Yes, blame others for your garbage candidate


Unless all of independent media has been mysteriously lying about Hillary Clinton over the past year, she must be one of the most flawed front-running candidates in US history. And unless you just enjoy spouting half-truths or identity politics, it’s got to be getting harder and harder to make a legitimate case for why she should be elected. The most popular argument these days, is “trump is worst,” probably followed by the “its historical because of gender” strategy.

The problem with these arguments should be extremely obvious- neither “reason” has anything to do with actual qualifications! Sadly, however, cognitive dissonance is now more powerful than The Force from Star Wars. So when anyone tries to argue the facts of Hillary’s terrible record, they are immediately met with:

  1. Ad hominem attacks, claiming they are sexist or not sensible/practical
  2. Declarations of being a Drumpf supporter (which I can almost include as an ad hominem)

2-cognitive-dissonance

Even though there are SO MANY decent reasons for opposing a Clinton nomination, her supporters will stop at nothing to fight against the truth. Most often, those of us who speak out from a progressive perspective get a scolding that we are helping Drumpf by criticizing Clinton. So we all need to work on turning a little secret into more widely known information. Kyle Kulinsky (SecularTalk) says it best:

Everyone should be allowed to vote for whomever they want. If you support Drumpf, you go ahead and do that, even if I do say mean things about you on my barely-visited blog. In the end, I am sorry that you were fooled into supporting someone that wasn’t even serious about running. If you want to support Clinton, that is also fine, but you must live the fact that you would sacrifice our society for the sake of a poisonous brand of neoliberalism. It will never be liberalism’s fault that your candidate sucks, and we don’t owe our votes to any candidate, flawed or not. How about you find a good argument for your candidate, rather than relying solely on rhetoric? Probably tough, since nobody knows what that flip-flopper will do in the end.

I’m sure that writing this instantly qualifies me as a sexist, because that’s how neoliberal multiculturalism works- identity gets used as a shield against any legitimate critique. To be a staunch Clinton supporter, is to subscribe to a cult of personality; you basically need to treat it like a religion in order to keep supporting it. You need to stay strong on your faith, because it would be much harder to find a substantive reason for what you are doing.

So that’s why everyone else is to blame for the unsavory pile of contradictions that HRC fans call a candidate. Remember when Drumpf was garbage because he had no substance, and could only really say he’ll be the best because of “winning”? The only solace that an honest HRCF has right now in the Democratic discussion, is that they are supposedly “winning”.