Allow me to explain one aspect of this. (As I understand it.)
Back in the 80s, and after the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who everyone loved as a guy but were not so complimentary of as a president, Ronald Reagan was so popular that the word "liberal" was toxic to a politician's career.
Carter was therefore a one-term president, and he was a Democrat, which is why being seen as "liberal" like Carter was the surest way to lose voters and Congressional seats.
Reagan made it "cool" to be a Republican again, after the abject failures and scandals of Nixon's presidency that caused him to resign and Gerald Ford to take up the Oval Office. People swung far left after the resignation/failure of Nixon's presidency, which is how Carter became president after Ford.
Because of Reagan's popularity and loosening of financial restrictions and lowering taxes for the wealthy, it created a LOT of powerful rich people who then further contributed to the party that set them up so nicely - they supported the GOP overwhelmingly.
During the 12 years that Republicans ran the USA after Carter (From 1980 - 1992) the left wing started to try to fight back and fix the taxes issue and some other business and financial loopholes. HOWEVER. Since this attacked the heart of the rich and powerful, their counterstrike was to try to murder the careers of everybody who claimed to be liberal and wanted to try to balance things out again between the businesses and the populace and the wealthy and the poor.
During this time, the first President Clinton ran as a Democratic governor of a Southern state. Now, before the era of Civil Rights, most of the south was "Democratic" and had been since oh, about the time of the Civil War (or, as they called it, the War of Northern Aggression - *snort*). This is why Lincoln, as a "Republican" was overwhelmingly supported by the NORTH, and his radical, "liberal" idea of abolishing the abomination of slavery was a "Republican achievement".
So during the Civil Rights era, Southern people were increasingly annoyed with Truman, who ordered the beginning of integrating the USA. Truman was a Democrat. But an "Old Democrat", not a "contemporary Democrat". Because Truman was doing all of this, which pissed off all the racist Southerners who had been "Old Democrats" for generations, the OTHER side, the conservatives on the Republican side, seized upon this anger and began pandering to their bigotry.
Eisenhower followed Truman, and though he also was in favour of integration (but possibly for different reasons than just moral high ground), he also spoke to a lot of issues that the conservatives of the day were in favour of. Nixon was his vice-president.
So here's the 90s, where it was seen that the last "effective" Democratic president was LB Johnson (after JFK was shot), from 63-69, since CARTER was seen as an ineffective president. So 30 years later, Clinton was able to run as and be seen as a "moderate" candidate. And part of the reason the first President Clinton won was that he was not "too liberal". He did everything in his power to be seen as NOT liberal, NOT too far left, yet DIFFERENT and PROGRESSIVE in a way that GHW Bush was not. Republicans voted for Clinton because he was "moderate".
The first President Clinton had to play the game, he had to do some things to keep Democrats happy and do some things to keep Republicans happy. Every time he tried to do something too "out there" he'd be yanked back up. This was when he and Hillary Clinton, as First Lady, was trying to get universal healthcare passed through Congress.
It was the 90s and the Clintons had to play the game, especially before the second election and getting him elected a second time. But the Republicans were so pissed off at Bill Clinton and how effective he was as President that they turned on him and used that stupid scandal crap to impeach him.
So, long story short (too late) - we are JUST NOW coming to the liberal revolution of the USA. The conservatives had theirs when they formed the Tea Party and those idiots began pushing ALL of the Republicans to the right. Moderate Republicans (like John McCain) were targeted every bit as much as liberals and Democrats.
So when you say Hillary Clinton is "flip-flopping" you have to put that into context. Until the Tea Party, the US Government may not have gotten along or agreed all the time, but at least they were able to WORK TOGETHER. And the way they worked together was supporting some things and opposing other issues of the opposite party, ON BOTH SIDES.
But this "fuck you" attitude is fairly new. Since 2010 elections, more or less. That's when the Conservatives and Tea Partiers took the stance that compromise was anathema and stark obstruction was the way to go.
Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have both been in politics since far before this "new attitude". They HAD to be "moderate" and support some things they didn't ideologically agree with because that's how stuff GOT DONE in government before 2010.
