Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Why Do They Hate Hillary?

Cartoonist Jack Ohman asks a relevant and pertinent question: Who do so many people hate Hillary Clinton?

Barack Obama once said that Hillary is likable enough, but Democratic primary voters, especially young women, largely to prefer Bernie Sanders. For many of them voting for the first woman president seems less enticing than feeling the Bern.

Given that Ohman is a cartoonist, he is none too helpful on this score. He says that people hate Hillary because she is a woman. It’s all about the misogyny. If that’s the best you can do, you should stick to cartoons.

Considering how many young women are turned off by Hillary, it’s difficult to tax them all with misogyny.  Surely, these young women would flock to Elizabeth Warren if she were a candidate.

What is it about Hillary?

Could it be all of her lies, coupled with her arrogant presumption that no one will really care?

Could it be the vulgarity of cashing in on her husband’s presidency? People believe that the Republican candidate is vulgar, but Bill Clinton is the only president in memory who used his post-presidency to enrich himself and his wife. If the public believes that you will use the office of the presidency for anything other than to advance the public good, they are not going to like you.

Could it be that Hillary enabled Bill Clinton’s sexual predations? But, this is not news. When these accusations were in the news every day in 1998 people tended to support and defend Hillary. They gave her a senate seat in 2000.

Now, of course, Donald Trump has very explicitly made them an issue. He has openly attacked Bill Clinton for being a rapist and a sexual predator. Perhaps that has caused people to think more clearly than they did in 1998. Perhaps the cultural climate has changed to the point where no one can ever condone rape, even to protect the right to choose. And perhaps the current politically correct way of thinking about these things, namely that women who accuse men of rape are to be believed, has redounded to her deficit.

There is also the fact that today’s younger generation has been largely brainwashed with leftist propaganda, so they are more likely to flock to a socialist like Bernie Sanders than to a liberal Democrat like Hillary Clinton.

And then there is the achievement gap. Had she not been married to Bill Clinton, Hillary would have no chance of becoming president. She would never have been senator from New York or Secretary of State. Hillary has next to no accomplishments to her name. Her candidacy is running on fumes, and perhaps young women have noticed it. Most of them do not want to get ahead by riding their husbands' coattails

Obviously, no one would say the same about Elizabeth Warren.

Allow me another hypothesis. It might not have even entered the consciousness of the young women who find Hillary unappealing. I suggest that young women are rejecting Hillary Clinton as a role model. They know or they sense or they intuit that Hillary does not like men… except as they can be used to advance her political agenda and her will to power. And they know that any woman who gushes over Hillary Clinton might as well be wearing essence of man repellent. The same would not be true of Elizabeth Warren, however tough she is.

Hillary might recently have become a grandmother, but most people, and that includes most young women, do not see her as a motherly type. Not only has she handed in her woman card, but she has never been seen as very much of a mother, either.

For years the American public has been willing to close its eyes and its mind to the bizarre nature of the Clinton marriage. Undoubtedly, people have not wanted to think about their arrangement. As long as Hillary was a wife, they did not want to throw the strange nature of her marriage in her face.

But, if you start asking questions about the Clinton marriage, as young women, in particular, are wont to do, you arrive at some disturbing conclusions.

What kind of a woman allows her husband to conduct a myriad of affairs and even sexual assaults? The answer must be that she would rather he expend his sexual energy with other women.  One has long suspected that Hillary was more concerned about exposure and disclosure than she was about who Bill Clinton was having sex with. She fought to maintain her political viability, not her honor as a woman.

Very few women would make the same moral choice.

More than a few women believe that if a man strays as often as Bill Clinton apparently did he is running away from his wife. No one wants to believe that a wife is at fault or is responsible for her husband’s errant ways, but the truth is, most women believe that the wife is somewhat responsible. In many ways, Hillary Clinton’s true distinction has been that she is the only woman Bill Clinton doesn't want to fuck.

