Replies to post #235735 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[bulldzr]

Lawd Almighty what a great article!

From a Texan.... "The Tea Party laid down a marker on mass stupidity, of course, and their record of idiocies sets the bar for competition pretty high."... and "But we lose when we lose because we’re even dumber than those right wingers who are just dumb enough to think elections matter. We’re dumber than the Koch brothers and the Walton heirs who spend billions because they so foolishly believe elections make a difference, and they’d rather not risk having people like Hillary or Barack impeding their whims and desires even just a little."

[StephanieVanbryce]

That essay came at the most appropriate time and not a moment too soon.. however, I'm afraid the malady has really got a deep hold on people. It will be over, only for a time, when that surprising devastating defeat comes in some presidential election or any election that means everything! As it has in our democratic party history. Thanks so much for posting it! And you know what I never go there anymore since Bart died .. I really didn't even know he wrote that but found out at his death and now, I see that other great people have taken over. There is always room for another thoughtful, scolding, insightful biting democratic blog .. ; )

[fuagf]

Racists, Assholes, or Just Plain Stupid?

.. thanks for the chimp reminder ..

Jaime O'Neill

Conservatives and the Right

by Jaime O'Neill | July 20, 2015 - 7:13am

Today, on Facebook, I read yet another of the endless attacks on “illegal aliens,” that mainstay of right wing fear and hate mongering used to keep donations flowing into the coffers of candidates like Donald Trump and other unconscionable manipulators of prejudice. This particular hate squib wanted to make the point that calling people “illegal aliens” wasn’t racist; it was just an accurate description of most Mexicans coming into this country. It further argued the point that if you entered the country illegally from anywhere, you were, by definition, an “illegal alien,” an ipso facto criminal. Disapproving of people who break laws doesn’t make the people who do so “racists,” as liberals like to assert. Calling people “illegal aliens” and fomenting hatred for them is just honest talk and precise word choice.

As is my wont, I replied to that bit of right wing propaganda.

“You may not be a racist if one of your top political concerns is fretting about ‘illegal aliens.” You might not be a racist if you think Donald Trump’s irresponsible generalizations about Mexicans are things that should be promoted by people who want to be the President of the United States. But whether or not you’re a racist, it’s likely you’re an asshole. You don’t encourage or demand changes to our immigration laws that would provide protection for the immigrant workers who come here to pick the vegetables for the salad you order, or to provide a bit of legal shelter for the desperate young man who faces extreme dangers to come here, crossing a desert so he can pour water into your glass before your meal, working off the books as a bus boy in a restaurant in order to send money back home.

It is possible, of course, that you’re neither a racist nor an asshole. You may just be inattentive. Or stupid. You may too busy to care about the politicians who continually use Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, or migrant workers as scapegoats, blaming them for all manner of things, spreading the nonsense about how much they get in government benefits, or about how many of them are merely criminals, raping just about anything they see that's American, from women to dogs. Some of you may even believe that the Mexican government is handpicking the people who come here, sending us their worst people, as Donald Trump, the poster boy for rich scumbags everywhere, so frequently asserts. Such assertions have made him the current Number One choice as the head douche among Republicans, the one most of them now want to be their candidate for the presidency. If you like Donald Trump, there’s a slim chance you’re not a racist, but there is no possibility at all that you’re not an asshole.

You say you’re worried about the illegality, the fact that these people don’t respect our laws, but then you champion people like Cliven Bundy, a rich white guy who also doesn’t respect our laws, who wants free grazing rights for his cattle on land that belongs to all of us. You are likely to be found spouting off about how George Zimmerman was just trying to privately police the dark-skinned “thugs” who are endangering us all. You are also less than outspoken about all the illegalities being perpetrated by our richest and most powerful people and forces, and you even tend to vote for those who have shown their disdain for our laws, those politicians like the despicable Ted Cruz and others who so consistently vow to block laws they don’t like. You consistently side with the rich and powerful over the poor and the weak. You never question a Republican Party (or those Democratic Party defectors) who complain about immigration policy, but never make any effort to seriously address or correct the problem. You refuse to look at how the status quo benefits those who employ these powerless people, who exploit their desperation, who cheat them routinely, always secure in the knowledge that “illegal aliens” have no recourse under law, no way to seek justice in a system in which they are hounded and marginalized, labeled and despised.

Perhaps, way back in high school, you were made to read The Grapes of Wrath, or at least watch the movie. Remember how those Okies were pushed from pillar to post, beaten by goons when they tried to organize, screwed over in every possible way until, in the last scene, a woman with nothing else left to offer nursed a dying old man with milk from her breasts. Remember how those Okies were derided as “animals,” and how those who tried to work for better pay and conditions were called “communists,” or “outside agitators,” or “undesirables,” or “un-American.”

If that story resonated with you at all, and if you’re really not a racist, then use your imagination and transform those white Okies into tawny Mexican field hands, people who sweat in the 100 degree sun of the central valley, who are victims of people and policies you have been far too slow to find outrageous and unjust. Try to see yourself in those sandals, working that long day in that blistering sun for far less money than weasels like Donald Trump make in a nano-second.

