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~ Feverish ravings of a middle-aged mind

Random Blather

Monthly Archives: September 2016

The Dangerous Self-Delusions of Some Hillary Supporters

06 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by dougom in News, Opinion

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

government, Hillary Clinton, politics, POTUS

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Like these here folks

As we’re in the home stretch (fucking finally) of the 2016 election cycle, and Hillary Clinton is now the official nominee, there are some trends that I’ve been seeing for a long while that, in the big picture, are kinda scary, and I wanted to talk about.

First the obvious:  In the abstract, it is absolutely amazing we finally have a woman at the top of a Presidential ticket.  Women are woefully, absurdly under-represented in the public sector (outside of folks working as administrative assistants, I would imagine), and it is far past time we had a woman at the top of the ballot.  And I think the excitement among many women generated by her candidacy is pretty damn understandable.

Still in abstract mode:  It’s good we have a qualified candidate on our ticket.  No matter what you think of her, Clinton has been involved in politics for a long, long time, had an intimate look at how a Presidential administration works, and has accumulated some good legislative and diplomatic experience since Bill left office.  No matter what the right-wing nut jobs (RWNJ) say, this lady is qualified.

Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, Hillary Clinton is a terribly-flawed candidate, something that caused me to vote for someone else in 2008, and made me lament this election season, “Does it have to be this woman?”  Even more unfortunately, expressing that kind of thought has been, if not exactly dangerous, a good path to get inundated with charges of sexism and misogyny.  Pointing out her very real non-progressive policy problems doesn’t seem to help; if you were for Bernie against Hillary, you must be a sexist, patriarchical pig (in some quarters).

But now I’m seeing some genuine delusional thinking among Hillary supporters, and it’s kind of scaring me.  It’s scaring me for Hillary, because she might actually lose to Trump and, despite my dislike of her as a candidate, she is so much better than him it’s scarcely worth talking about why.  But I’m also worried that by allowing themselves (and this includes the folks inside the campaign) to continue on with these delusions, they’re going to endanger a very real chance of taking over the Senate or House.

There are two main delusions working here:

She is being unfairly treated by the press, but once people “really” get to know her (or “once she gets her message out”) they’ll see she’s great.

And the response to this is a simple negative: No.  No they won’t.  Hillary has been in the national public eye for more than a quarter-century, and a plethora of polls show that people have made up their mind about her.  Another huge set of polls show her negatives are higher than her positives; ignoring Trump, she is the most widely disliked candidate to ever run for President since polling started.

Lots of people hate Hillary, everyone has made up their minds, and that’s not going to change for many people, if any.

And the dangerous delusion is that this will change.  That people will actually give a shit about her “official policies”, or listen to her speeches, or be convinced by the endless articles about how unfairly treated she is by the press.  Or by going to her rallies.  Or by anything.  People’s minds are made up, and the best thing her folks can do is work hard to get people to the polls.  Not just to save us from Trump, but for the down-ballot folks who can benefit from a higher turnout.  Higher turnout, Dems win.  It’s that simple.  And this leads us to the second, even scarier delusion:

There’s no ‘enthusiasm gap’.

Again, a simple response is available: Yeah, there is.  It’s very real, and there’s been a ton of polls and articles that support this.

This delusion was displayed in stark terms today with dueling columns in the New York Times, where Paul Krugman pooh-poohed the idea there’s an enthusiasm gap (with a pointer to an article by Michelle Goldberg from April, aeons ago in political time), and another article talking about how Millenial black women are indeed very unenthusiastic about Hillary’s candidacy.

I’m a very leftist Progressive, one who has advocated for GLBT equal rights for decades, who believes we need single-payer healthcare, who thinks the government needs to stop financing monogamy, etc. etc.  Hillary is a New Democrat Apparatchik who is a war hawk (Henry Kissinger, FFS!), has close ties to Wall St., and has followed her husband’s trailblazing path by not just ignoring her base, but (with encouragement from the Beltway press) actively and publicly scorning them and their policies.  That she has now paid us lip service by including some of our policies in the party platform is nothing but window dressing, given no one really pays attention to the party platform after an election.  (Note none of this has anything to do with her gender.)