And this does not even account for the possibility, taken by many to be a fact, that Hillary herself led the effort to defame and discredit any woman who had the temerity to come forth to denounce her husband.

Were I to speculate, I would say that for young women, the Clinton marriage looks like a political arrangement. It was not about love and romance, but was a career move, perhaps for both parties. Both were allowed to live their sexuality as they wished, but would collude and conspire to advance their political interests and enhance their political power. Whatever they did for the country, they would become obscenely wealthy.

For my part I do not believe that young women can get around the notion of seeing a woman marrying for political reasons, for pretending to love a man when she only likes what he can do for her politically.

David Brooks makes a similarly cogent point, based on different evidence:

Can you tell me what Hillary Clinton does for fun? We know what Obama does for fun — golf, basketball, etc. We know, unfortunately, what Trump does for fun.

But when people talk about Clinton, they tend to talk of her exclusively in professional terms. For example, on Nov. 16, 2015, Peter D. Hart conducted a focus group on Clinton. Nearly every assessment had to do with on-the-job performance. She was “multitask-oriented” or “organized” or “deceptive.”

Clinton’s career appears, from the outside, to be all consuming. Her husband is her co-politician. Her daughter works at the Clinton Foundation. Her friendships appear to have been formed at networking gatherings reserved for the extremely successful.

People who work closely with her adore her and say she is warm and caring. But it’s hard from the outside to think of any non-career or pre-career aspect to her life. Except for a few grandma references, she presents herself as a résumé and policy brief….

She looks less like a human being and more like an avatar from some corporate brand.

For Hillary it’s all politics all the time. This signals fanaticism, not public service. Whatever Hillary does for fun, we can safely assume that she wants to hide it from public view.

One suspects that many young women will eventually choose Hillary over Donald Trump, but for now Hillary’s prospects do not seem very good, even with the deck stacked in her favor. Bernie Sanders is not going away any time soon. The FBI is still investigating her.

One can even imagine a scenario wherein the FBI issues a report calling for her indictment. Then perhaps she will be forced to drop out of the race, not so much in favor of Bernie Sanders, whose viability in the general election has been largely overestimated, but in favor of the man who is waiting in the wings… Joe Biden.

Will the Democratic Party go with a loser like Hillary or will it try to re-engineer the process in order to bring out a more viable candidate?

6 comments:

  1. In C S Lewis's novel 'That Hideous Strength,' the protagonist (Mark) takes employment at an organization ostensibly dedicated to using science to improve society. When it is (probably) too late, Mark finally realizes that the true purposes of this organization are very sinister. With his loyalty in doubt, he is taken prisoner by the group, and is visited by one of the leaders, a man named Frost:

    "What Mark could not understand was how he had ever managed to overlook something about the man so obvious that any child would have shrunk away from him and any dog would have backed into the corner with raised hackles and bared teeth. Death itself did not seem more frightening than the fact that only six hours ago he would in some measure have trusted this man, welcomed his confidence, and even made believe that his society was not disagreeable."

    That's how HIllary Clinton strikes me...the badness should be obvious to any child, any dog, certainly any voter.

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  2. I'm skeptical about our ability to assess "Hillary the person", but I read somewhere that she's more of an introvert, and it may be introverts in general are more hidden, and you can project anything on what you don't know, whether good or bad.

    Or wait, she calls herself an extro-introvert.
    http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/07/politics/hillary-clinton-extro-introvert/
    ------
    "I love being, like I love being with people. I love all of the excitement and I like meeting people and hearing their stories," Clinton said at an MSNBC-sponsored Democratic forum in South Carolina. "But I also like time alone. And I like to think and relax and sleep and stuff like that. So I guess I'm a little of both."

    Clinton regularly talks about her love of reading and spending time at home, but has shown on the campaign trail that she does like to interact with people. As her campaign has picked up momentum, for example, she has spent more time on the rope line, taking selfies with people and chatting.
    ------

    I don't know if her description is any different than an introvert.