And if you still want to go on about how these people are just criminals who have no respect for our laws, who you think are sucking up oodles of tax dollars that are rightfully yours, and are the main source of our most pressing problems, you just might have to accept, once and for all, that you’re probably a racist. And an asshole. And stupid.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jaime-oneill/63104/racists-assholes-or-just-plain-stupid

[F6]

Bernie supporters could blow this election: Why refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton will only make everything worse

Some liberals are now insisting that a vote for Hillary is no better than a vote for Republicans. They're wrong
Dec 2, 2015
http://www.salon.com/2015/12/02/bernie_supports_could_blow_this_election_why_refusing_to_vote_for_hillary_clinton_will_only_make_things_worse/ [with comments]

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[F6]

[ http://memegenerator.net/instance/65638086 ]

(the image, or at least very similar to the image, that was in the post to which this is a reply)

[F6]

The real reason Hillary Clinton lost the US election


America didn't want to listen to Hillary Clinton.
(Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)

By Marcie Bianco
April 10, 2017

Five months after the US presidential election, pundits and analysts are still working to understand the factors behind Hillary Clinton’s defeat. Now a new book by American scholar Susan Bordo, The Destruction of Hillary Clinton, makes a striking argument about the cause of Clinton’s loss: She had no control of her narrative, particularly as it was shaped by the media [ https://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/11/02/how-media-s-email-obsession-obliterated-clinton-policy-coverage/214242 ].

In culture, controlling the narrative is key to gaining authority. That is why women have historically been denied the right to control their narratives, along with their lives and bodies. Hillary Clinton’s experience was all women’s experience, magnified on a national scale. The problem is that the people who should read Bordo’s book are the very ones who will not read it—no matter how seductive the title appears to misogynists and the Hillary-haters chanting “lock her up.”

In this regard, Bordo’s book is bound by the same sexist constraints that hemmed in Clinton: Falling back on mindless misogynist tropes and narratives is economically more efficient than actually paying attention to, and deconstructing, them. Throughout the election, people did not judge Hillary Clinton for themselves, but let the misogynist media [ https://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/07/25/video-medias-years-sexist-attacks-hillary-clinton/211863 ] do it for them.

Bordo’s central premise, she explains, is “that the Hillary Clinton who was ‘defeated’ in the 2016 election was, indeed, not a real person at all, but a caricature forged out of the stew of unexamined sexism, unprincipled partisanship, irresponsible politics, and a mass media too absorbed in ‘optics’ to pay enough attention to separating facts from rumors, lies, and speculation.” For her part, Hillary knew, from decades of sexist attacks [ https://mediamatters.org/research/2016/02/05/a-comprehensive-guide-to-sexist-attacks-on-hill/199700 ] on her character, that she had to stay focused on the issues, even if that meant she was criticized for not being a showman on the debate stage. As a Vox language analysis of Clinton’s speeches shows [ http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/16/13972394/most-common-words-hillary-clinton-speech ], Hillary spoke primarily about policy and abstained from personal subjects, save the few heartfelt moments in her viral “Humans of New York” post [ https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork/posts/1362236273850469:0 ]: “I know that I can be perceived as aloof or cold or unemotional. But I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions. And that’s a hard path to walk.”

Viewed through a gender lens, the presidential election was nothing less than a manifestation of the America’s ongoing gender war, magnified to mythic proportions: the battle-worn feminist who proclaimed black lives matter faced off against, and lost to, the epitome of toxic masculinity and American exceptionalism. And, after eight years of a contemplative scholar-president—a black man who embodies the aloha spirit—America was all too keen to reclaim its virility in the image of a pompous business tycoon. The magnitude of America’s misogyny was writ large when the nation—abetted by the Electoral College, and perhaps the nefarious handiwork of a few international entities—selected a grossly inexperienced man over an experienced woman.

Bordo’s feminist analysis is concise and incisive. She moves from the double standards faced by female politicians, often in the form of the likeability penalty, through to a discussion of the ultimate red herring, “the emails”—which, she assiduously observes, were the culmination of a decades-long witch hunt against Hillary Clinton. The fact is that it was perfectly legal for Clinton to use a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state; as Bordo points out, the National Archives changed [ https://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clintons-personal-email-use-came-before-recent-rule-changes-1425415233 ] their guidelines about personal email accounts after she left her position. None [ http://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/a-guide-to-clintons-emails/ ] of the emails Clinton sent while serving as secretary of state were classified [ http://www.factcheck.org/2016/06/partisan-spin-on-clintons-emails/ ] as confidential during her tenure. A handful were given this designation years after the fact, and after she left the State Department.

