- My Forums
- Tiger Rant
- LSU Recruiting
- SEC Rant
- Saints Talk
- Pelicans Talk
- More Sports Board
- Fantasy Sports
- Golf Board
- Soccer Board
- O-T Lounge
- Tech Board
- Home/Garden Board
- Outdoor Board
- Health/Fitness Board
- Movie/TV Board
- Book Board
- Music Board
- Political Talk
- Money Talk
- Fark Board
- Gaming Board
- Travel Board
- Food/Drink Board
- Ticket Exchange
- TD Help Board
Customize My Forums- View All Forums
- Show Left Links
- Topic Sort Options
- Trending Topics
- Recent Topics
- Active Topics
Started By
Message
"America Called Bull**** on the Cult of Clinton" Reason magazine
Posted on 11/20/16 at 6:58 pm
Posted on 11/20/16 at 6:58 pm
quote:
America Called bullshite on the Cult of Clinton
The one good thing about Trump’s win? It shows a willingness among Americans to blaspheme against saints and reject the religion of hollow progressiveness.
Brendan O'Neill | November 20, 2016
If you want to see politics based on emotionalism over reason and a borderline-religious devotion to an iconic figure, forget the Trump Army; look instead to the Cult of Clinton.
Ever since Donald Trump won the presidential election, all eyes, and wringing hands, have been on the white blob who voted for him. These "loud, illiterate and credulous people," as a sap at Salon brands them, think on an "emotional level." Bill Moyers warned that ours is a "dark age of unreason," in which "low information" folks are lining up behind "The Trump Emotion Machine." Andrew Sullivan said Trump supporters relate to him as a "cult leader fused with the idea of the nation."
What's funny about this is not simply that it's the biggest chattering-class hissy fit of the 21st century so far — and chattering-class hissy fits are always funny. It's that whatever you think of Trump (I'm not a fan) or his supporters (I think they're mostly normal, good people), the fact is they've got nothing on the Clinton cult when it comes to creepy, pious worship of a politician.
By the Cult of Hillary Clinton, I don't mean the nearly 62 million Americans who voted for her. I have not one doubt that they are as mixed and normal a bag of people as the Trumpites are. No, I mean the Hillary machine—the celebs and activists and hacks who were so devoted to getting her elected and who have spent the past week sobbing and moaning over her loss. These people exhibit cult-like behavior far more than any Trump cheerer I've come across.
Trump supporters view their man as a leader "fused with the idea of the nation"? Perhaps some do, but at least they don't see him as "light itself." That's how Clinton was described in the subhead of a piece for Lena Dunham's Lenny Letter. "Maybe [Clinton] is more than a president," gushed writer Virginia Heffernan. "Maybe she is an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself," Nothing this nutty has been said by any of Trump's media fanboys.
"Hillary is Athena," Heffernan continued, adding that "Hillary did everything right in this campaign… She cannot be faulted, criticized, or analyzed for even one more second."
That's a key cry of the Cult of Hillary (as it is among followers of L. Ron Hubbard or devotees of Christ): our gal is beyond criticism, beyond the sober and technical analysis of mere humans. Michael Moore, in his movie Trumpland, looked out at his audience and, with voice breaking, said: "Maybe Hillary could be our Pope Francis."
Or consider Kate McKinnon's post-election opening bit on SNL, in which she played Clinton as a pantsuited angel at a piano singing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," her voice almost cracking as she sang: "I told the truth, I didn't come to fool ya." Just imagine if some right-leaning Christian celeb (are there any?) had dolled up as Trump-as-godhead and sang praises to him. It would have been the source of East Coast mirth for years to come. But SNL's Hallelujah for Hillary was seen as perfectly normal.
As with all saints and prophets, all human manifestations of light itself, the problem is never with them, but with us. We mortals are not worthy of Hillary. "Hillary didn't fail us, we failed her," asserted a writer for the Guardian. The press, and by extension the rest of us, "crucified her," claimed someone at Bustle. We always do that to messiahs, assholes that we are.
And of course the light of Hillary had to be guarded against blasphemy. Truly did the Cult of Hillary seek to put her beyond "analysis for even one more second." All that stuff about her emails and Libya was pseudo-scandal, inventions of her aspiring slayers, they told us again and again and again.
