Human nature has a number of less attractive qualities. One of these often becomes evident when discussions about “the other” are conducted; theories get developed and spread about people who aren’t given the opportunity to speak for themselves.
For example, as a teenager in Sunday School I was taught what “the Jews” think and believe. Only much later in life did I finally realize that real, live Jews don't actually believe such stuff at all; and in fact they hold a variety of opinions, just as Christians do. The lesson I learned was this: if one wants to know what someone truly thinks and believes, one best accomplishes that goal by talking to, and more importantly, LISTENING to that actual person themselves. Most Christians never think to take that action; instead they prefer to tell and listen to imaginary tales that were created by God only knows; these tales rather conveniently portray Jews as either evil or stupid, while portraying Christians as good guys who know the eternal truth. Christians spin a tale in which they themselves are the heroes, which makes a lot of sense when you stop and think about it. Why would they spin the tale differently?
Another example: Republicans love to pontificate about what liberals think and believe. You know the story: we care more about whether frogs live or die than about the ability of human beings to earn a living and feed their starving children. We think abortion is swell and have no moral reservations whatsoever about having one, even up until shortly before the time of birth. Who needs birth control? We just find our way over to the closest Planned Parenthood when we begin to smell a bun in the oven! Also, we are sex fiends who will do it any time, any place, and we find marriage certificates to be so incredibly yesterday. We secretly yearn for bestiality, and to be able to marry our beloved dog, cat, or horse (but only if we love them enough). All of these tales are utter bullshit, of course — strawman arguments set up precisely because they are so easy to knock down, and in the process make liberal attitudes look weak, bizarre, and evil. Republicans spin a tale in which they themselves are the heroes, which makes a lot of sense when you stop and think about it. Why would they spin the tale differently?
I need a heroSpinning a tale so that one’s own kind are the heroes is not unique to Christians or Republicans, I think. The fault lies in human nature. I recently came across a diary on the rec list that was designed to appeal to HRC supporters, I suspect; it makes them out to be the heroes, while those who feel differently are either fools or villains. Instruction is given about what Sanders supporters think and believe. My reaction to this diary is pretty much the same as when I read a conservative piece that explains how us libtards think: it is incorrect, but of course that makes sense because the purpose of the article is not journalistic accuracy. No, the purpose of the article is to feed red meat to the base. I am a Sanders supporter, and my views do not resemble those described in the diary about “my kind”. I suspect the diarist must have anticipated reactions similar to mine, because they began their work with the following weasel words:
In this very critical piece, by the Salon’s Nico Lang, he takes a look at what drives Sanders’ supporters disdain towards Hillary Clinton. I won't agree it’s all Sanders supporters, but there are a vocal few that do their candidate and our Democratic Party no favors.
In the piece, he was critical of Mrs. Clinton and prefers Mr. Sanders, but he makes a strong case that with blinders on, Sanders supporters are assisting the GOP.
If you’re a Democrat that truly wants to help get Democrats elected, it’s powerful stuff and serious food for thought.
Hmmm … I wonder who those “vocal few” are? They sound evil and nasty, don’t they? Or perhaps they are good but naive souls who don’t realize they’ve been wearing blinders that prevent them from seeing the truth? I also wonder who the Democrats “that truly want to help get Democrats elected” are? They must be the “good guys”, eh? True Patriots, perhaps?
Here’s the thing: I suspect that the diarist would lump me into the category of Democrats who are doing their party “no favors” by speaking out on Daily Kos. Oddly enough, I don’t really mind that description. I’ve been called much worse. “Heretic” is a potent word that carries tremendously negative connotations, though at the heart of it is simply a difference of opinion between those who hold power and those who don’t. I actually had a physical urge to lean over and vomit when I realized it was being applied to me. “False Prophet” came later, and actually rates even higher on the negative scale, but I had never really realized that until I was accused of being one myself (by a parent, no less).
And so, in the interest of those who sincerely wish to be fair and balanced, I wish to take time to explain my actual views. Remember, this is “powerful stuff and serious food for thought,” and therefore deserves nothing less than a serious response.
We’ve clearly moved past derangement. This is the time of full-on Hillary hysteria.
Lol, nothing like a bit of demonizing the other to get the party going. But once you’ve come to terms with being a heretic, believe me, being accused of deranged hysteria isn’t so bad.
You’ve heard all of this before, of course. Hillary Clinton isn’t trustworthy.
Ok, to be completely honest this is the one part that I actually do agree with. In a nutshell, yes, I don’t trust HRC for many reasons. Two of the most important ones are
1) HRC’s enormously strong ties to wealthy donors, and
2) the fact that she has “evolved her thinking” frequently, and apparently by complete coincidence, at times when that change of thinking appears to help her politically. Has she ever “evolved her thinking” in a way that hurt her politically? That would be interesting to know, but I don’t.
