You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that.... Now, some of those folks -- they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. Hillary Clinton, New York City, September 9, 2016
For one unfortunate enough having to cull through
the last thirty years or so the reams of Hillary Clinton’s tedious, mostly pre-programmed
verbiage – the speeches, interviews, press conferences, campaign stumps -- the
challenge is to find anything that is not (a) pandering and grievance mongering
(b) self-servingly invented or false (c) a projection of her own hostility and
paranoia (d) malicious and rancorous slander of her numerous “enemies,” that
is, anyone who had the temerity to remind the public of her frequent detours
around the truth. At some point when Hillary Clinton no longer remains
a threat to the American people and some hapless biographer must, out of the “sow’s
ear” of her long, sordid career attempt to produce a readable “silk purse,” a starting
point might likely be the most memorable and enduring of her many slurs, the
one above, the “basket of deplorables,” combining all the elements of ‘a’
through ‘d’ above, made during her abysmal 2016 Presidential campaign.
To grasp the true “Hillaryness” of this moment one must
not just read the words but watch her actual delivery captured on the You Tube video,
where she does a passable impersonation of Joseph Goebbels. She is speaking in New York City to an LGBT
group, people with whom she, perhaps, feels the most at home, real Americans,
as she suggests to her enthusiastic followers, not the Untermenschen
she is complaining about. When she gets to this point, her demeanor
changes. The frantic, screechy voice slows down a bit and lowers. She takes
deeper breaths and her gestures are more rhythmic and forceful. This is not the
routine, robotic pandering one typically sees with HRC. There is a slight
weariness about her, the kind she must frequently experience that comes from
having to pretend to tolerate so many stupid people on the campaign trail, like
those who can’t quite get the hang of transgendered pronoun assignment. She is more deliberate and calm, off script, speaking
from her heart.
Unfortunately, what comes from the heart of Hillary
Clinton, whatever its rare composition might be, unintendedly reveals how
politically simple minded, ideologically primitive, and power grasping she is,
sort of a severe, undeviating national schoolmarm, singling out and shaming
those rowdy, naughty kids so that the nice, well-behaved ones can feel rightly
and proudly superior and understand just how well favored and special they will
remain by constantly sucking up to the teacher, affirming her wisdom,
benevolence and authority. Hillary has never risen above being a cold moralist
on the hunter’s prowl, a maniacal, unselfconscious ideologue driven by the need
to make those multitudes of nasty, unworthy people out there do what they they
are supposed to do, or, to make them face the consequences. What the
consequences she had in mind for the designated “unredeemables” can only now be
a matter of grim speculation. This malignant moralism tainted as well by
avarice, perhaps, helps to explain the single largest flaw of her campaign that
likely scuttled her election, one that frustrated even her acolytes, her
inability to create a rationale for her presidency beyond the heights of her
own ambition.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and even more so, the
aftermath of the election has brought us to the nadir of identity politics, American-style,
always a churning, roiling miasma of grievances, always the drive to recruit
more victims, stoke the raw resentment higher. A first in American post-election politics for
expressing disappointment and frustration over the result was when a
disaffected, resentment laden Democrat tried to gun down a bunch of congressmen
because they were Republicans. Afterwards, Phil Montag, a Nebraska Democrat Party official, was
recorded saying of the wounded Congressman, Steve Scalise. “I’m
glad he got shot.” Scalise must have been one of the irredeemables Hillary
had in mind. Montag was just saying out
loud, what many Democrats, I suspect, were thinking.
Identity politics did work out better eight years
ago for Obama, but Obama was young, fresh and black, adept at working the levers
of white guilt, whereas Hillary even by then was, well, none of the above, and
with the warmth and personality of cobra (ironically and cruelly noted by
fellow candidate Obama, “you’re
likeable enough Hillary” in her failed 2008 primary campaign). She was trying to be Obama II in the 2016 Presidential election, but there was
only one Obama, and Hillary was carrying a lot of baggage.
There is so much irony to relish in the retrospect
of the 2016 campaign: the Clintonistas plus the MSM early in the primaries
salivating at the thought, improbable as it was at the time, of a Republican
Donald Trump facing Hillary in the general election. Given HRC’s well known, shall we politely
say, “limitations,” who could possible have been a more magnificent target? Here was the raging bull in America’s china
shop of politics, a tailor-made, larger than life caricature of all those
horrible things the Democrats had long taught the American voters to believe
compose a typical Republican candidate. The only voters both Democrats and
establishment Republicans could predict to turn out for this rude, ineloquent braggadocio
with the orange comb over would be a couple of unemployed coal miners fresh off
their bar stools, the knuckle-dragging bigots from the sticks who cling to
their religion and their guns, and the remnants of the Klan. Everyone else was
going to be “Ready
for Hillary!” However, they failed
to realize, if this declaration were reformulated as a question, “Ready for
Hillary?” it would resonate more like a promo in a trailer for a horror movie.
The irony throughout this most bizarre election in
American history persisted up to the end. As the election season moved toward
completion, reality for Hillary and most of the Democrats never seemed to dent their
fantasy of a landslide and coronation, never intruded enough to make them
realize that Hillary, with all her material advantages and full alignment with
the organs of mainstream culture, plus Trumps numerous blunders, was just not
going to be able to seal the deal.