It is ONLY NOW where people are fed up with the Republican obstructionism and the last recession from the Bush years which began in the Reagan years to say "fuck moderate - we need real liberal policies now because the Conservatives have fucked us over, and if they don't want to play nice, we don't want to either anymore".
And it is ONLY NOW that Democratic candidates, on the opposite end of the spectrum from Tea Partiers and Conservatives, are able to support the issues and policies they REALLY favour instead of fearing that skewing too liberal will kill their career and they'll be voted out by a mob of conservatives.
So Hillary Clinton has been liberal all along. She's just had to be in the closet about it, so to speak, if she wanted to be able to get into a Senate seat and get anything done. She saw in 2008 that Obama, pushing from her left, managed to out-liberal her in many ways, and she has changed strategies now. In some areas where Bernie is more conservative currently, Hillary is coming from his left because she CAN NOW. The rules have changed.
You can't do shite if you're out of the race. Hillary Clinton is an attorney, and she is a politician, and an extremely intelligent woman. She has been doing this shite for a long time. She has calculated exactly how far right or left she can reasonably go without being pulled all the way down and knocked out. Which is why she's still in the game.
But I hope you know WHY now, a little better, Hillary (and Bill too) has been forced to play the game as she has.
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Monday, February 22, 2016
Problem with Sanders - there's no there, there
One article has commented on Hillary:
"I just want to reflect for a moment on how kickass that is — that the smooth and stately Senator Brooke stands up and wags his finger at Wellesley’s graduating class, telling them to get back in their boxes and know their places, and then Clinton takes the podium and politely and eloquently tells him to go fuck himself."
Another article remarked:
"Brooke spoke first and suggested the anti-war protests sweeping across college campuses were a poor way of exercising students' constitutional right to assemble, saying "coercive protests" would discourage support from people empathetic to their cause. Clinton, who had led demonstrations against the Vietnam War on campus, wasn't afraid to take a moment to go off script and respond to Brooke's speech.
[She said]
'We're not in the positions yet of leadership and power, but we do have that indispensable task of criticizing and constructive protest and I find myself reacting just briefly to some of the things that Senator Brooke said. ... Part of the problem with empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn't do us anything. We've had lots of empathy; we've had lots of sympathy, but we feel that for too long our leaders have used politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible.' "
It does appear clear to me that Hillary Clinton had many aspects THEN what Bernie has been advocating NOW. And she has evolved, gotten wiser, more capable, versatile. And far more knowledgeable. She knows how to get things done and how the system works. For Bernie to be the exact same person in his 70s as people are saying he was in his 20s is beyond belief. Nobody does that. And if someone does, that is ABNORMAL. I don't remember who said "change or die".
So this MLK thing here is the worst sort of twisting of facts and anecdotes. She is NOT saying this to a Black leader, she is saying this to a white guy from a nearly all-white state, with a majority of young white bros and brahs who don't appear to "get it", who she (and many, MANY others see as falling for the same old trick - politicians promising anything without reality to back it up to get what they want). I'm not saying Sanders is out to trick people - I just don't see any there, there. I don't see any evidence he can do what he is promising. All I see is him saying X has to happen, but not how, in the real world, it CAN happen.
Hillary keeps saying she is NOT going to make any wild promises because that would be MISLEADING to people. Yet Bernie is doing the exact thing that she said young people were disillusioned by 47 years ago. She went on directly after that quote about politics being the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible, with this (caps emphasis is mine) -
"What does it mean to hear that 13.3% of the people in this country are below the poverty line? That's a percentage. We're not interested in social reconstruction; it's human reconstruction.
How can we talk about percentages and trends? The complexities are not lost in our analyses, but perhaps they're just put into what we consider a more human and eventually a more progressive perspective.
The question about possible and impossible was one that we brought with us to Wellesley four years ago. WE ARRIVED NOT YET KNOWING WHAT WAS NOT POSSIBLE. CONSEQUENTLY, WE EXPECTED A LOT.
Our attitudes are easily understood having grown up, having come to consciousness in the first five years of this decade -- years dominated by men with dreams, men in the civil rights movement, the Peace Corps, the space program -- so we arrived at Wellesley and we found, as all of us have found, that there was a gap between expectation and realities. But it wasn't a discouraging gap and it didn't turn us into cynical, bitter old women at the age of 18. It just inspired us to do something about that gap."
