Athenae, Fuck The Mommy Wars, Kids Today, Political Crack, Race, So Called Liberal Media, Stupid Blue Dog Tricks, Stupid Everything Tricks, Stupid Republican Tricks, Supreme Court, Twitter

I’m Done With All Your Hillary and Bernie Feelings, Internet

TED CRUZ WANTS TO SET THE WORLD ON FIRE.

Genuinely, I think he does. I think he wants to bring about the end times. I think he is living in a comic book and none of the rest of us are real to him.

Marco Rubio is six years old and he keeps thinking if he talks faster and louder it will make him sound smarter. Debate moderators ask him why his own people think he sucks, and he yells about his Lord and Savior.

Jeb Bush once ruined an entire family’s life just to make points with the Jesus freaks over Terri Schaivo, and the freaks are not even voting for him now. Like, think of that. You mortgage your soul for someone, and they’re like, “Ick, get away.”

I don’t know what to worry about more, that Donald Trump is gonna pick somebody for his VP that he has already publicly called a giant shitlord who will then sink him from within, or that he’s gonna choose a military dude like Petraeus. Then he’ll win, and quit, leaving us with a morally dyslexic G.I. Joe in charge.

ANY ONE OF THEM gets to appoint Supreme Court justices, as Sainted Dead Scalia reminded us last night, and Notorious RBG ain’t gonna live forever. If we make her deal with one more Republican president, she would be well within her rights to give the concept of existence on this planet the finger.

So if I read one more thinkpiece about ageism, sexism, Bernie-ism and who isn’t respecting who enough online, I will send this whole Internet to bed without supper. I have a Mom Voice now. I can do that.

I mean, dear God. IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU, writers. It’s not about you. It’s not about you, people who have time to be penning this or that for a publication that exists to explicate the zeitgeist or whatever. God damn, what is happening in this country right now during this political campaign, it is not about you.

Some of the things being said at and near Bernie’s fans remind me of how I was treated as a young person at my first paying gig: You’re only 22 so nothing you say is legit, like call us when you grow up. Some of the things being said at and near Hillary remind me viscerally of how I was treated the last time I asked for a raise at my job: You need to be nicer because that matters more than any other skill you have. 

Some of the things being said to younger and older voters are making me ragey and some of them are making me sad and you know what those feelings of mine, those deep and real feelings mean to a bunch of people in Flint, Mich. whose kids have been poisoned by lead in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ Two Thousand Sixteen?

FUCK.

ALL.

There was a Democratic debate Thursday night or during the Super Bowl or whenever, and two candidates on stage — a Jew and a woman, both the first of those groups to win major primaries — were discussing their responses to systemic racism. Systemic. Racism. They were discussing institutionalized hatred of black people and the dehumanization of them by the government.

Yes, later John Lewis and Bernie Sanders supporters snapped at each other on Twitter and yes, Hillary could not get away with having a prominent supporter who goes by “Killer Mike” because of sexism. But at that debate OUR PARTY HAD A GODDAMN DISCUSSION ABOUT FIXING RACISM.

The Republicans, at their debate last night, were fighting over who gets to hold the fire hoses and unleash the German Shepherds. 

And not for nothing, but a few weeks ago we had a sitting U.S. Goddamn President name of Barack Hussein Obama who spoke not tentatively, not neutrally, not cautiously but ADMIRINGLY of the courage of young gay men and women living their lives as full citizens of the United States. He PRAISED THEM. As role models not just to other gay people but to everybody, in front of a joint session of Congress, behind a fucking podium with a seal on it, to thunderous applause.

Later, at the Republican debate, a bunch of guys talked about if we could put Don’t Ask Don’t Tell back into effect somehow and make everybody forget if Gunny Highway likes dudes and stack the Supreme Court with people who will go around forcibly divorcing every gay married couple on earth.