    What do we know about introverts anyway?
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/07/physical-behavior-of-introverts_n_6069438.html
    10 ways introverts physically interact with the world around them differently than extraverts.
    1. They withdraw in crowds.
    2. Small talk stresses them out, while deeper conversations make them feel alive.
    3. They succeed on stage — just not in the chit-chat afterwards.
    4. They get distracted easily, but rarely feel bored.
    5. They are naturally drawn to more creative, detail-oriented and solitary careers.
    6. When surrounded by people, they locate themselves close to an exit.
    7. They think before they speak.
    8. They don’t take on the mood of their environment like extraverts do.
    9. They physically can’t stand talking on the phone.
    10. They literally shut down when it’s time to be alone.

    Anyway, it makes sense an introverted wife would feel content to let her extroverted husband be the politician, and she could step forward when her passions made it easy. But then after he reached the top, 2 terms as president, and he had no more need for political ambition, she was free in her 50s to see what she could do, and she ran for Senate in New York and won that liberal state at least.

    Brooks might be right that some distrust her because we can't see who she is outside of her career, but that doesn't bother me personally. I know Conservatives like to consider her incompetent, but that looks more like pundits preaching to the choir than objective analysis. The reason I would support her for president is I can be sure she'll take the job seriously, she won't be bored and go golfing when there are things that need doing.

    But if I had a concern it would be over the isolation of the role of the president. George W got caught it in when his popularity fell at the end, and Obama is also probably pretty isolated as well after 2 terms. So it might be introverts are in more danger when things go back and they withdraw from the world, and lose touch with what affects their decisions are having on people, or seeing what fears and hopes need addressing by a vulnerable nation in crisis.

    So if Hillary has her "inner circle" support staff that in part exists to protect her from seeing things that need seeing, that's a recipe for inferior decisions.

    What's strange to me is that Trump's extroverted boasting is seen by many as proof of his high ability, when to me and many others it just looks like mental laziness - someone who can't bother to find out the facts before he misrepresents them.

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  3. Jack Ohman: I used to see his cartoons in a paper I took. I stopped reading his cartoons well before terminating the paper.

    Hillary? Well, she just isn't even close to "likeable enough" for me.

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  4. What I find interesting is the media drumbeat about how women hate Trump, and that he's toast because of that. NEVER is mentioned the extent to which men (particularly white men) hate Hillary--and probably a great deal of indifference from black men who won't be really motivated to come out for her (at least those not in prison). I guess men's votes don't matter, but if Hillary thinks that this is a demographic she can afford to blow off, she might find out the hard way.

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  5. Hey, I'm a cartoonist, too, but I know they hate her because she's hateworthy, for a number of reasons. Here's one:
    You get what you pay for

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  6. As difficult as this maybe for some people take the time to watch Hilary's body language, and here is the hard part, look at her face especially around the eyes. Every thing anyone would want to know is right there on display. This is not a nice person which many people inherently sense by watching her actions. Did you ever wonder why when you meet someone why you find yourself automatically disliking that person? Even when you try to analyze "why" you cannot shake that feeling.
    Used to read a lot about power relationships, body language and deception. Hillary is a classic example of that strange sense we get when we sense the quest for power, dissimulation, an elitist attitude and true deception.
    If you don't think these things exist try this little experiment. Group of people are sitting around the table, including you. First see if you can determine the power relationships that exist between the people by where they choose to sit. Then gradually encroach on someone's space and watch the body language and discomfort. Hillary uses this by attempting to use the fact we are uncomfortable when someone invade our personal space thereby effectively, for now, using the victim and female card. Women are very aware of power relationships so many women recognize its use before most men ever consider it. They were and are aware of sexual politics almost from the time they are old enough to utilize it. Men are oblivious until they get burnt.
    And one wonders why Hillary is disliked by both men and women?

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