If you want to understand why scandal-plagued Republican candidate Roy Moore may win the special US Senate election in Alabama, you have to stop thinking about sex.

Moore is in polls going into the vote on December 12, in spite of mounting evidence of disturbing sexual encounters with underage girls, including allegations that he molested some of them. Many of his supporters simply refuse to believe the allegations, and others plan to vote for him in spite of this rather than switching support to Democrat Doug Jones as some prominent Republicans have done.

Why? The answer lies in what propelled Moore into position to contest the race: his status as a culture warrior. Moore is the result of what happens when a cultural divide becomes so wide the two sides no longer listen to each other.

Moore is not among the conservatives who form the backbone of the modern Republican Party. He’s a theocratic Christian populist who believes is “the sovereign source of our law” and Muslims should be barred from holding public office. And his political record would, under normal circumstances, be one of disgrace: He was twice elected chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court, the second time after having been removed from office in 2003 for refusing a federal court order to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Supreme Court building.

After being re-elected to the post, he was suspended in 2016 for ordering state officials not to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples after the US Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to bar gay marriage. He resigned in April to run for the Senate after losing an appeal.

As a result of his battles with federal courts, Moore has become the champion of Americans who feel that the dominant political culture is determined to destroy them. And he has stoked the flames of that passion and risen on its fumes.

The accusations against him have come at a time when and the very deep, creating an atmosphere where supporters can simply dismiss the allegations.

The sexual harassment scandals that have forced major figures in entertainment, media and politics, such as Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer and Representative John Conyers, from their jobs have also paradoxically strengthened Moore’s position. Their behavior toward the women around them has alienated them from their liberal, pro-feminist allies and branded them as hypocrites.

Conservative columnist John Podhoretz, , also noted that Democrats’ ongoing support for former President Bill Clinton in the face of numerous allegations of harassment by women have strengthened Moore, by setting the precedent that his politics were more important than the details of the accusations against him.

“Moore is saying exactly the same thing to conservatives: Allow yourselves to believe in the truth of these claims and you are going to surrender this country to godlessness and transgenderism,” Podhoretz wrote.

Indeed, this was one of the key arguments for supporting Moore that were of conservative Alabama voters organized by Republican pollster Frank Luntz for VICE News.

“Policy is everything,” said Ann Eubank, a retired accounting assistant, to applause from the rest of the group.

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Change is usually measured in decades in the conservative Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. That’s what makes the revolution triggered by its young, impatient crown prince so noteworthy. showed his hand in October during a to an investment conference in Riyadh when he said, “We are returning to what we were before — a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world.”

Alluding to the usual slow pace of change in his country, he added: “We will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with destructive ideas. We will destroy them today.”

It’s a risky gambit for the 32-year-old crown prince, who was just appointed to the post in June by his father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz. The speech comes amid a series of reforms that are shaking the foundations of the Saudi monarchy, bringing its very legitimacy into play. Not just the prince’s own survival is at stake, but that of the entire regime.

Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy rests on Islam as its foundation: Its constitution is the Quran and the Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad; its legal system is based on Islamic law. The king’s official title is Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, and his legitimacy rests on his ability to be a custodian of the land where Islam began and its holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Saudi royals have historically protected themselves from threats to that position by appeasing more conservative Islamists with strict adherence to Islamic values and rituals at home and millions of dollars in funding for the spread of the faith abroad, including to extremist groups that have metastasized into serious terrorist threats such as al-Qaeda. But this process has broken down in recent years, starting in 1990 when the kingdom’s willingness to accept US and other Western troops on its territory to beat back a threat from Saddam Hussein made an enemy out of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, scion of a rich Saudi family close to the royals.

The September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States accelerated the breakdown to the point where the Saudi regime became a target of extremists. Since 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudi nationals, Riyadh found itself under pressure to choose sides, and it chose closer ties with the United States. Attacks on Saudi soil have not only targeted US troops and other foreigners, but also Shia Muslims and members of the royal family. Meanwhile, the prognosis for Saudi Arabia’s oil-based economy worsened, while the Arab Spring prompted unrest among a population where 70% percent are under the age of 30.