The differences between Bernie and Hillary are real (see Kissinger, Henry and Dead, Why Isn’t He Yet) and explanations of them are welcome and necessary. But the constant online whining about behavior of campaign supporters towards one another and the over-identification with the candidates personally* is starting to feel like therapy for the comfortable commentator class. Maybe we’re forgetting that BEN CARSON DOESN’T KNOW WHAT THE DEBT CEILING IS..

It is starting to remind me of 2003 when Yes Hippies Are Right But They Smell, or 2004 when Yes Democrats Are Right But The Midterms. I do not want to see President Trump elected so that all U.S. progressives can Suck On This for not supporting Bernie. I do not want somebody else’s kids to fight three more wars so We Can Learn Something This Time It Serves Us Right for not supporting Hillary. We who are here to type stuff into the Internet don’t get to write checks for other people’s asses to cash.

I am supposed to be freaking out right now because calling someone a Bernie Bro is reductive and mean and makes you less likely to vote Hillary? I will call you anything you WANT, okay? What do you want me to call you so we can get some work done? I am sorry I was born after Roe v Wade but I’ve had by conservative estimate 37 transvaginal ultrasounds, so if I give you a pin commemorating the fight to make abortion legal can we please elect Bernie to stick a probe up Scott Walker’s bunghole?

President Bernie, President Hillary, are not going to lead-poison our children to save a few bucks and then be all LET’S NOT TELL ANYBODY when they get a memo about the poisoning. They’re not going to make cracks about turning Syria into a glowstick and they’re not gonna slap their junk on Putin’s dinner table and they’re not gonna forget where China is or whatever it was Trump did last week. They’re not going to punish poor women by faux-investigating the only medical clinics that give a shit if those women live or die.

I want a woman president, maybe this woman. I want a non-Christian president, maybe this dude. I would rather have CLAIRE as president than any combination of any of the Republicans currently running and I’m sincerely afraid that we might not survive a couple of them. Far too many of the things I’m reading lately are forgetting that soon and very soon that will be the fight we’ll have to have.

At that point the therapy sessions will be over, and not a moment too soon. So work for your chosen candidate. But don’t confuse that work with the kind you need to do on your psyche, because the latter you can get done on your own goddamn time.

A.

*Call me, John Kerry, you are 8 feet tall and it still charms me senseless.

44 thoughts on “I’m Done With All Your Hillary and Bernie Feelings, Internet”

  1. I want a president who keeps religion the hell out of politics. One who truly believes in separation of church and state. I want a president who truly wants what is best for “We the People” I don’t give two shits if it is a woman, man or dog. I want equal pay. Equal treatment for everyone. I want socialism but with a softness. I want the debates to end. I want people who complain to shut the fuck up unless they can prove to me that they have voted. Is that too much to ask?

  2. Thank you, Athenae, that was righteous.

    The differences between how Bernie would govern and Hillary would govern are nothing compared to how any of these Republican shitstains would.

    Actually, that’s to do a disservice to an actual shitstain, which harms no one except your pride. These R’s are so throbbingly evil that the doomsday clock would need to be set to .000001 minutes to midnight.

  3. Well said, as usual. As it happens, I’m supporting Bernie, but I will stipulate that Hillary is eminently qualified. I will enthusiastically support her if she’s the nominee. I want them to compare and contrast their views in a civil way. Let the Republicans continue with the insults and rude behavior. You’ve raised an important point, and we should be reminded of it daily.

  4. No war but class war, I check in here to learn about once a week, my Kick is nearing twenty. I deal daily with high functioning autistic spectrum with my very late emerging young adult. All I have to say aboot your writing is thank you and don’t ever stop. Inspirational is entirely inadequate. Thank you so very much.

    (From the more and more environmentally polluted NE WI) Fresh water is apparently just fictional marketing).

  6. Most excellent. If people didn’t get the point of the 2016 election before Saturday, they sure as hell should get it now! The sitting president will appoint a supreme court justice. The next president will likely appoint two, if not three more justices. Does anyone really want the likes of the trumpmeister, raphael, or rubio to be the ones to do that? WAKE UP!