As Thomas Frank says, the insistence that Hillary was scandal-free had a blasphemy-deflecting feel to it. The message was that "Hillary was virtually without flaws… a peerless leader clad in saintly white… a caring benefactor of women and children." Mother Teresa in a pantsuit, basically. As a result, wrote Frank, "the act of opening a newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station."
Then there was the reaction to Clinton's loss. It just wasn't normal chattering-class behavior. Of course we expect weeping, wailing videos from the likes of Miley Cyrus and Perez Hilton about how Clinton had been robbed of her moment of glory; that's what celebs do these days. But in the media, too, there was hysteria.
"'I feel hated,' I tell my husband, sobbing in front of the TV in my yoga pants and Hillary sweatshirt, holding my bare neck," said a feminist in the Guardian. Crying was a major theme. A British feminist recalled all the "Clinton-related crying" she had done: "I've cried at the pantsuit flashmob, your Saturday Night Live appearance, and sometimes just while watching the debates." (Wonder if she cried over the women killed as a result of Hillary's machinations in Libya? Probably not. In the mind of the Hillary cultists, that didn't happen—it is utterly spurious, a blasphemy.)
Then there was Lena Dunham, who came out in hives—actual hives—when she heard Clinton had lost. Her party dress "felt tight and itchy." She "ached in the places that make me a woman." I understand being upset and angry at your candidate's loss, but this is something different; this is what happens, not when a politician does badly, but when your savior, your Athena, "light itself," is extinguished. The grief is understandable only in the context of the apocalyptic faith they had put in Hillary. Not since Princess Diana kicked the bucket can I remember such a strange, misplaced belief in one woman, and such a weird, post-modern response to someone's demise (and Clinton isn't even dead! She just lost!).
It's all incredibly revealing. What it points to is a mainstream, Democratic left that is so bereft of ideas and so disconnected from everyday people that it ends up pursuing an utterly substance-free politics of emotion and feeling and doesn't even realize it's doing it. They are good, everyone else is bad; they are light itself, everyone else is darkness; and so no self-awareness can exist and no self-criticism can be entertained. Not for even one second, in Heffernan's words. The Cult of Hillary Clinton is the clearest manifestation yet of the 21st-century problem of life in the political echo chamber.
Mercifully, some mea culpas are now emerging. Some, though not enough, realize that Hillaryites behaved rashly and with unreason. In a brilliant piece titled "The unbearable smugness of the liberal media," Will Rahn recounts how the media allowed itself to become the earthly instrument of Clinton's cause, obsessed with finding out how to make Middle Americans "stop worshiping their false god and accept our gospel."
Indeed. And the failure to make the gospel of Hillary into the actual book of America points to the one good thing about Trump's victory: a willingness among ordinary people to blaspheme against saints, to reject phony saviors, and to sniff at the new secular religion of hollow progressiveness. The liberal political and media establishment offered the little people a supposedly flawless, Francis-like figure of uncommon goodness, and the little people called bullshite on it. That is epic and beautiful, even if nothing else in recent weeks has been.
LINK
This post was edited on 11/20/16 at 8:18 pm
Posted on 11/20/16 at 7:12 pm to I B Freeman
Amazing read, and very well written, very very well written. Best post election write up I've seen yet.
Posted on 11/20/16 at 7:29 pm to I B Freeman
This is awesome. A linky would be super appreciated!
Posted on 11/20/16 at 7:30 pm to I B Freeman
Yes, yes they did.
Heads up though, I Just got warned by Chicken about copy pasting entire articles and not adding links. Just a heads up brother.
Heads up though, I Just got warned by Chicken about copy pasting entire articles and not adding links. Just a heads up brother.
Posted on 11/20/16 at 7:32 pm to I B Freeman
Good article. I am baffled by the inability of so many people to see Hillary Clinton for who she really is. I told my husband after the election that I truly believed if she told her electorate to "drink the kool aid" that I thought many of them would. I hope she is finally put out to pasture.
Posted on 11/20/16 at 7:43 pm to dpd901
I thought this as a joke or satire at first...damn, these people are unhinged.
Posted on 11/20/16 at 8:03 pm to I B Freeman
"Democratic left that is so bereft of ideas and so disconnected from everyday people that it ends up pursuing an utterly substance-free politics of emotion and feeling and doesn't even realize it's doing it."
And they probably never will realize it.
And they probably never will realize it.
Posted on 11/20/16 at 8:24 pm to I B Freeman
quote:
"Maybe [Clinton] is more than a president," gushed writer Virginia Heffernan. "Maybe she is an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself,"
Jesus Christ.