Prince Mohammad’s program is as pragmatic as it is revolutionary: In order to diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy away from oil and provide a sustainable future for its youth boom, the nation must be more open to the secular world. Open hostilities with Islamist extremists have made appeasement unworkable and victory essential, but that doesn’t mean it will succeed.

Since Prince Mohammad was elevated, his father has decreed that — a reformist priority for years — and watch public sporting events. But the most ambitious of the reforms is aimed at rewriting the rules of Islam itself: A royal decree of October 17 to examine the examples and teachings of the prophet Muhammad to screen out those considered fake or that have been interpreted to justify extremism and terrorist violence. The center will gather Islamic scholars from around the world to participate in the effort. Its establishment comes in the wake of within Saudi Arabia that included the and proposed changes to religious education.

In a statement, the the center will “eliminate fake and extremist texts and any texts that contradict the teachings of Islam and justify the committing of crimes, murders and terrorist acts.” If successful, the effort will help relieve concerns that the reforms would detach the Saudi regime from the Islamic sources of its legitimacy.

But the top-down nature of the reforms carries a huge risk. None of the reforms are aimed at easing the regime’s iron grip on its population, and there’s no sign of a relaxed tolerance of dissent. Liberal dissidents who might otherwise provide valuable support for the reforms, such as remain in prison. Meanwhile, there are plenty of centers of Islamic scholarship outside the control of the Saudi state that could compete for the loyalty of Saudi Muslims disappointed by the regime’s reforms — most notably in Iran, Riyadh’s regional rival.

Previous top-down efforts in the Middle East have not produced sustainable change. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s reformist policies helped spark the clerical revolution against him in 1979 that established the current Islamic Republic of Iran. In Turkey, the secular reforms established by Mustapha Kemal Ataturk’s iron fist are systematically being rolled back after nearly a century by Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with the apparent support of a majority of his fellow citizens.

Crown Prince Mohammad has described himself as being a man in a hurry. But, if he doesn’t rush the development of a system in which his people can share the political and economic benefits of his reforms, the whole endeavor might ultimately fail.

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Now that the National Football League (NFL) in the showdown over players sitting and kneeling during the playing of the US national anthem, it’s a good time to look at why the protests were doomed to failure from the start.

The protesting players wanted to raise awareness about abuses of power by police. Concerns over such abuses are widespread and have the potential to unite liberals, conservatives and libertarians in the search for solutions. But the method chosen by the protesters couldn’t have been more divisive, dooming their effort to failure.

The national anthem and the flag are symbols of the American nation, serving the same unifying purpose as those of other nations across the world. Absent their symbolic value, they would just be and a piece of red-white-and-blue cloth. It’s that symbolic value which prompted protesters to target the anthem, drawing a negative reaction from most of their fellow citizens.

Since the 1980s, the fight against illegal drugs and rising rates of violent crime produced a political climate that allowed police in the US to greatly expand their power and limit their accountability for abuses. Though crime rates , fear of crime remained high in public perceptions, bolstering support for expanded, more aggressive policing combined with weak oversight.

But recent widespread reports of abuses — many seen as racially motivated — have left many black Americans in particular feeling as if they are powerless to influence how laws are enforced in their communities. Even in cities where black leaders dominate the political and judicial structure that controls law enforcement, many minority residents believe racial bias permeates the system, and they have reacted with protests and street violence.

Though race has been a factor in some of the well-publicized police abuse cases, there are bigger factors at play, most notably the militarization of police, as detailed in journalist Radley Balko’s book, , which has led to them being seen in many communities as an occupying army. Impunity also is a factor, even in cases where officers overreacted, like the in Minnesota.

Calls for reform from both liberal and conservative activists and politicians had come long before quarterback Colin Kaepernick at a San Francisco 49ers game on August 26, 2016, triggering a nationwide protest by football players and other athletes that mushroomed after President Donald Trump jumped in during September 2017 and said

But Kaepernick had already fatally doomed the protest by setting a tone for it that was guaranteed to draw opposition from most Americans. In a after the first protest, Kaepernick said: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”

THE LEFT IN AMERICA

It’s not unusual for protests from the left to target national symbols. The practice of flag burning as a form of political protest emerged out of the anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s and has been declared a constitutionally-protected form of free expression. Though legal, it’s not without a social cost: By targeting universal symbols of the American community, the left has marginalized itself as a political force relative to its strength in other countries.

