Van Buren will be nominated and he will defeat Clay or any other National Republican–no, no, Whig, I must get used to calling them that. How topsy-turvy it is! Those of us who were for the Revolution were Whigs. Those for Britain were Tories. Then there was the fight over the federal Constitution. In our state Governor Clinton wanted a weak federal government. So some of the Whigs became anti-Federalist, and some like Hamilton became Federalist. Then the Tory-Federalists became Republican. Now Tory-Federalist-Republicans call themselves Whig though they are anti-Whig while the anti-federalist Republicans are now Jacksonian Democrats. Oh, names are magic here!
-From Burr – A Novel, by Gore Vidal, Part 1834, Chapter Four
Boy oh boy was Hillary right. Sometimes I wish she’d double-down on it. You know, like President Stupid doubles-down on his krapp. Although I was shocked when Hillary said it, her Deplorables comment from 2016 has lingered with me ever since. Indeed. I hate to love Hillary (as opposed to love to hate her). I’m still a big fan, too. I know. I know. I’ve said somewhere here or there that I wish she and her husband would just go away. Then again, for whatever reason, I’d rather have the likes of Hillary (Pelosi) around then the likes of Steve Bannon1. Listening to Bannon reference Deplorables, by-the-buy, is music to my ears. I mean. Come on. Is there a better example of the pot calling the kettle black?
Then again, it’s not what she said that was actually so bad–especially if you’re a rational human who knows the difference between being right or just being told what someone else thinks is right and going with that. The worst part about what Hillary said is that it gave republicans their version of Romney’s 47% comment, thereby providing hardcore right-wingers with yet another example of #Americant elitism. That, of course, fit well with the already ignoramus rhetoric that continually hides the truth about what baby-boomers and their parents have done to my beloved & missed united mistakes of LAND OF FREE TO BE STUPID.
Hillary’s recent appearance on Rachel Maddow’s show got me thinking about Deplorables again–even though the word is not mentioned once in the interview. Link to that interview is at the end of this worst-post. I suppose Hillary thinks she killed the issue (the word) after publishing her election-loss book where she almost apologises for using it. (No, I didn’t read the book.) So I went back and had another read of what she said in order to straighten out my worst-mind. Here’s what she said:
I know there are only 60 days left to make our case – and don’t get complacent; don’t see the latest outrageous, offensive, inappropriate comment and think, “Well, he’s done this time.” We are living in a volatile political environment.
You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic – Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now they have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.
But the “other” basket – the other basket – and I know because I look at this crowd I see friends from all over America here: I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas and — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that “other” basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but — he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathise with as well.
— Hillary Clinton, at an LGBT campaign fundraising event in New York City on September 9, 2016
Now I’m wondering about Baskets. Or. Is there a reason to differentiate between all the Deplorables that are in the #Americant basket? I tend to think there is a reason to do just that. Obviously, according to the quote above, Hillary is aware of her generalisation. Perhaps that’s why she calls out the bigots and rascists, etc., but seems to steer away from them with a hint of sympathy towards the STUPID that just don’t know better and all wear #MAGA hats. The bigots and the racists are, of course, the base of the Republican Party. That base is in my worst-guestimation what has kept the Republican Party in the seat of #Americant power2 since Ronald Reagan. Indeed. And so. I have to hand it to Republicans. They really do know how to take advantage of not just a country of STUPID much better than Democrats but they also know how to galvanise a basket of Deplorables with gusto. Credit where credit’s due, baby.
This is also a reason I can’t get behind a lot of the Progressives out there. The one thing that bugs me most about them is the fact that they don’t seem to understand that you can’t change the/a two party system from without. You can only change it from within. Hence, yes, having protest-voted for #Trump or thinking a third-party vote is rebellious–ain’t gonna cut it. My current fear is that Progressives are just gonna enable more of the worst of the status quo that Republicans have been riding on for years. If the last electoral-college election hasn’t proved that… may your God help you. ↩︎
Since Reagan there has been only two Democrat presidents. As best as I can recall, of the sixteen years those two presidents served, there was only four years between them with a Democrat majority in Congress. Since the President doesn’t make laws or enact policy… His only legislative power is the Veto. Holly krapp! How so many #Americants can’t see the ramifications of all these decades of Republicansim (run amok) really astonishes worst-moi. Oh well. ↩︎
It was actually Ockham who prepared our minds for this unwelcome (to him) conclusion. He devised a “principle of economy,” popularly known as “Ockham’s Razor,” which relied for its effect on disposing of unnecessary assumptions and accepting the first sufficient explanation or cause. “Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.” This principle extends itself. “Everything which is explained through positing something different from the act of understanding,” he wrote, “can be explained without positing such a distinct thing.” He was not afraid to follow his own logic wherever it might take him, and anticipated the coming of true science when he agreed that it was possible to know the nature of “created” things without any reference to their “creator.” Indeed, Ockham stated that it cannot be strictly proved that god, if defined as a being who possesses the qualities of supremacy, perfection, uniqueness, and infinity, exists at all. However, if one intends to identify a first cause of the existence of the world, one may choose to call that “god” even if one does not know the precise nature of the first cause. -Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great, Chapter Five, The Metaphysical Claims Of Religion