Here's one of the articles I quoted, and it has a link to the entire speech in the text, if you want to read that.
http://www.bustle.com/articles/76154-hillary-clintons-graduation-speech-at-wellesley-college-was-inspiring-in-1969-her-words-still-hold
"I just want to reflect for a moment on how kickass that is — that the smooth and stately Senator Brooke stands up and wags his finger at Wellesley’s graduating class, telling them to get back in their boxes and know their places, and then Clinton takes the podium and politely and eloquently tells him to go fuck himself."
Another article remarked:
"Brooke spoke first and suggested the anti-war protests sweeping across college campuses were a poor way of exercising students' constitutional right to assemble, saying "coercive protests" would discourage support from people empathetic to their cause. Clinton, who had led demonstrations against the Vietnam War on campus, wasn't afraid to take a moment to go off script and respond to Brooke's speech.
[She said]
'We're not in the positions yet of leadership and power, but we do have that indispensable task of criticizing and constructive protest and I find myself reacting just briefly to some of the things that Senator Brooke said. ... Part of the problem with empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn't do us anything. We've had lots of empathy; we've had lots of sympathy, but we feel that for too long our leaders have used politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible.' "
It does appear clear to me that Hillary Clinton had many aspects THEN what Bernie has been advocating NOW. And she has evolved, gotten wiser, more capable, versatile. And far more knowledgeable. She knows how to get things done and how the system works. For Bernie to be the exact same person in his 70s as people are saying he was in his 20s is beyond belief. Nobody does that. And if someone does, that is ABNORMAL. I don't remember who said "change or die".
So this MLK thing here is the worst sort of twisting of facts and anecdotes. She is NOT saying this to a Black leader, she is saying this to a white guy from a nearly all-white state, with a majority of young white bros and brahs who don't appear to "get it", who she (and many, MANY others see as falling for the same old trick - politicians promising anything without reality to back it up to get what they want). I'm not saying Sanders is out to trick people - I just don't see any there, there. I don't see any evidence he can do what he is promising. All I see is him saying X has to happen, but not how, in the real world, it CAN happen.
Hillary keeps saying she is NOT going to make any wild promises because that would be MISLEADING to people. Yet Bernie is doing the exact thing that she said young people were disillusioned by 47 years ago. She went on directly after that quote about politics being the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible, with this (caps emphasis is mine) -
"What does it mean to hear that 13.3% of the people in this country are below the poverty line? That's a percentage. We're not interested in social reconstruction; it's human reconstruction.
How can we talk about percentages and trends? The complexities are not lost in our analyses, but perhaps they're just put into what we consider a more human and eventually a more progressive perspective.
The question about possible and impossible was one that we brought with us to Wellesley four years ago. WE ARRIVED NOT YET KNOWING WHAT WAS NOT POSSIBLE. CONSEQUENTLY, WE EXPECTED A LOT.
Our attitudes are easily understood having grown up, having come to consciousness in the first five years of this decade -- years dominated by men with dreams, men in the civil rights movement, the Peace Corps, the space program -- so we arrived at Wellesley and we found, as all of us have found, that there was a gap between expectation and realities. But it wasn't a discouraging gap and it didn't turn us into cynical, bitter old women at the age of 18. It just inspired us to do something about that gap."
Here's one of the articles I quoted, and it has a link to the entire speech in the text, if you want to read that.
http://www.bustle.com/articles/76154-hillary-clintons-graduation-speech-at-wellesley-college-was-inspiring-in-1969-her-words-still-hold
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
How the System Works
I just have to tell you - I am continually underwhelmed, in this particular election, with how many people are trying to "rise up" without knowing how things work. How can you accomplish anything if you don't even know how the system works?
And the reason many people don't know how the system works is because they have NEVER EDUCATED THEMSELVES on it before now. Yet they see stuff and they're just outraged again and again.
I was done being outraged when the Supreme Court gave Bush the presidency over Gore. DONE. Nothing surprises me now. And it is with that albeit jaded clarity that I am looking at this entire Presidential situation.
