Rex Smith: Old myths do little for us in a new day

Before he sinks into well-deserved obscurity, let's take note once more of Roy Moore, he of the big hat and little swinging gun. And the horse! Let's talk just now about his mare, Sassy.

When he rode up to vote in Alabama on Sassy this week, Moore surely wasn't trying to create a metaphor for what's dividing a lot of Americans from each other. Maybe he just likes to ride — though Twitter quickly yielded attacks on his horsemanship, with suggestions that poor Sassy would have been within her rights to buck him off.

But here's the thing: Even aside from Moore's apparent hankering to be an old-time cowpoke, he's a throwback. It doesn't take an old white guy dressing up like a cowboy for us to know that evoking a past that cannot be recovered remains a powerful force in American politics, and a divisive one.

You don't have to go to the Deep South to see this preference for an earlier and simpler time by those who, under the old standards, wouldn't have to tolerate anybody questioning their right to be in charge — because then, by golly, America really would be great again.

Take, for example, the deplorable behavior being reported daily thanks to the #metoo movement. At the very least, these are men behaving as though they still live in the era when a legal doctrine known as coverture was in effect, which held that a woman didn't have rights outside the shadow of a man. A wife was a man's chattel — his property. That yielded the widespread 19th-century assumption that a man has a right to do whatever he wishes with a woman's body, as though it was his own.

The New York Married Women's Property Act of 1848 finally removed some roadblocks to women making their own economic choices. Lots of men now, though, still behave as though they regret the change. The president of the United States, for one, asserted on the notorious "Access Hollywood" tape his right to kiss any woman he wanted because he was famous, or even to grab a woman by the genitals. Locally, we have Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin, sanctioned this month by the Assembly for sexual harassment and heard in August recordings making vulgar statements to a female aide who had accused him of roughing her up. And there's the mayor of Cohoes, Shawn Morse, accused of violence against women now and decades ago. Both McLaughlin and Morse vigorously deny any wrongdoing.

You would think in the 21st century nobody would assume that a woman's body could be owned by anybody but herself. But in our political system, dominated by people who look like the author of this column, the single issue that sharply defines the boundary between liberals and conservatives is a woman's right to control her own body — that is, the question of abortion rights. Today's cowboys sure like to assert their right to answer that question.

Not to malign the tough guys who built a powerful nation on this continent. I grew up where the prairies meet the mountains, a place where America's frontier legends loomed large. The theme song of the Oscar-winning movie "How the West Was Won," filmed nearby, long thrummed in my head: "Here came dreamers, with Bible, fist and gun."

But what forged a nation here isn't the same as what will sustain it: Bible, fist and gun each have their place even now, but you can't be nostalgic for an era when they conferred authority.

Take the Bible, which can liberate with its message of hope or imprison within the bounds of its pre-scientific myths. It's beyond ironic that a nation colonized in no small part by people seeking religious freedom is increasingly serving up religious intolerance, even as modern societies can't avoid bumping up against each other.

The fist? Fighting is an obsolete way to interact, more useful when physical prowess was needed to fill family bellies than at a time when a nation's future depends upon its brain power. Morse, who insists witnesses and police documents citing allegations of his violence toward women are false, says he has been in a lot of fights over the years. To some, that sounds like a threat, which most leaders of his stature wouldn't cite with pride.

And guns, outside military and police hands, nowadays have a place in firearms sports and hunting. Surely the framers of our Constitution couldn't imagine the 2nd Amendment being interpreted to bar restriction on bump stocks, which enable a rifle to fire 800 rounds per minute.

Still, though, we clutch our past, which only makes it harder to deal with people who didn't experience it exactly as we did. The president's notion of making America great again is fine, but to realize it we need more Teslas than Sassys, more eggheads than brawlers, more religious tolerance rather than less and, certainly, fewer sexual harassers.