So I have been writing for almost a year on the leftiness blogs about the Clinton candidacy. Not necessarily in an entirely approving mode, at least not in terms of many of her statements or her alliances, but nevertheless in an appreciative sense.
She is good at what she does, and she has put herself in the best possible position that she can manage to become the next President of the United States.
Meanwhile I have watched with increasing wonderment at the tidal wave of anti-Hillary Clinton sentiment that has built among so many leftiness bloggers.
“The leftiness death wish in all of its sad glory”, I thought originally.
But more and more I am beginning to reconsider my reaction.
The literal hatred…potentially self-defeating in many of its aspects…that is being directed at her (At her personally AND at her candidacy.) seems driven by more than just stubborn leftiness dreams of ideological purity. The rapidly increasing support for her essential ideological twin Obama on the blogs is all you need to know about THAT idea.
So…what gives here?
Read on for my own take on the subject.
This morning I wrote a comment on the Hillary thing called Clinton Wins Stunning Victory in New Hampshire
In it, I presented the beginnings of an idea that many of the leftiness bloggers who so resist her candidacy are doing so for almost totally unconsciously held sexist reasons.
And I quite predictably got a self-defending response from someone called “anna in philly”.
Who wrote:
are you saying we women cant look at all the info and think for ourselves?
that we cant look at all the corporate and special interest donations and come to the conclusion that she cant possibly do anything progressive because she is bought and paid for?
I started a reply, and it grew.
So I am now presenting it as a stand-alone post.
Here it is.
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No anna, I am saying that on some levels, almost NO ONE can think rationally.
Case in point.
You.
I wrote…quite carefully:
…many of the leftist women who have been most vocally attacking Hillary Clinton are in some quite complex way actually attacking the fact that she is female.
And a WHOLE lot of the men. Who are quite unconscious of what they are doing or why.
I applied the word “many” to the female opponents of Hillary Clinton and the word “most” to the males.
Because that is what accurately reflects my take on the matter.
Not all men OR women. But certainly more men than women.
And you answer by asking
…are you saying we women cant look at all the info and think for ourselves?
that we cant look at all the corporate and special interest donations and come to the conclusion that she cant possibly do anything progressive because she is bought and paid for?
“WE” women.
ALL women.
And by that all-inclusive “we”, you put yourself firmly INTO the camp that cannot reliably think for itself as far as I am concerned.
Because you did NOT think for yourself.
I could go on for a long time here, but I do not have the time to do so. Thus a brief précis of my path to this idea will have to do.
I was very close to two women…one now deceased and one an ex-lover…as recently as 8 months ago. Recently enough so that Hillary Clinton’s aspirations towards the Presidency were quite apparent and it was also quite possible that she might achieve that goal. Both were very independent women, women who had worked and succeeded all of their lives while also comparatively successfully raising children and sustaining a marriage. And both had an almost blind antipathy to Hillary Clinton. When they were really pressed for a reason to this antipathy their answer came down time and again to ideas such as “I just don’t like her!!!”
Followed closely by “LOTS of women don’t like her!!!”, “Lots of PEOPLE don’t like her!!!”, “The conservative right will defeat her”, “The South will rise against her” and the like.
They were both essentially political moderates, so the idea that she was a centrist or controlled by the evil masterminds of SMERSH, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers and the Illuminati didn’t enter into their own equations.
And I would watch in wonderment, trying to figure out how this INCREDIBLY consistent, successful, careful, survivor (and conservator, if the truth be known) of a flawed marriage who raised an apparently sane child in the midst of the turmoil of a political career could rouse such emotionally-based antipathy in two women for whom her life might be considered a template in many respects.
And then…EUREKA!!!
I got it.
They resented her success. They resented the template ITSELF. To some degree, the fact that this woman had become a truly DOMINANT woman…not just independent,. but dominant over the lives of many, many men as well as children and women pressed buttons in both of their heads that had been implanted in their early “I ENJOY being a girl!!!”, “Play with those damned dolls or ELSE” youth.
There is a popular saying…I do not know its origin…that goes ” ‘BALLS!!!’, said the Queen. “If I had ’em, I’d be KING!!!’ ” It is a derisive, anti-female saying, most often heard in all-male situations.
But it holds a grain of truth, if only because of the pervasiveness of the sentiment it expresses throughout most successful human societies. And that grain of truth…that grain of reality…is imposed upon them from outside when as little girls they are forced (“taught”) to wear dresses that make their genitalia relatively easy to reach while men wear protective leggings; it is embedded when they are taught (forced) to wear long, troublesome hair that can be easily grabbed, when they are taught (forced) to daub their faces with paint in order to appear desirable to men while men are allowed to walk into the room relatively ungroomed and are considered all the more “masculine” for it, etc…y’all know this by now, right? I hope so.
Well…THIS queen is violating ALL of the rules. Those subliminal rules that burrow their way deep into our psyches and lie fallow like an untouched landmine until something comes by that sets them off.
She is saying “Balls? I don’t NEED balls to be king. I don’t even need to ACT like I have balls. In fact…the king not only has no clothes, his ‘balls’ have made him act in so many foolish ways that it is time for someone WITHOUT balls to become the ruler.”
This is revolution on the HIGHEST of psychological planes, and the landmines it sets off…the mindmines…in a number of people are spectacularly well camouflaged.
That’s my take on it, anyway.
Hillary Clinton…conservatively dressed, coiffed and made-up Hillary Clinton, 60 year old-ish baby boomer child of the upper middle class Hillary Clinton…is tromping through the minefields of a LOT of people’s beings wearing army boots and detonating landmine after landmine as she goes. Somehow miraculously surviving, which may be the unkindest stomp of all. (“Aaaah, yer momma wears army boots!!!” Them was FIGHTIN’ woids to the Dead End Kids. And somewhere deep inside, we are ALL Dead End Kids. Bet on it.)
Look in the mirror, boys and girls…men and women, who after all are essentially only OLD boys and girls…and see the truth of the matter.
Your OWN truth.
If indeed this antipathy that you feel to Hillary Clinton has no basis in your early sex role training…and you are going to have to look DEEP inside to find that shit, bet on that as well…if it is not emotionally based but rather based on real positions and real facts, then feel free to go on about your anti-Hillary business.
But if your reaction to her and or her candidacy is primarily emotionally based, if you support some OTHER candidate who resides in the same general pockets as does she for any reasons other than at least a somewhat factually based belief in her own non-electability…a belief that her strong success in the red areas of New York State does well to belie…then look into yourself.
The fault may not lie in either the stars OR the candidate.
In may lie within your own formative upbringing.
Take a look.
A good, LONG look.
You might be bettah off.
WE ALL might be bettah off.
Peace on y’all.
Later…
AG