I just have one thing to say to people who are continually outraged by the system - it's your fault.
It is ALL YOUR FAULT if you only just now decided to participate in the system. It is ALL YOUR FAULT if you only now decide you want to help do stuff to encourage change. WHERE WERE YOU when the Senate and House were overrun by Republicans in 2014, 2012, 2010? Where were you then?
Don't come around on presidential years not knowing how stuff works and shouting about "listening to the people" if you did not vote in those past 3 years. (If you were too young to vote then that's one thing, but most people will have been able to vote at least once before now - but did they? Usually that answer is no.)
I'm disgusted with the system, but I have at least been standing up for YEARS, doing what I can, casting my vote, trying to make it count.
I completely applaud those who attempt to educate and inform people. Not enough people take that responsibility onto themselves. But you have to also level with every single one of them that this is how things are, and if they're just showing up now, they helped keep alive the crappy system we have currently. If you don't participate when you can, you don't get a say, period, and you certainly don't get a say when you find out how stuff works and go "that's bullshit". Yeah we already know that. You're new here. Those are the rules.
Well guess what? You have to work within the system in order to change the system. It's the paradox of politics. Or you could just stage a coup, but not even the Tea Party has been that radical.
If you don't like how your delegates or superdelegates work, then VOTE THEM OUT. Simple as that. Participate. But you're not going to petition superdelegates into changing their minds. If you were a superdelegate, I'm sure you would vote what you feel is the best for the country.
Yes, maybe the "people" are for Sanders in NH, but crowds are wrong just as often as they are right. Let's not forget that "people", when they had the chance to do the right thing, voted YES on Prop 8 and denied marriage equality to gays and lesbians in the State of California. The "people" were dead wrong, there. And it finally had to be decided by the courts.
That kinda sucks, right? The "people" SHOULD have their say - oh, wait, unless the "people" are amazingly discriminatory and voting to strip civil rights from other people. It's never as simple a situation as people think. Nothing ever is. Otherwise, it would be fixed already. Welcome to the rest of the world.
And the reason many people don't know how the system works is because they have NEVER EDUCATED THEMSELVES on it before now. Yet they see stuff and they're just outraged again and again.
I was done being outraged when the Supreme Court gave Bush the presidency over Gore. DONE. Nothing surprises me now. And it is with that albeit jaded clarity that I am looking at this entire Presidential situation.
I just have one thing to say to people who are continually outraged by the system - it's your fault.
It is ALL YOUR FAULT if you only just now decided to participate in the system. It is ALL YOUR FAULT if you only now decide you want to help do stuff to encourage change. WHERE WERE YOU when the Senate and House were overrun by Republicans in 2014, 2012, 2010? Where were you then?
Don't come around on presidential years not knowing how stuff works and shouting about "listening to the people" if you did not vote in those past 3 years. (If you were too young to vote then that's one thing, but most people will have been able to vote at least once before now - but did they? Usually that answer is no.)
I'm disgusted with the system, but I have at least been standing up for YEARS, doing what I can, casting my vote, trying to make it count.
I completely applaud those who attempt to educate and inform people. Not enough people take that responsibility onto themselves. But you have to also level with every single one of them that this is how things are, and if they're just showing up now, they helped keep alive the crappy system we have currently. If you don't participate when you can, you don't get a say, period, and you certainly don't get a say when you find out how stuff works and go "that's bullshit". Yeah we already know that. You're new here. Those are the rules.
Well guess what? You have to work within the system in order to change the system. It's the paradox of politics. Or you could just stage a coup, but not even the Tea Party has been that radical.
If you don't like how your delegates or superdelegates work, then VOTE THEM OUT. Simple as that. Participate. But you're not going to petition superdelegates into changing their minds. If you were a superdelegate, I'm sure you would vote what you feel is the best for the country.
Yes, maybe the "people" are for Sanders in NH, but crowds are wrong just as often as they are right. Let's not forget that "people", when they had the chance to do the right thing, voted YES on Prop 8 and denied marriage equality to gays and lesbians in the State of California. The "people" were dead wrong, there. And it finally had to be decided by the courts.