Bordo is at her most powerful when she exposes how the generational gap effectively trapped Hillary in two competing narratives about Hillary’s political ideology that divided women largely by age in this election. Depending on one’s generation and knowledge of recent political history, Hillary was either the feminist firebrand or the establishment warmonger. In the 20th century, America found Hillary far too liberal—“Saint Hillary [ http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/23/magazine/saint-hillary.html?pagewanted=all ]” the “aspiring philosopher queen [ https://books.google.com/books?id=0RVDDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=%22hillary+clinton%22+%22aspiring+philosopher+queen%22&source=bl&ots=zyxgVzPG0U&sig=npoH7UIdSws5si2Cs6o9UUxDHZU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiU6LnUo4nTAhUS22MKHb_GBuoQ6AEIJzAC#v=onepage&q ],” the respectable mastheads like New York Times disparagingly called her. But in the 21st century, Hillary has become known as a money-hungry, power-grabbing member of the “establishment.” “[Y]oung women,” Bordo claims, ‘weren’t going to rush to order a plastic ‘woman card’ for a candidate that had been portrayed [during the primary] by their hero as a hack of the ‘establishment.’”

Older women who had lived through the struggle for women’s rights could empathize with all that Hillary has incurred. Younger women were indifferent to Hillary as much as they are to the bathwater of this struggle. For them, a female president is inevitable—someday. They aren’t, to quote the slanderous phrase, tritely “voting with their vaginas.”

The narratives about Hillary’s marriage to Bill Clinton have also changed over time, reflecting the prevailing social mores and anxieties of the period. Hillary was blamed for Bill’s gubernatorial reelection loss in 1980 because she was a “radical feminist [ https://books.google.com/books?id=0RVDDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=%22hillary+clinton%22+%22aspiring+philosopher+queen%22&source=bl&ots=zyxgVzPG0U&sig=npoH7UIdSws5si2Cs6o9UUxDHZU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiU6LnUo4nTAhUS22MKHb_GBuoQ6AEIJzAC#v=onepage&q ]”—the “Lady Macbeth of Little Rock [ https://books.google.com/books?id=0RVDDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=%22hillary+clinton%22+%22aspiring+philosopher+queen%22&source=bl&ots=zyxgVzPG0U&sig=npoH7UIdSws5si2Cs6o9UUxDHZU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiU6LnUo4nTAhUS22MKHb_GBuoQ6AEIJzAC#v=onepage&q ]”— who refused to adopt his surname. But over 30 years later, Bordo notes, she was lambasted for taking his last name and deciding to stay with him after his consensual affair with Monica Lewinsky. Because when things go well for men, it’s all their doing—but when things go poorly for men, there is always a woman to blame.

A large part of Bordo’s objective with this book is to counter the deep trove of misogynist material that has been used to discredit Hillary throughout the decades. In this regard, Bordo faces a nearly impossible task—a lone voice in the winds of misogyny. But it is admirable. Openly loving Hillary Clinton is, indeed, a radical act.

At one point in her book, Bordo outlines nearly three pages of Hillary’s accomplishments (e.g. “Helped create the Office of Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice”; “Helped create the Children’s Insurance Program”). Her goal is to disprove Bernie Sanders’s ridiculous quip [ http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/sanders-clinton-not-qualified-to-be-president-221666 ] that Hillary was not qualified to be president. If it weren’t the case that these bullet-points are just brief glimpses at Hillary’s long and illustrious resume, they would seem hyperbolic. But this is always the fate of women. To put it bluntly: women have to do twice as well as men in order to get half the credit. Even then, the credit may not be forthcoming if men are intimidated by women’s intelligence and fortitude and strength.

Unlike Clinton, Sanders was fully in control of his narrative—evident by his ability to deceitfully label Hillary part of the “establishment,” while righteously declaring himself a revolutionary. This is how, Bordo argues convincingly, Sanders “splintered and ultimately sabotaged the Democratic party—not because he chose to run against Hillary Clinton, but because of how he ran against her.” Bordo could have pressed harder on this point. But it remains a glaring hypocrisy that liberals who complained about Clinton’s support of the notorious 1994 Crime Bill overlook the fact that the only 2016 Democratic contender who voted for that bill was Sanders.

Bordo’s argument would have proven stronger had she more explicitly threaded together how the exact language harnessed against Hillary Clinton by conservatives throughout the 1980s and 1990s was eagerly and blindly appropriated by young liberals during the 2016 presidential election. That critique would have proved devastating—indeed, perhaps far too devastating for publication.

What resonates most in Bordo’s analysis is how much Hillary has lacked the authority over her own narrative—and how much the media and the general public refused to pay attention to what she had to say. This rings especially true in recent weeks, as more is revealed [ http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39324587 ] about the Trump campaign’s connections [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/trump-russia/ ] to Russia. All this time, Hillary’s been telling us [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/as-democrats-call-for-grand-jury-investigation-watch_us_58d44c0be4b0c0980ac0e470 ]. She warned us, repeatedly, even during the presidential debates, that Trump was Putin’s puppet. We just haven’t been listening to her. Because we hate listening to our mothers.

No wonder she likes to be alone in the woods.

Copyright 2017 Quartz (emphasis in original)

https://qz.com/953908/susan-bordos-the-destruction-of-hillary-clinton-why-did-hillary-clinton-lose-the-2016-election/

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[F6]

Wow - "I am proud to be a Democrat and wish Bernie were, too." #ShePersisted

https://twitter.com/tomwatson/status/904828553908420609 [with comments], via http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-blames-bernie-sanders-2016-election-defeat-new-book-659613 [with embedded video, and comments]

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