What I do know is that politicians have been known to say pretty things in order to be elected, but then act differently once they are in office. We all know this. It is my regular practice to evaluate ALL politicians, not just HRC, in terms of whether or not their words are sincere.
“Hillary’s personality repels me (and many others).”
This is not true for me at all. I find her image to be quite likable.
Bragman reminds us that this isn’t a woman thing — he’s a feminist, after all — but it might not be overtly sexist as much as a byproduct of it, as well as the gender hangups of an earlier decade. Leibovitch points this out in his Times article, explaining: “She was a working woman and full political partner with (gasp) feminist tendencies. Among would-be first ladies in the early 1990s, these were exotic qualities.”I love this bit, but unfortunately in a sarcastic way. I love how a denial is made that sexism might be involved, but at the very same time, that denial is done in a way to get us thinking “wait a minute … maybe it is a sexist thing after all.” Like the guy who tells his political rival, “Look, I don’t think you had anything to do with that murder business you were accused of” — which is so utterly slick because
1) you get everyone to remember that juicy murder scandal, and what your rival was accused of doing (i.e. rival = murder, rival = murder, rival = murder), and
2) you also get to look like a good guy for taking the high road! When the literal truth is, you are in fact doing the exact opposite, you are in fact slinging mud! How great is that?
Next, we are led to the conclusion that Hillary has not only suffered, she has suffered in the name of a worthy cause, i.e. feminism itself. Double-points!
For the record, I have been a feminist for my entire life, and a working woman for most of it. Sexism has absolutely zip, nada, zero to do with my feelings about Sen. Clinton. I see these words as a clever ploy to play the gender card, and it ticks me off.
There are real reasons to have reservations about a Clinton presidency — including her oft-cited ties to Wall Street and her hawkish foreign policy — but how often are they the central force of the criticism lodged against her campaign?
Looky, looky, looky ! The author of the hit piece tells us right there that Clinton’s
oft-cited ties to Wall Street
and
hawkish foreign policy
are real reasons to have reservations! They are not evidence of “Hillary-Hate,” as has oft been expressed here at Daily Kos. They have been deemed legitimate!
And those are actually the two key reasons why I will not vote for HRC in the primary!
Her ties to Wall Street make me concerned that she does not always have the best interests of the 99% in mind. Silly old me has always thought that striving on behalf of the best interests of the 99% (or that more old-fashioned word, “Labor”) is what the Democratic Party is supposed to be about.
Furthermore, I am convinced that President HRC would be much more likely to take us to war than President Sanders. As a military brat, I have personal reasons for disliking war — I feel for the families, especially the children, of the soldiers — war essentially turns military spouses into single parents, at a great cost to everyone in the family, and all too frequently turns spouses into widows and widowers. I am also enormously concerned that more war will lead to more national debt, and more national debt will lead to more insistence by conservatives to cut social safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare because “we cannot afford them”. I would feel slightly better about HRC’s hawkishness if she also told us loudly and proudly, in a way that even conservatives would hear, that she condemns the current fashion of paying for war with the national credit card. Not only do the 99% have to pay for war in blood, now they literally have to pay for it out of their own pocketbooks too. The 99% are effectively are paying for the opportunity to die in battle. How completely fucked is that?
As for as the last sentence in the quote , I call bullshit. My answer to “how often?” is “frequently, if not almost always,” at least from folks here at Daily Kos. Do we bring up any of the inane stuff that the right clamored about in the 90’s with Bill? Whitewater? Blue Dress? No, we don’t. Wall Street and War are pretty much the top concerns that I’ve seen in pro-Sanders diaries.
In an August poll, Quinnipac found that while political respondents felt that Hillary Clinton was “strong” and a candidate with “experience,” the words they most associated with her are “liar,” “dishonest,” and “untrustworthy.” These designations appear to be motivated by her Emailgate scandal and the ongoing questions about Benghazi — but none of the myriad investigations into either have turned up anything close to a smoking gun.
I don’t question the results of the poll, but Salon-guy doesn’t seem to understand why Sanders people don’t trust Clinton. I don’t trust her because I strongly suspect she does not always have the best interests of the 99% in mind; my feelings have nothing to do with Emailgate or Benghazi. And I note that the vast majority if not all of the Daily Kos community, even the Sanders supporters, rallied round her and wished her nothing but the best during the Benghazi witch trials.