That kinda sucks, right? The "people" SHOULD have their say - oh, wait, unless the "people" are amazingly discriminatory and voting to strip civil rights from other people. It's never as simple a situation as people think. Nothing ever is. Otherwise, it would be fixed already. Welcome to the rest of the world.
Friday, February 5, 2016
The Truth About Grandpa - And Yourselves, Sheep
I am going to say this only once, so pay attention. I will not say it again, because if you do not get it now, you will never get it.
The SAME exact Sanders Sheep who are attacking Hillary for using money at her disposal to run her campaign as she likes are IGNORING that Grandpa Bernie is doing the exact same thing. Allowing money from PACs to be used to get him elected.
The SAME Sanders Sheep who are on Bernie's bandwagon because HE HAS INTEGRITY AND HE SPEAKS THE TRUTH AND WE BELIEVE HIM NO MATTER WHAT, faced with this LEGITIMATE PARADOX are self-deluding en masse.
WAIT THAT'S NOT TRUE - I MEAN THE MONEY IS STILL NOT FROM BANKS BECAUSE BANKS - EVEN THOUGH HE SAID HE DOESN'T WANT PAC MONEY IT'S OKAY EVERYTHING IS FINE.
I mean, you can see why anyone not under Sanders mass hysteria is casting massive side eye at the irrational, unreasonable, justifying, laughably amateurish attempt at political sophistry by the Sanders supporters to make everything that Grandpa Bernie does okay.
It is NOT okay.
If integrity is present, you do not need to justify it.
So all this "yeah but-ing" that people are doing in support of Sanders means that, OMG, if they have to justify his actions they are not performed with integrity. Which is the basic foundation on account of which they have latched themselves onto Bernie in the FIRST PLACE.
How do you resolve this dilemma? Open your eyes. That's how. Extricate yourself from mass hysteria and cultish fawning.
Because if you do not, if you delude yourselves into such blind, rabid enthusiasm for a candidate who has been standing on a platform of trustworthiness and integrity and truth you make YOURSELVES the dishonest ones. And then what Bernie is left with, for supporters, is a herd full of haters and liars who will stop at nothing - i.e. ENGAGE IN ESTABLISHMENT POLITICS - to get Grandpa elected.
And Grandpa Bernie will NOT tell you to stop doing all of those dishonest things on his behalf. Why? BECAUSE HE WANTS TO WIN.
QED...integrity gone.
Bernie put himself in such a terrible position, trying to inject integrity into politics. We are not there yet. That is why he is going to fail. He made that terrible, unforced error from the beginning, and it is not something that you can climb back from.
Anyone else see the problem here? I mean, it is really not hard to see...for anyone with the savvy to actually consider things with eyes wide open and not fixed on glitter unicorns in the sky.
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
The Audacity of Political Realism
I got into it with someone on Facebook.
Avery always said that arguing with people on the internet is like competing in the Special Olympics. At the end, he concluded, quite non-politically-correctly, you're all still disabled.
So this person is a Sanders supporter, and posted a hate video about Hillary Clinton and bashed her for a bit and bashed her supporters for being tricked by her ongoing witcheries and dishonesty.
And of course, I thought that was quite ridiculous. He was posting things by Breitbart and the New York Times, in support of his position of engaging in the ongoing and current distemper, of which those publications have, individually, long been convicted of taking potshots at Hillary and attempting to flay her alive every chance they devised.
So, after a few responsory jabs, in which I pointed out the hypocrisy of his actions, I finally posted, to his question, "how do you rationalize all these things about Hillary Clinton?" the following response.
_________________
Okay. This is a long answer. Allow me to attempt to point you in a different direction.
So, you continue to ask how people rationalize your laundry list of Hillary's faults as, clearly, an avatar of the Elder God Cthulhu.
The correct answer, which you should have already understood, is "we don't".
This is not to say that we are denying she has any faults. But we are not required to rationalize, that is, make acceptable, ANY of the smear issues, true and false, that have arisen about her, to fully comprehend her raw capacity combined with decades of practical, high-level, and pertinent experience in politics, governance, and foreign relations, and determine she would be best to be President.
The reason I am bothering to explain any of this to you at this point is that you seem to think that people who support Hillary do not understand that she is flawed. I do not believe I could fully express to you what a severely naive and warped viewpoint that is.