  7. I hate being ripped into by my fellow Democrats; it happened to me in 2008, and it’s happening to me again in 2016. But, for as aggravating as the intra-party squabbles can be, to me it also says that our party is healthy. We don’t demand that everyone in our party marches in lock-step; we allow for differences in opinion, even if it does get a little ugly at times.

    Right now I’m a Hillary supporter. In 2008, it pissed me off to no end when Obama supporters pretty much said, “Step aside and let the black man through. You wimmins can wait ’til next time.” I didn’t (and still don’t) want to wait 50 years after a black man for a woman to become President, the way we had to wait for the Vote (for one thing, I’ll be dead). Nonetheless, I set that anger aside and voted for Obama in the 2008 general election. I did spend a good deal of his first term wondering if maybe President Hillary would’ve handled things better, but if it hadn’t been the batshit insane racism of the right, it would’ve been the batshit insane misogyny.

    All that being said, the whole Hillary email thing is distressing. I haven’t really dug into it to figure out how much “there” is there, but even if it’s a bunch of nothing, she could still suffer electoral death by a thousand cuts. I don’t mind her perceived arrogance. I’ve run across lots of arrogant people in my lifetime, and I tend to cut a lot of slack if someone has the talent/smarts to back it up. Maybe because I’m a pretty smart cookie, too, and I don’t suffer fools gladly. If you’re familiar with Downton Abbey, I think of Hillary as the Lady Mary of politics: insufferable at times, but with enough brains, confidence, and chutzpah to pull it off.

    We need to stay on message: Vote Democratic for President AND Congress. Because, whether it be President Bernie or President Hillary, (s)he will get bupkis done if Congress keeps its current makeup.

    1. Hillary’s email thing is very very bad. You should educate yourself and look into it. To date, we know she had over a thousand classified emails on her server, including intel that so top secret that the state dept would not release them. And that’s just the email she turned over. Don’t forget, she deleted thousands of emails. She has committed numerous felonies and, if there was any justice in this world, she would spend the rest of her life in jail.

      2. Lord have mercy. Educate yourself yourself. The emails were classified *after* she left office. FFS.

      4. I have looked deeply into Hillary’s email thing, as you call it. And , there is actually very little to it. As many Whitehouse and Fed Government employees have, she used her private email. Shr and her husband had their own private email server, which I would do in a hot second if I had the resources to do so. State Department staff and others sent emails to Secretary Clinton that were not marked classified at the time they were sent to her. She did not originate any emails on her private email that contained classified information. Later, when the Republicans tried to blame Benghazi on Sec. Clinton as a witch hunt and started investigating is when yhe private emails were discovered after she had resigned from the office. The FBI has done a thorough investigation and out of 35, 000 emails 6 were found to have contained information that was CHANGED to classified AFTER THE FACT. Not before they were sent, not hundreds or thousands of emails either. Just a small handful that had been reclassified after the fact. Moreover, the FBI could not show any bad intentions or even purposeful action related to any attempt by Secretary Clinton to release classified information unlawfully unlike General Petraeus who willfully broke the law to provide highly classified military information to his mistress…tskw tsk.
        So, the FBI is about to wrap up their investigation and sorry to inform you and every other misinformed, Clinton hating, assworm out there….she will not be charged with a damn thing. So sorry for you, but suck on it. And next time, get your information correct before you decide to make any misleading innuendos attacking someone’s character. I’m afraid it only shows what poor character you have instead.

  9. Reblogged this on The Other Side and commented:
    This is the most sensible internet post I have seen regarding Bernie and Hillary supporters yet this election season. Read this: the differences are real, but are the reasons you are fighting over? Seriously now, you are about to get sent to bed without supper, Internet, so listen up and take note…