As much as I would like to see Bernie Sanders become the next Democratic nominee, it does us absolutely no favors to let Hillary hysteria win the day.
Again with the hysteria? I prefer Sanders for the “real reasons” that were mentioned in the article.
The response from many among Sanders’ white male voter base to Hillary Clinton’s continued success in the polls is to refuse to vote for her in the general election, as if the only thing worse than a Republican presidency is four years of another Clinton.
Fuck it, again with the sexism crap? I am a white FEMALE voter who is voting for Sanders because I care tremendously about my child and don’t want her to have to live her life as a serf who must bow down and serve the new aristocracy that is emerging before my very eyes. Rich people prove every single day that, collectively, they don’t give a fuck about whether lower class people live or die. They send jobs out of the country, they want to deny us healthcare, they try to “motivate us to work” by cutting safety net programs that prevent people from starving. They are actively conducting a class war against us, and we are losing.
I also note the dog-whistle word “white” in the quote, which inspires me to state that I think Sanders contributions to PoC are not properly understood by many PoC. And that is because of communications issues from the Sanders campaign; Sanders needs to state his qualifications using frames that would be more relevant to PoC today. I think his contributions to the Civil Rights movement have been impressive, from the time of Martin Luther King Jr. until today. I wrote a diary when I got ticked off about how a well known Daily Kos writer criticized Sanders for something he said at the first debate, namely
“I was there with Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. King, in the March on Washington."
HRC supporters whispered about how horrible it was for Sanders to crassly overstate his role regarding Dr. King’s work, that all Sanders actually did in 1963 was stand at the back of the crowd and listen to a speech, and isn’t it disgusting that Sanders would try to grab false credit from the awesome and amazing Dr. King? OMG, Sanders is such a douche-bag.
As it turns out, Sanders words were both literally true (Sanders was in the crowd), and metaphorically true (see my diary, FYI, found by googling "bernie sanders mlk", to learn how Sanders contributed to the civil rights movement, he was even arrested when trying to desegregate Chicago’s school system).
Meanwhile, do you know what HRC was doing during the heat of the Civil Rights movement? She was busy being a teenager in a conservative household. In 1964, she was campaigning for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater. To her credit she became a liberal later in college, but in 1965 as a freshman at Wellesley, she was serving as president of the Young Republicans. I find it rather galling for HRC supporters to criticize Sanders for overstating his role regarding Dr. King’s work (via the above quote, mind you, it’s the word “with” that is so troubling), when their favored candidate was not only not contributing to Dr. King’s work, but was literally working on behalf of conservatives at that time. Politics is apparently a blood sport.
But instead of folding our arms like a pack of third graders who have been told recess is cancelled, Sanders supporters should hold Hillary Clinton accountable to the right things, instead of quibbling about how much we just don’t like her, make her a better candidate.
WTF? Holding HRC accountable to the “right things” is what I see Sanders supporters constantly trying to do. But any mention of Clinton’s “oft-cited ties to Wall Street” and “hawkish foreign policy” consistently brings condemnation from her supporters; they call us Hillary-haters for daring to mention what salon-guy blesses as “real reasons to have reservations about a Clinton presidency.”
Bernie Sanders’ supporters might accuse Clinton of sounding like a Republican, but we’re the ones who are doing the GOP’s dirty work for them.
I call bullshit, and here’s why: discussion of “oft-cited ties to Wall Street” and “hawkish foreign policy” does little to nothing to increase the ammunition available to Republicans. Clinton’s ties to Wall Street? Puh-leeze. Those guys have the Koch brothers, who are nefariously organizing secret meetings to coordinate financial support for conservative campaigns, and to teach corporations how to best take advantage of the loopholes opened by Citizen’s United. Progressive complaints about Clinton’s ties to big banks is utterly piddling in comparison, and will not matter one iota to anyone who thinks that the proper way of the world is for rich people to get everything they want because they have “earned” their money and “deserve” the right to spend it however they want.
And Clinton’s hawkish foreign policy? Are you friggin kidding me? The GOP’s wet dream is anything that strengthens the military-industrial-complex; the only thing they might dislike about Clinton is the possibility she might come across as more hawkish than the guy THEY eventually nominate and therefore steal conservative voters. If progressives need to embrace the priorities of conservatives in order to “win”, can the “winners” actually be called progressives? Talk about a deal with the devil.
Heads they win, Tails we loseSanders supporters are not guilty of doing the GOP’s dirty work. We are engaging in a battle over the soul of the Democratic Party, and who that party is supposed to work for. If the party no longer works for the best interest of the 99%, and instead is just another option to do the bidding of the 1%, then as one very special Kossack puts it, “We are all fucked”.