The protesting athletes see themselves as heirs to the civil rights movement. In fact, they are kneeling into a from most Americans who see disrespect for the national symbols as disrespect for the nation itself. They are inviting their fellow countrymen to disregard their opinion because they are delegitimizing the community itself.

It’s one thing to protest racism in policing in America. It’s something entirely different to claim America is racist.

This was not the moral tone set for the civil rights movement by Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial. King, who was a master of rhetoric, portrayed racism and discrimination as anti-American, and declared that black people were entitled to the promise of the nation’s founding documents as much as anyone else.

“When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir,” King said. “It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.”

The protests may drag on as NFL owners consider whether to require them to end amid complaints that the league is stifling the free speech of players. But they have already failed because Americans, including those who agree with the underlying issue of police abuses, stand against them.

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The record-breaking move of Brazilian football superstar Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain likely would not have been possible without the financial support of a tiny Gulf nation under fire for its perceived support of Islamist terrorism: Qatar.

That Qatar is even capable of being a key factor in the No. 1 telenovela of the summer transfer season is why the equally dramatic, but far more significant, geopolitical crisis has been so hard to solve more than 60 days in. The petroleum-rich emirate’s investments in world football rival those its accusers say have been offered to keep Islamist extremist movements alive. And the same state-funded company that owns the Al Jazeera news outlet — a focal point of the political controversy — also controls the beIN Sports network, one of the major global broadcasters of football games.

In the match-up of global politics, Qatar is playing simultaneously on both sides of the pitch, leaving American and other Western officials unable to decide if it’s primarily a friend or foe.

On one hand, there’s the nation that has bankrolled the ��transaction that brought one of the world’s best players to Paris and fueled hopes of a UEFA Champions League triumph. It’s the same country that is set to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup as the latest effort to brand itself as a modern Muslim state.

Ownership of PSG by an investment firm linked to Qatar’s ruling al-Thani family is just one of many massive financial bets the tiny nation has made in Western economies to secure the future of its 313,000 citizens, who make up only about 12% of its 2.6 million residents.

Qatar has also made political investments in the West. It’s a full member of the international coalition fighting the Islamic State, and hosts the US military headquarters in the Middle East at Al Udeid Air Base near Doha.

But it’s the other side of the coin that prompted Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt to abruptly break off relations on June 5 and impose both a trade and travel ban on Qatar.

At the core of the dispute is Qatar’s support for Islamist movements throughout the Middle East as a means of bolstering its diplomatic influence, primarily the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots. Specifically, Qatar stands accused of supporting who pose security threats to the governments aligned against it, along with including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, al Qaeda and even the Islamic State. Qatar is also accused of violating with its neighbors to curb that support.

Doha denies all the allegations and has rejected a list of demands that includes an end to financing of terrorist groups and harboring of individuals seen as linked to terrorism, along with shutting down Al Jazeera, which stands accused of inciting violence throughout the region and of for the Brotherhood and other extremists.

The Saudi-led group has also pushed for Qatar to be stripped of hosting the World Cup, and its media Doha’s attempt to “politicize” the Neymar move to bolster its image.

Much of the evidence offered by Saudi Arabia and its allies echoes that which US officials have offered over the years to bolster their case that Qatar is at the very least not doing enough to curb support for terrorism. In an Acting Treasury Undersecretary Adam Szubin said Qatar “still lacks the necessary political will and capacity to effectively enforce their [countering the financing of terrorism] laws against all terrorist financing threats regardless of organization or affiliation.”

But Qatar’s role as a nominal ally and its massive investments in Western economies have given leaders pause to go as far as the Saudi-led group in trying to punish Doha. It’s the source of the confusion in US policy that has President Donald Trump that Qatar supports terrorism “at a very high level” while his Defense and State Departments work to negotiate a resolution to the crisis.

In much the same manner, many football fans who believe Qatar’s money supports terrorism will watch on beIN Sports as Neymar takes the pitch at the Parc des Princes. And when he does, he’ll be wearing on a message from PSG’s prime sponsor, the national airline of the UAE: “Fly Emirates.”

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