  10. This meme — that we should not be in disputes with one another because all Democrats are better than all Republicans — is coming exclusively from the Clinton camp. There are profound reasons to doubt whether electing her would be in any meaningful way better than electing Donald Trump or Governor Kasich. What, after all, ARE her achievements? Being the one in the room who said the President should go after Bin Laden? OK, assuming she said that, it was the right advice, but I doubt it was outcome determinative. As to essentially all the rest of her achievements, they seem to me to be pretty much along the same lines as President Wilson’s achievements. He reinstated Jim Crow and got agreement at Versailles to impose ruinous reparations obligations on Germany, thus pretty much guaranteeing what came next. Bernie Sanders is right that judgment counts for more than mastery of technique. She is a Neoliberal who really in her heart believes in use of military force. Once upon a time I thought that was clever political placement: that she did not want to let anyone get to the right of her on being tough. But watching the last couple of debates makes me doubt that analysis. She talks tough about use of force in the Middle East because she truly believes that has merit. If our one greatest concern is staying out of more expenditure of blood and treasure in the Middle East, Trump is probably a safer bet. So the meme that we should all be willing to settle for her does not cut it with me. I am against settling for her. I am in favor of saying, plainly and politely, that having taken millions from Wall Street, and multiple millions more from major polluters, major pharmaceutical companies, major defense contractors, that she is unfit to be President.

    2. No it most certainly it is not. I’m totally in the tank for Bernie. I’m not a fan of Hillary. Like, at all. I don’t like her. I was also an Obama supporter in 2008, even though I knew back then that he was really center-right. I’m super-excited that he’s basically winning so far (a tie in Iowa and a LANDSLIDE in New Hampshire) on votes even if the super delegates are being awful right now.

      But as a woman of reproductive age, I have to vote for a Democrat in the general, even if it’s not the Democrat I supported in the primary. The only people *I* see pulling the PUMA thing are white male Bernie supporters. All of the many, many women I know who support Bernie plan to vote for whichever Democrat wins the nomination.

    4. Did you read the story?

      It’s not a meme, and I don’t know why you read this as pro Clinton. It’s merely a call to reason, and a passionate plea that people stop over-identifying with the candidates and getting all worked up about their individual candidate. The writer *never says you can’t vote for Sanders* and she criticizes Clinton followers.

      I swear, if you’re not going to read the story, don’t comment. Sanders said, on national media, that he doesn’t want people like you defending him and getting all wacky on the internet. You should listen to him and refrain!

    5. What planet do you live on? Because it certainly isn’t any planet on which someone can claim that Hillary Clinton has no achievements. And as the mother of a Marine who has served in Iraq? Your idea that *Trump* is a better bet? Yeah, you’re delusional, my friend. Check your meds.

  11. I am a lifelong democrat who believes that Bernie is the right Democratic nominee and the best choice to beat the Republicans. More importantly, I believe that Hillary is bought and paid for by big oil, Fracking interests, wall street, prisons for profit, and big banks who will want to continue with their corporate welfare and tax shelters to the detriment of the middle class. Bernie is the ONLY candidate FOR THE PEOPLE. I am very actively campaigning for Bernie because I feel he is the only HONEST politician in Washington and isn’t going to allow Monsanto and other corporate interests to continue to destroy the planet with GMOs and hydro-fracking. Hillary has too much baggage and potential indictments hanging over her head. The DNC has lost it’s objectivity and will try to stop Bernie because he is not the ANOINTED ONE and is sending all registered democrats a survey and solicitation for donations ALL of which will be going to HRC. Citizens United won’t be overturned in time to stop the money in politics before the primaries are finished and Bernie supporters are hopeful that the war hawk and the military industrial complex doesn’t win and the people get a change to level the income, racial and social injustices of the corporate and political elite.

    1. I’m starting to believe that Bernie Bros are paid operatives of the RNC.

      Two comments in a row (see George M Allen and marylou) using RWNJ signifiers:
      * bad punctuation
      * bad spelling
      * a truly disturbing ignorance of the existence of the [Enter] or [Return] keys
      * reference to Hillary’s impending indictment and/or email scandals
      * A Wilson reference? Like seriously, what the hell!
      * etc, etc.

      This kind of incoherence doesn’t write itself, sheeple!

      1. PatrickG, I got news for you. NOBODY knows how to spell or use punctuation these days, and I’m tired of every Hillary supporter accusing Bernie supporters of being right wing operatives.