Nobody remembers the Monica Lewinsky affair? And Hillary's "light" of saying anything to stay in power.
What a feminist hero.
She lost because she offered nothing.
She was a holdover...like Dan Quayle and Gore respectively.
The Dems miscalculated her viability.
She lost because we are tired of dynasties in America and pride ourselves in not being Monarchs.
Bush Clinton Bush Clinton Bush Clinton.
This post was edited on 11/20/16 at 8:25 pm
Posted on 11/20/16 at 9:19 pm to I B Freeman
A very telling and horrifying article and true every bit of it.
Posted on 11/20/16 at 9:37 pm to I B Freeman
This is an excellent article. Right on target.
Truthfully though, there's been plenty of candidate worship on both sides. The author may have missed it, but there are plenty of Trump supporters who believe any criticism of Trump is akin to blasphemy.
It is a pathetic (and occasionally dangerous) thing to put an unhealthy amount of faith in any politician.
But whatever. Ding dong, the witch is dead!
Truthfully though, there's been plenty of candidate worship on both sides. The author may have missed it, but there are plenty of Trump supporters who believe any criticism of Trump is akin to blasphemy.
It is a pathetic (and occasionally dangerous) thing to put an unhealthy amount of faith in any politician.
But whatever. Ding dong, the witch is dead!
Posted on 11/20/16 at 10:20 pm to I B Freeman
quote:
The press, and by extension the rest of us, "crucified her
Snort
Posted on 11/20/16 at 10:29 pm to I B Freeman
Another piece of "fake news" from an extremist right-wing website. Even the name ("Reason") should tell you something.
I read Emote.
/Simon Jeffrey Wheezington
I read Emote.
/Simon Jeffrey Wheezington
Posted on 11/20/16 at 11:25 pm to I B Freeman
Thanks for posting this.
I have to say that in all of human history, it would be quite a challenge to find a group of subjects that are more thoroughly brain-washed than the devotees of Hillary Clinton, and other Leftist Dem politicians.
Good job, Democrats. You have created an army of unthinking useful idiots to vote for you and support you no matter how incompetent you are and no matter how destructive your policies prove to be. They are so brain-washed that they will blame anybody buy the Democrat pol, regardless of the mountains of objective evidence demonstrating Dem guilt.
I have to say that in all of human history, it would be quite a challenge to find a group of subjects that are more thoroughly brain-washed than the devotees of Hillary Clinton, and other Leftist Dem politicians.
Good job, Democrats. You have created an army of unthinking useful idiots to vote for you and support you no matter how incompetent you are and no matter how destructive your policies prove to be. They are so brain-washed that they will blame anybody buy the Democrat pol, regardless of the mountains of objective evidence demonstrating Dem guilt.
Posted on 11/21/16 at 2:50 am to Champagne
The ironic thing is, she wins if the Bernie bros back her fully... the progressives who thought for themselves rejected her
Posted on 11/21/16 at 3:19 am to I B Freeman
Wow, outstanding read. Firebombs incoming Reason Magazine. God bless you.. keep your heads down.
Posted on 11/21/16 at 5:45 am to mulletproof
Great article and right on the money. The Dems simply do not know what hit them. The Trump train hit them and the people rejected Hillary. Done deal, now MAGA
Posted on 11/21/16 at 6:44 am to I B Freeman
quote:
I Be Freeman
Wow man, that was an outstanding article. Thank you for posting that OP. This is why I lurk the Political Talk board to get this kind of information.
Posted on 11/21/16 at 8:07 am to mizzoubuckeyeiowa
Great article. I don't understand how anyone can buy into anyone running for any office so completely as to ignore their faults.
That's not all. Everyone ignored discussing her futures trading again which is pretty fishy considering her "luck" at the time.
But hey anyone can turn $1,000 into $100,000 in ten months.
quote:
Nobody remembers the Monica Lewinsky affair? And Hillary's "light" of saying anything to stay in power.
That's not all. Everyone ignored discussing her futures trading again which is pretty fishy considering her "luck" at the time.
But hey anyone can turn $1,000 into $100,000 in ten months.
quote:LINK
One analysis performed by Auburn University and published in the Journal of Economics and Finance claimed to find that the odds of a return that large during the period in question were about one in 31 trillion.
This post was edited on 11/21/16 at 8:09 am
Popular
Back to top
Follow TigerDroppings for LSU Football News