One might argue I’m an outlier.  But in addition to the Bernie folks, you’ve got plenty of Progressives who distrust Hillary because of her defense policies, her Wall St. ties, and other issues where previously (as a Senator or Secretary of State or even early in the campaign) she said and did one thing, and then (mostly after leftward pressure from Bernie) she changed her tune, or seemed to.

There are also more than a few people with Clinton Fatigue.  Almost all these folks  are well aware she is treated unfairly by the press, that her reputation for lying/sneakiness/whatever is something the RWNJ press has been hammering into the public consciousness for decades.  And they don’t care.  They’re sick of hearing about Benghazi, emails, Vince Foster, lame jokes about Monica, and on and on and on.  And the only way they’re going to be relieved of that fatigue is by the Clintons stepping away from public life.  So you can imagine that looking forward to another 4-8 years of Clinton nonsense feels these folks (and yes, I’m one of them) not with excitement, but a fatal combination of dread and ennui.  These are the people who saw her lose in 2008 and breathed a sigh of relief.  One that was premature, as it turned out.

This is a group that includes people like my mom, whose feminist cred dates to the early 70s and indoctrinating her son with Ms. Magazine and Our Bodies, Our Selves.  My good bi friend who actually worked with Hillary in the mid-90s.  My wildly progressive friend in Portland.  My ex-gf, who applied to be a Bernie delegate at the convention.  And on and on.  This is anecdotal, of course it is, but it’s backed up by plenty of polling data.

But Paul Krugman and other Hillary boosters seem to want to deny this is an issue.  They have a double-barreled strategy:  1) There is no enthusiasm problem, and 2) Even if there were, what are those whiny progressives going to do about it anyway?  Vote Trump!  Ha ha ha ha ha!

It’s a problem.  And not just for Hillary, but for the down-ballot folks so important to getting any of the progressive agenda into the conversation.

Personally I don’t understand Hillary’s whole candidacy.  We found out from the whole DNC/Debbie Wasserman-Schulz debacle that what most progressives suspected was true: “The Establishment” had put their thumbs on the scale in favor of Hillary.  But why?  Aside from her high negatives, she has a terrible relationship with the press, is a desperately boring (or annoying, depending on who you ask) speaker, scorns her base, and has negative numbers that strongly suggest winning would be a very difficult, uphill battle.  Why did everyone decide she needed what amounted to a coronation rather than a primary season?  Why did so many other, very qualified women (Elizabeth Warren leaps to mind) decide to stay out of the race?  Hell, why did so many men decide to stay out?  WtF kind of party decides even before the primary season that there’s basically only going to be one candidate?  What the hell?

And The Democratic Establishment wonders why so many of the “rank and file”, so many of the progressives, so many of the millennials, so many African-Americans, so many college-educated men, weren’t all immediately sold on the Hillary narrative.  Why people keep saying their out of touch.  Well, duh!

So I hope to God the Hillary boosters’ delusions are either popped (though I see no evidence that’s going to happen any time soon), or it ends up not making a difference because Trump is so awful he drives people away and into voting for Hillary and the other Democrats.

I hope.

Some Thoughts on Avengers III

04 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by dougom in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

black widow, Marvel, MCU, review

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Or as Marvel insisted on calling it: Captain America: Civil War
(Photo courtesy of Huffington Post)

Just watched “Captain America: Civil War” and had a few thoughts. And let that be your warning; it’s going to get geeky. Might want to take a pass.

It was an oddly paced movie that in a way reminded me of the second Matrix movie, with long episodes of talking bracketing big or intimate action sequences.

imageMerovingian: “Blah blah blah blah blah…”
(Photo courtesy of Matria Wikia; Monica Bellucci included because why not?)

Luckily, I found the talking portions to be, honestly, fascinating.

Why so? Because these folks have been blowing up cities and parts of cities for a bunch of movies now, and in comic books forever, and there have rarely been consequences. This shows that some problems aren’t easily solved, don’t have black-and-white points of view, are not (in short) “comic book” simple. Honestly, the dialogue among the Avenger characters was so much more nuanced than that of our Presidential candidates—and yes I’m being dead serious here—that it was a little vertigo inducing. Fictional comic book movie characters are actually debating in a rational and realistic way their in-universe problems?

