This is actually about a bigger issue than my feelings about Hillary, but I know that the first response of many people will be “Gawd I’m so bored with people griping about Hillary!” This is about more than that, but I don’t know that I have these thoughts and feelings fleshed out enough to really convey that. So I ask that people bear with me as I “think out loud” a bit, and hopefully people who understand what I’m getting at and share some of those feelings can help me develop this further. Because, ultimately, I don’t want this to be about ranting, but about action in response to the media’s buildup of the “inevitability” of Hillary as the Democratic nominee.
Lately, if one visits many of the high traffic Democratic/progressive blogs, one can’t help but be greeted by Hillary Clinton’s face, with words along the lines of “Be part of the conversation from the start.” Oh, that’s rich. In so many ways.
She’s using that conversation meme pretty consistently. Now, where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, Howard Dean said something about a “Great American Conversation” didn’t he?
But, Hillary, what on earth do you mean, “from the start”? We’ve been having a conversation for several years now, and we’ve done a lot more than talk. We knew with every fiber of our beings that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a bad idea. And we did everything we could to make our voices heard. But very few people have access to the kind of megaphone that would allow us to really be heard, so we were thrilled to find people like Howard Dean who were willing to carry our message to a larger audience. Want to know why some of us get so upset when people attack Howard Dean? Because he’s often speaking for us–he’s saying what we would say, if we had access to that kind of megaphone. So, when you diss Howard, you are dissing us. Please keep that in mind, and try not to act too surprised when we don’t want to jump on your bandwagon after you’ve attacked our messenger.
Another reaction I have is that this whole “conversation” meme must be something that Hillary and her advisers decided would “sell” to bloggers. Sort of the way she came up with this:
In her statement, she also called for “bold but practical changes” in national policy, a four-word formulation that her advisers said was carefully chosen, given that she has sought to portray herself as both a pragmatist and someone who thinks big. Some Democrats dismiss the latter image, finding her too cautious. Yet her pledge of boldness reflects her well-known desire to disprove the notion that she is hesitant or calculating.
So, I do have my eyes open here, Hillary. I don’t believe you want to have a conversation. I believe that you’re using those words because you think they are effective marketing tools.
And besides, how can we have anything resembling a real “conversation” when it is to take place on your turf, on your terms? I would love to have a real conversation, where we talk about who we are as America, at our best, and how to find our way back there–or at least get closer to that place. It would be wonderful to talk about another way of relating to other nations, rather than just accepting the “Bush doctrine” as status quo. But from you, today, I heard this:
Clinton said her view is that the nation is engaged in a deadly fight against terrorism, a battle that she contends Bush has botched.
“I do think we are engaged in a war against heartless, ruthless enemies,” she said. “If they could come after us again tomorrow they would do so.”
So, even though he “botched” things, you can’t resist using the fear tactic that has been (apparently) so successful for Bush. And that’s another thing that bugs me, by the way. For all the hoopla about you potentially being the first woman elected president, you are way too closely aligned with the patriarchy for my liking. And, for me at least, mindset and worldview are more important than whether a candidate has a matching set of X chromosomes or an X and a Y.
But as I said earlier, I don’t want to just gripe–I’d like to do something about it. Find some way to be more proactive about the wider conversation, rather than having reality dictated by the mass media. I saw this with Howard Dean’s campaign–certain memes were repeated over and over again in the mainstream media, and enough people accepted them as reality that they became reality for all intents and purposes.
I haven’t watched all of it, but I just saw a few minutes of a documentary called Hyperland, with Douglas Adams. It’s in the links section here
“Douglas falls asleep in front of a television and dreams about future time when he may be allowed to play a more active role in the information he chooses to digest.”
Of course we now have the internet, and the potential to play a much more active role. But we’re still acting like we live in the age of television, digesting the stuff we get from the people on the screen, who are still talking “at” us.
