, as Trump verbally assassinated the courageous, democratically elected leader of a nation fighting for its life against a Russian dictator.
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| Remember: Collins voted for This |
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| And for This |
Zelensky, remember, turned down offers to fly him out of Kiev when the Russians attacked, replying, "I don't need a ride. What I need is ammunition."
You want to talk about moral fiber? Talk about Zelensky. Or courage. And then consider what Trump has done to Zelensky and Ukraine while Collins silently acceded.
So Zelensky stood tall against Putin, who brooks no dissent and who has said he wants to restore the Russian empire in Europe and Asia.
And Trump slaps down Zelensky. Asked for her reaction, Collins called the meeting "very unfortunate," as if Trump had simply upset a cup of tea, splashing on the Ukrainian stalwart. "Very unfortunate?" That's like calling the Hiroshima bomb "very destructive." Or like calling the crashing and burning of the Hindenberg, "A disturbing mishap." Or calling the murder of Alex Pretti, "An unfortunate incident."
She did not want to halt military aide to Ukraine but she did nothing when Trump halted it.
She voted against impeaching Trump for his actions toward Ukraine, saying he had "learned his lesson."
She remained virtually silent about Trump's depredations from Ukraine to Minneapolis. And as Martin Luther King said, "In the end, it is not the words of our enemies we will remember, but the silence of our friends."
And what we must remember about Collins is her silence, and her quiet votes to give Trump everything he wants.
Brooks has decried Platner's posts concerning rape; but Collins votes with a man convicted of rape--well, technically not "rape" but, you know, not to mention his metaphorical rape of the Constitution.
What did Collins say when Trump's thugs murdered Alex Pretti and Renee Good? Well, she said, maybe we should consider better use of police body cameras and better training for ICE agents.
Ya think?
There is an old legal doctrine: Qui tacet consentire videtur "Silence Implies Consent." Susan Collins might have her picture placed right next to that one.
David Brooks did not stop with condemning Platner as a moral degenerate, in an exegesis typical of Brooks, who, as a "public intellectual" always wants to draw grand conclusions from the particulars of our contemporary landscape, Brooks goes on to explain why people support people like Platner and Trump. It is because Americans are not as smart as he is, nor as well schooled:
"Democrats are supporting Platner for the same reason Trump people are supporting Trump," Brooks said. "It's because 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years ago we privatized morality. We told people we're not going to teach morality in schools. It's up to you to come up with your own values. And the problem is when you do that, unless your name is Aristotle, you probably can't come up with your own philosophy. And so what happens is...you've got a lot of people in this country who are morally inarticulate; they're morally undeveloped."
The fact is, if Mad Dog lived in Maine, morally inarticulate and underdeveloped (i.e. working class) as he is, Mad Dog would vote for Jack the Ripper, if he were a Democrat, running to unseat Republican Collins.
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