Late on last November 8th reality came
crashing down on the aspiring national schoolmarm and the entire establishment.
The country, it seems, was not quite ready for Hillary. Given over as she as
always been to the delusion of her self-perfection and given, as always, no
inclination for self-introspection, her defeat, she bitterly complained, was the
fault of Jim Comey, Vald Putin, and too many, “you know, to just be grossly generalistic,”
deplorables -- racist, sexist white guys, one and all, who once again took away
what was rightfully hers. Not enough “progressives”
out there, too little progress.
Perhaps, but consider another possible explanation,
one best illustrated with reference to the outcome of different contest, a
sports one, billed as “The
Rumble in the Jungle”, a huge upset that shocked the world -- a boxing
match staged in Kinhasa, Zaire, October 30, 1974. The massively hyped matchup featured World Champion,
George Forman battling former champ, Muhammed Ali. Forman, 25 years old, bigger and stronger, at
the peak of his career, was heavily favored to defeat Ali, at 32 his dazzling
skills fading, a step or so, slower than in his prime, seemingly unprepared to
withstand the onslaught of Forman’s herculean power. Under the blazing African sun that day George
Forman, too late, came to understand what “rope-a-dope”
meant and to taste defeat bitterly seasoned by overconfidence. Laying on the
ropes for the first seven rounds, arms up to protect his head from a knockout
blow, Ali let Forman pound away at his mid section draining his energy and
exhausting his huge, powerful punching arms.
In the eighth round Ali danced into the center of the ring and knocked
out the man everyone expected to win the fight.
In the 2016 election Donald Trump, a novice, underdog
political pugilist, did to Hillary Clinton what Ali did to George Forman. He
rope-a-doped her. Massively funded and staffed, arrogant and overconfident,
buying the hype from the MSM and the happy-talk from the retinue of sycophants
she kept in tow, Hillary apparently came to believe that she was going to be President simply because she thought
she should be President. Trump was a
loathsome, sexist slob: all she had to do was to keep repeating it. Throughout the most of general election, like
George Forman flailing away at Ali, Hillary was daily pounding Donald Trump. Vague
and unclear to the electorate as to why
she should be President, other than the fact that she was not Donald Trump, all
she needed to do to put him on the mat was to keep throwing the usual Democrat
punches: Trump was a racist, sexist, xenophobe, Islamophobe who would wear a
pointy hat and white robes in the White House, a Hitler here, a Mussolini
there, everywhere a Trump Brown Shirt. From
the vernacular of identity politics she extracted and threw every sock of PC feculence
at him imaginable hoping to make him so politically and morally toxic only the
troglodytes would want to vote for him. Trump, however, laid on the ropes and let the
insults rain down, treating them as being just that, pure insults, not the
substantive, irrevocable moral stains intended by the Democrats to stick to him
and destroy his character and sink his election. Unlike conventional Republicans, Trump seemed
unphased, offered no apologies, used the insults to energize his base, and did
not walk back his own controversial, sometimes outrageous cuts at Hillary and
her crew. Like the effects of Forman’s
shots to Ali’s ribs, Hillary’s “racist” jabs and “sexist’ roundhouses at Trump
failed to put him away. Hillary’s strategy of PC name calling found her
“preaching to the choir” and the choir in the swing states like Ohio and
Michigan couldn’t quite find the right tune. Late on November 8th the cable news
anchors (CNN, MSNBC, FOX, CBS) in stunned disbelief and unable to disguise
their horror, began to grasp that the Orange Man was going to be President.
Trump had weathered Hillary’s best shots, come off the ropes and turned her “inevitability”
upside down.
“More than anything else, Hillary’s “basket of
deplorables” was her defining and damning moment. Her comments reveal the corrosive
core of identity politics, its cultural Marxist premise that affirms that the
most fundamental feature of social reality is the domination and exploitation
of the weak by those who are privileged. Hillary’s politics is a North American
Peronism, making needy, “have-not” voters into grateful clients by punishing
those reluctant and selfish “haves.” It
is also, as noted above, a malignant moralism, a quest for victims who fall under
her protection and patronage, and the “outing” of the victimizers, very bad
people who deserve to have no power, influence, or opportunities to participate
in civil society. These people, as she noted are “not America”, and presumably,
should not be allowed to be a part of America. The ominous and threatening implications of
her remarks reek of the persecution and purges in the last hundred years coming
out of movements that represented progress and promised equality for everyone. That they barely stirred a comment suggests
how deeply embedded Hillary-style Peronism is in mainstream American culture. There
is no doubt that she truly believed what she said, and though she lost the
election, the party that nominated her will continue to promote the same kinds
rising from the ranks, even more open and aggressive in their antagonism for
the imaginary haves.
After his defeat George Forman went on to become a
charming sort of guy, a minister and well known TV pitchman for his grills. Also
he regained his heavyweight crown at age 45, the oldest man to hold the title. Hillary? Hopes are not so high.
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