The difference is, my dear padawan, people who support Hillary Clinton are in no way blinded by the false notion of her perfection. Hillary Clinton is a human, therefore, QED, she is not perfect.
That is one of the main, sustaining differences between Hillary supporters and Bernie supporters. We are in no way disillusioned by her because we have never been illusioned by her. We know her very well.
Yet the large majority of Sanders supporters seem to take any criticism of him or his ideas as blasphemy. LITERALLY. This is why the rest of us on the outside look upon Sanders followers as like a cult.
Bernie Sanders is a human, therefore, QED, he is not perfect. BUT HIS SUPPORTERS DO NOT WANT TO HEAR ANY OF THAT.
Let me discourage you from making an essential, novice mistake of assuming there is any one candidate who might ever be perfect. Because you believe that there may be the Chosen One waiting, undiscovered, to release humanity from the falsehoods of the Matrix, you believe that you will eventually find a person like that.
You will not.
I love Elizabeth Warren. Love her intelligent, laser-like focus at once illuminating and tearing through the misdeeds of Wall Street. But if I dig long and hard enough, I am quite sure I will eventually find some article somewhere which, oh, say, has produced an allegedly real police report indicating that she was cited for kicking a dog when she was 14 years old. Or some such ridiculous thing. Some misstep, some fault, some error in judgment. Because nobody is perfect.
Many, many little Sanders lambs have been so disillusioned and frustrated with the US government, state government, local government, police forces, etc. They have been doused with reality one too many times and they are steaming mad about it. About the failure, about the seeming uselessness of ever expecting anything to change.
But this disillusionment and frustration turn very quickly, and are thwarted into incensed righteousness and self-righteousness, which is a cardinal sin of politics. It is a cardinal sin of the intarwebs, as well, but ESPECIALLY of politics. And it is also a laughable, noobish mistake.
There IS NO Neo. Just as there IS NO spoon.
If you all are looking to Bernie Sanders and attaching that Messiah status to him, or at least, considering him as a Moses who might lead the country out from beneath the plagues of current oppressive and dysfunctional government and into the promised land of milk and honey which we all hold in our hearts that 'Murica can actually be like some day, you have been seriously misled. Moreover, you have, quite amateurishly, and also somewhat intentionally, misled yourselves.
You are, moreover, using your voice to publicly disparage one of the most powerful women on the planet. You might want to ask yourself why this is helpful to anyone. Is it an exercise in coercion, trying to turn people against her to vote for Sanders instead? Trying to pull people's negative feelings and resentment and fears of the Clintons to the surface?
And in that case, are you any - even a hair - better than Trump and his supporters?
Arguably, perhaps, THE most powerful woman in the world right now is Angela Merkel, and god knows she is far from perfect. But she is competent, and focused, and does not often shirk making difficult decisions. Does any of that sound familiar? There is a reason Hillary Clinton's latest memoir book is yclept "Hard Choices".
But few people, especially difficult to distinguish within the surging herds and crowds of Sanders supporters, want to give her credit for any of her extraordinary accomplishments in public service. ...Why?
If everyone were judged ONLY in terms of their errors, missteps, faults, and flaws, NONE of us are good enough people to lead anyone, parent anyone, teach anyone, cure anyone, counsel anyone, and so on.
If you are distinctly unable to successfully explain your support of Bernie Sanders in any other way than attacks on his opponent, then it is quite obvious that either you do not believe there are any truly convincing arguments to support him, or you simply have not done your homework.
Now, with that said, let me encourage you to reconsider your attacks on Hillary Clinton. I am not asking you to vote for her. But I do believe she has earned far more respect than she has been afforded by people who do not understand 1) reality, 2) politics, 3) the reality of American politics, 4) the dire straits of the US government currently.
Sure, it is not sexy and revolutionary to be pragmatic about governance and how things work IN ACTUALITY in Congress and interconnectedly with the rest of the world. But, FFS, who else will volunteer to actually roll up her sleeves and say, we've got work to do, let's get to it.