Now it should be said it wouldn’t have been nearly as good without Robert Downey Jr., who honestly is quite remarkable. Somehow that guy has managed to channel his harsh life experiences into his acting. It’s amazing to watch. Chris Evans isn’t a bad young actor, and it’s interesting to see how he’s grown as the films have progressed, but Downey is in many ways the film’s gravitational center, a person obviously wrestling with the paradox of his situation as a hero who may be inviting villians to simply up their game. As a man who deliverately went around “the establishment” now acknowledging government may have a genuine role in life. You may not find it fascinating, but I did.

It certainly helped that he’s surrounded by some high-caliber actors, such as Don Cheadle and Paul Bettany. Not to mention old pros like Martin Freeman, Paul Rudd, William Hurt, and Marisa Tomei. John Slattery! William Hurt! Alfre Woodard, for heaven’s sake!

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Photo courtesy of Romano’s Reviews)

On a more granular level (as we say in tech), I loved they made Spiderman an actual teen. He looks it and acts it, and it was a whale of a lot of fun. Maybe a Spiderman movie will be a relief from all this grim ‘n grittiness.

On the down side, I could hardly follow the action in the “big” fight sequence among the Avengers, because I couldn’t remember who the heck was fighting who, and was perpetually confused.

And as much as I love Paul Rudd, and boy do I, I still can’t stand Ant Man. Maybe he’ll be less . . . out of place if they ditch the shrinking and leave him with his giant thing. But in the meantime, ugh.

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Sorry, Paul (Rudd at the Ant Man Premier)

But to get serious again, to me the moral center of the movie was Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow. I’ve made no secret I’m a total Johansson fanboy; I think she’s an absolutely amazing actress, in addition to being multi-talentied, almost ridiculously beautiful, and having one of the sexiest voices since Kathleen Turner did Roger Rabbit. (Would have been a fun nod to Body Heat to have Turner be some computer voice or something that talked to William Hurt. But I digress.). I admit this. But put it aside.

Black Widow is, by far, the most morally-ambiguous character in the film, perhaps in the Marvel Comic Universe (MCU). She was training from a young age as a professional killer, and is one of the very best in the world. That was her job as a spy for the Soviet Union. And then she switched sides to the Americans…and did the same thing for them. Now she’s an Avenger, empowered to act with this group of incredibly powerful people totally beyond the law.

And yet it’s Black Widow/Natasha/Nat who seems to grasp what no one else is able to: That some things can be more important than taking a side. That sometimes, groups can break up, but other times, you need to do whatever you can to keep the group together because it’s just the right thing to do. Even if it pisses off some people. Because to Natasha, having been on all sides, or perhaps no side, it’s the *people* who ultimately matter, the people to whom she has decided to give her loyalty to, after a lifetime of giving it to governments and agencies and higher authorities. It’s Nat who realizes that agencies, authorities, governments, they’re all made up of people, too. And if you can’t be loyal to your friends––and to Nat, her friends are incredibly precious to her––who can you be loyal to at all?

The advertising hook for Civil War is for you to choose a team, and half-joking, half-not I said I didn’t choose Team Iron Man or Team Captain America, but Team Black Widow. Because over more than half a dozen movies, it’s *her* that *I* have learned to trust, and to her I’ve given my cinimeatic loyalty to. And so you can only imagine how surprised I was when I watched the film and found that . . . I had made the right choice. Because neither Cap nor Iron Man were right, and neither was wrong; in the end only Natasha was able to grasp the underlying truth and, while seeming to betray *both* sides, turned out to be truer to not only herself, but the ideals of her teammates.

Which, being me, infuriates me in two ways. First, after telling Stark to watch his back, she *disappears from the film* for the entire final act. Just up and vanishes! WTF, Russo Brothers?

And second it only reinforced what many, many fans have been clamoring about for a while now: This character, played by this (immensely bankable, extremely popular) actress absolutely deserves a film of her own.

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How many times do I have to say it? (Photo courtesy of Medium)

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