This is the best election ever.
For years I have avoided election seasons. I mean that literally. I have refused to play the radio (I have no television) because I don’t want to hear the ads and I don’t want to hear pundits telling me their versions of whatever lies the candidates are spouting. I sink my attention in books and music and audio lectures and wait for the idiocy to pass.
This time, however, I’ve been entertained like never before. The Trump phenomenon is unprecedented and Hillary’s crookedness makes the average politician look like Pollyanna on a good day. It’s like a three-ring circus that never ends. I look forward to reading or listening to the news every day.
A week ago, Clinton spoke at a “LGBT for Hillary” fundraiser in Manhatten and said that half of Trump’s supporters could be grouped into a “basket of deplorables” and were, for the most part, irredeemable; but the other half just felt that government had let them down, and the Democrats needed to understand and empathize with that basket.
She wasn’t specifically talking about me. I’m not a Trump “supporter.” I intend to vote third-party. Yet I’m sure that she deplores me all the same.
Hillary defined her deplorables as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.” I think that her speechwriters did a fine job that day of restating her unending campaign theme in a new and arresting way: “basket of deplorables.” I think it’s funny myself, and I think that I would have laughed right along with those poor, oppressed, and marginalized millionaires who can be heard on the recording laughing at the remark.
A campaigning politician is a revolting sight for many reasons, but a salient reason is their pattern of seizing upon something their opponent said and pitching a fit as though the remark deserved it. For example, when President Obama (whom I deplore, by the way) said to businessmen “you didn’t build that,” anyone interested in the truth could perceive that he meant to say (but garbled it) that the businessman didn’t build the infrastructure of roads, utilities, etc. That is different from, say, Michelle Obama saying
“Let me tell you something, for the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”
Those words are plain. Likewise, when her husband said “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” nobody has to twist it to make it a calculated and blatant lie.
Antihillarists are feigning shock and disgust that Clinton’s speechwriters would refer to some hard working Americans as a basket of deplorables. But for Hillary to call Trump’s supporters names is quite unremarkable. Appellations like “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic” and that fearsome badge of shame “you name it” are as common as graffiti in bathroom stalls. Some of them are just stupid (homophobic: fear of the “same”), some defy rational analysis (racist is never defined so as to apply consistently to both whites and nonwhites), and some are just attempts to smear normalcy (sexism: too many male Minions in Despicable Me). But despite the childishness of dismissing an opponent by calling him names, it’s done all the time — particularly when a leftist cannot answer an argument with facts and logic.
Me: The policeman was right.
Other: That’s racist!
Me: Homosexuals shouldn’t be Scoutmasters.
Other: That’s homophobic!
Me: Don’t draft women.
Other: You’re a sexist!
Hence my objection to considering Hillary’s insult newsworthy and somehow harmful to her campaign. Even though she “apologized” the next day, she went right on to repeat the same insults in altered syntax. Of course she deplores ordinary Americans with ordinary views. She and the whole multicult have been reading that Holy Liturgy Of The New State Religion every morning and evening for thirty years. Average folks have been cowed, which allows the multicultists to pursue the fundamental transformation of the United States nearly unopposed.
Trump scares them. His political positions don’t scare them (for those are all negotiable); Trump himself scares them because he has no respect for political correctness and he has no fear of their insults. Many are following his lead and stating plainly “We no longer care if you call us names; name-calling is not an argument.”
Those people, too, scare the multicultists. Maybe we could call it normalphobia.