Bernie Sanders does not want to do it. What Bernie Sanders wants is to push his revolutionary agenda through Congress. If you approach him with anything else besides that, from what I have seen, he will simply grumpy Grandpa wave it away because he's too concerned with his main agenda.
The problem with the Sanders campaign, as one article I read today put it, is if you are continually shouting about what is wrong and being self-righteously pissed about it, you are actually not listening to what others are saying. Most Sanders supporters do not want to listen to what others are saying, which is why they troll writers and journalists and send them death threats and so forth, who have been negative in any way in public toward Sanders or his ideas.
I will post a few articles here, some journalistic, some opinion/bloggy, in case you would like to read them, regarding Hillary and politics, just so you might glimpse a different viewpoint than your own. I am not expecting you to. But it is what a good padawan would do.
If you already know everything, then what is the point of still being on the planet? Learning continues, always, because everyone else knows something - at least one thing - you do not. Asking you to rethink things, as you have been pleading with others to rethink things on their end, is only fair. Who knows? You just might learn something new, or gain a deeper/different understanding of something you considered familiar.
And with that, I am out of this convo. Thanks for pretending to listen - I know full well this is tl;dr. Hopefully you, at least, have reconsidered how your voice might best be used during this long year of political discord. ...Or disregard this entirely. After all, this is 'Murica - people are fully free to be as stupid as they feel like being at any given moment in time. And that is precisely why Republicans and Conservatives love it so.
Hillary Clinton and the Audacity of Political Realism
Avery always said that arguing with people on the internet is like competing in the Special Olympics. At the end, he concluded, quite non-politically-correctly, you're all still disabled.
So this person is a Sanders supporter, and posted a hate video about Hillary Clinton and bashed her for a bit and bashed her supporters for being tricked by her ongoing witcheries and dishonesty.
And of course, I thought that was quite ridiculous. He was posting things by Breitbart and the New York Times, in support of his position of engaging in the ongoing and current distemper, of which those publications have, individually, long been convicted of taking potshots at Hillary and attempting to flay her alive every chance they devised.
So, after a few responsory jabs, in which I pointed out the hypocrisy of his actions, I finally posted, to his question, "how do you rationalize all these things about Hillary Clinton?" the following response.
_________________
Okay. This is a long answer. Allow me to attempt to point you in a different direction.
So, you continue to ask how people rationalize your laundry list of Hillary's faults as, clearly, an avatar of the Elder God Cthulhu.
The correct answer, which you should have already understood, is "we don't".
This is not to say that we are denying she has any faults. But we are not required to rationalize, that is, make acceptable, ANY of the smear issues, true and false, that have arisen about her, to fully comprehend her raw capacity combined with decades of practical, high-level, and pertinent experience in politics, governance, and foreign relations, and determine she would be best to be President.
The reason I am bothering to explain any of this to you at this point is that you seem to think that people who support Hillary do not understand that she is flawed. I do not believe I could fully express to you what a severely naive and warped viewpoint that is.
The difference is, my dear padawan, people who support Hillary Clinton are in no way blinded by the false notion of her perfection. Hillary Clinton is a human, therefore, QED, she is not perfect.
That is one of the main, sustaining differences between Hillary supporters and Bernie supporters. We are in no way disillusioned by her because we have never been illusioned by her. We know her very well.
Yet the large majority of Sanders supporters seem to take any criticism of him or his ideas as blasphemy. LITERALLY. This is why the rest of us on the outside look upon Sanders followers as like a cult.
Bernie Sanders is a human, therefore, QED, he is not perfect. BUT HIS SUPPORTERS DO NOT WANT TO HEAR ANY OF THAT.
Let me discourage you from making an essential, novice mistake of assuming there is any one candidate who might ever be perfect. Because you believe that there may be the Chosen One waiting, undiscovered, to release humanity from the falsehoods of the Matrix, you believe that you will eventually find a person like that.
You will not.
I love Elizabeth Warren. Love her intelligent, laser-like focus at once illuminating and tearing through the misdeeds of Wall Street. But if I dig long and hard enough, I am quite sure I will eventually find some article somewhere which, oh, say, has produced an allegedly real police report indicating that she was cited for kicking a dog when she was 14 years old. Or some such ridiculous thing. Some misstep, some fault, some error in judgment. Because nobody is perfect.
