To me, this is all pretty simple.
If Al Franken needs to step down because of accusations of sexual harassment, then so does John Conyers. And so does Donald J. Trump.
If Donald J. Trump does not need to step down because of accusations of sexual harassment, then neither does Al Franken or John Conyers.
If Roy Moore is unfit to serve as Senator because he allegedly molested a 14 year old girl 40 years ago, then Donald J. Trump is unfit to serve because he allegedly raped a 13 year old girl. If we're willing to let Roy Moore into the Senate, then Al Franken gets to stay in the Senate.
Am I missing anything here?
You're closer to the point of this thread than anyone else.
Since the prisoner's dilemma truce is breaking down, we might get to the point of most of congress being too tainted to serve.
I think that's what a lot of people would like. And I think there is at least one political camp (outside of Russia) that wants to engage in 'everybody is bad, they're as bad as we are so it doesn't really matter at all anyway and we can all go back to hiding our heads in the sand and up the butts of pretty girls or boys, if that's your jam' in an effort to both excuse terrible behavior and to (further) undermine people's faith in our government.
I think sexual harassment is horrible. I've experienced it myself and so have a lot, perhaps most of my female friends, starting in grade school. Yes: grade school, although I suppose in a lot of places 5th and 6th grades is now middle school. It's not just unpleasant and embarrassing, but it also serves the very real purpose of suppressing the confidence of young girls and women, and also, I would imagine, boys who are also sometimes victims. It's bad in many ways that aren't related to chastity or sex only within marriage kinds of ways. I think it also damages the boys and men who engage in such behavior. It needs to stop.
It won't stop by trying to dress it up as some game of prisoners' dilemma or any other game or mind game.
It only stops when we shine a bright light on it, and address how we treat other people. Which should always be with respect for their persons and themselves, no matter how much we disagree with them and also no matter how lonely or horny we are or how poor are our social skills or how attracted we are to them or how bad we feel about ourselves. That will go a long way to making the more nefarious reasons for such behavior stopping: genuine narcissism, cruelty, desire for power, desire to inflict pain, to generate fear in others, to feel strong and powerful by making other people feel weak and helpless.
There certainly are clueless, thoughtless behaviors that arise out of discomfort with one's own emerging hormones and their response to the emerging hormones and accompanying changes in body shape and size and hair, etc. as well as social immaturity that we all go through. Doubtless not enough of us grow up out of that as quickly as we should, largely because it's behavior that is swept under the rug, ignored, explained away instead of being corrected on the spot.
But there are also those who act with every intention of inflicting fear, pain, embarrassment, a sense of helplessness and isolation. That's a somewhat different and more sinister problem. And it won't go away by confusing it or conflating it with the stupid immature adolescent stuff that arises out of embarrassment and our own discomfort rather than recognizing it as a desire to assert our own wishes/desires over someone else's objections and making them feel bad about it to boot.