Many, many little Sanders lambs have been so disillusioned and frustrated with the US government, state government, local government, police forces, etc. They have been doused with reality one too many times and they are steaming mad about it. About the failure, about the seeming uselessness of ever expecting anything to change.
But this disillusionment and frustration turn very quickly, and are thwarted into incensed righteousness and self-righteousness, which is a cardinal sin of politics. It is a cardinal sin of the intarwebs, as well, but ESPECIALLY of politics. And it is also a laughable, noobish mistake.
There IS NO Neo. Just as there IS NO spoon.
If you all are looking to Bernie Sanders and attaching that Messiah status to him, or at least, considering him as a Moses who might lead the country out from beneath the plagues of current oppressive and dysfunctional government and into the promised land of milk and honey which we all hold in our hearts that 'Murica can actually be like some day, you have been seriously misled. Moreover, you have, quite amateurishly, and also somewhat intentionally, misled yourselves.
You are, moreover, using your voice to publicly disparage one of the most powerful women on the planet. You might want to ask yourself why this is helpful to anyone. Is it an exercise in coercion, trying to turn people against her to vote for Sanders instead? Trying to pull people's negative feelings and resentment and fears of the Clintons to the surface?
And in that case, are you any - even a hair - better than Trump and his supporters?
Arguably, perhaps, THE most powerful woman in the world right now is Angela Merkel, and god knows she is far from perfect. But she is competent, and focused, and does not often shirk making difficult decisions. Does any of that sound familiar? There is a reason Hillary Clinton's latest memoir book is yclept "Hard Choices".
But few people, especially difficult to distinguish within the surging herds and crowds of Sanders supporters, want to give her credit for any of her extraordinary accomplishments in public service. ...Why?
If everyone were judged ONLY in terms of their errors, missteps, faults, and flaws, NONE of us are good enough people to lead anyone, parent anyone, teach anyone, cure anyone, counsel anyone, and so on.
If you are distinctly unable to successfully explain your support of Bernie Sanders in any other way than attacks on his opponent, then it is quite obvious that either you do not believe there are any truly convincing arguments to support him, or you simply have not done your homework.
Now, with that said, let me encourage you to reconsider your attacks on Hillary Clinton. I am not asking you to vote for her. But I do believe she has earned far more respect than she has been afforded by people who do not understand 1) reality, 2) politics, 3) the reality of American politics, 4) the dire straits of the US government currently.
Sure, it is not sexy and revolutionary to be pragmatic about governance and how things work IN ACTUALITY in Congress and interconnectedly with the rest of the world. But, FFS, who else will volunteer to actually roll up her sleeves and say, we've got work to do, let's get to it.
Bernie Sanders does not want to do it. What Bernie Sanders wants is to push his revolutionary agenda through Congress. If you approach him with anything else besides that, from what I have seen, he will simply grumpy Grandpa wave it away because he's too concerned with his main agenda.
The problem with the Sanders campaign, as one article I read today put it, is if you are continually shouting about what is wrong and being self-righteously pissed about it, you are actually not listening to what others are saying. Most Sanders supporters do not want to listen to what others are saying, which is why they troll writers and journalists and send them death threats and so forth, who have been negative in any way in public toward Sanders or his ideas.
I will post a few articles here, some journalistic, some opinion/bloggy, in case you would like to read them, regarding Hillary and politics, just so you might glimpse a different viewpoint than your own. I am not expecting you to. But it is what a good padawan would do.
If you already know everything, then what is the point of still being on the planet? Learning continues, always, because everyone else knows something - at least one thing - you do not. Asking you to rethink things, as you have been pleading with others to rethink things on their end, is only fair. Who knows? You just might learn something new, or gain a deeper/different understanding of something you considered familiar.
And with that, I am out of this convo. Thanks for pretending to listen - I know full well this is tl;dr. Hopefully you, at least, have reconsidered how your voice might best be used during this long year of political discord. ...Or disregard this entirely. After all, this is 'Murica - people are fully free to be as stupid as they feel like being at any given moment in time. And that is precisely why Republicans and Conservatives love it so.
Hillary Clinton and the Audacity of Political Realism
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