      2. I’m tired of anyone who dislikes Hillary offering up 25 year old lines that were spewed out 24/7 by the GOP machine and Rush. Osmosis is alive and well and you’ve all absorbed quite a bit of BS.

      3. Hey, Benedict? I’m a Hillary supporter who is adept at spelling and grammar. And I’m tired of every Bernie supporter sounding like right wing operatives.

  12. All of the Hillary supporters really think she is better than some of these Republicans on foreign policy, when she has proudly admitted to taking foreign policy from Henry Kissinger? Even though he had responsibility in illegal war, multiple genocides, and coup d’etats? Must take some incredible mental gymnastics to make this all work in your brains. Oh, and don’t forget all the weapons to Saudi Arabia through the Clinton Foundation.

  13. Excellent post….It is getting harder and harder to comprehend the mind set of the sheeple that support the Republican candidates. Okay let me be honest, I don’t understand it at all. I seriously think there is a level of mental illness when I hear many of them. I struggle to stay present and not just hide away. Your post helped! Did you see the little film clip about Canada running for President. It was such good comic relief while making good points. http://usuncut.com/politics/canada-running-for-president-in-hilarious-new-ad-video/ It helps to laugh!

  15. Athenae: Exactly…
    Dear Berner/Hiller:
    This is NOT all about “YOU.”
    Despite what you’ve been told, misleadingly, voting is an act of participating in the polis, in social solidarity, in a community deciding its fate. By voting, It is BIGGER than “you” and your ego/ideology/obsession.
    Well said!

  16. Exactly! It’s important to remember that Bernie and Hillary voted the same way 93% of the time when they were in the senate together. Now, that 7% difference does matter to me, but it DOES NOT matter enough for me to risk President Trump or President Cruz.

  19. Excellent post as usual, but also some terrible bickering in the comments (as usual). I greatly prefer Bernie over Hillary, but I’ll take either one over the right-wing alternatives.

    1. Says the person who doesn’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re”.

  21. Thank you. God help us if any of the republicans are elected. Imagine a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court for the next 25 years. Imagine the GOP run EPA or Department of the Interior. Imagine all of the lower court judges that would be in power for decades.

  22. In short: Whoever gets the democratic nomination is the lesser evil, so vote for him/her.

    Well, not quite so fast.
    I was where you are about 4 months ago. Bernie first, then Blue.
    Since then, as a middle aged female lifelong democrat and two time Obama supporter, I have become completely alienated and disillusioned with “my” party. I can’t stand the DNC and all those in it who call the shots. What a bunch of knuckle heads. Who do they think they are? They don’t OWN my vote – they have to EARN it.
    In addition, fact-checking/researching the 2nd option left me completely disgusted.

    There comes a time when “lesser evil” just doesn’t cut it anymore.
    I will not vote for any candidate who
    – actively supported the Iraq War (and other wars)
    – actively accepts money from corps like Exxon, Monsanto and Wall Street
    – actively supports GMOs/Biotechs

    Hillary Clinton barely passes as “moderate” – she is a Third Way Democrat. And as long as Third Way pulls Democrats to the right on issues, the party will be split.

    The Democratic Party single-handedly imploded by treating an “independent” candidate running on their team as “not one of us”.
    I see it all over, “Bernie not a even Democrat” – this is the consensus of the party and a great number of its supporters.

    A disillusioned, disenfranchised electorate will do nothing for this country. After this election cycle, I will leave the Democratic Party and register Independent. This country DESPERATELY needs to come away from the two party system and Overturn Citizen United. The system is designed to herd the electorate in pre-destined candidates who are sponsored by the big corp interests, not the We, The People.

    Bernie is a once in a lifetime candidate.

    1. Go for it. I’m a middle-aged, lifelong progressive, who has fought in the trenches in the local, county and state level most of my life. An avowed Second-wave feminist who has sat in the waiting rooms of many a state congress-critter in order to lobby for women’s rights as well as the rights of racial and sexual minorities. Hillary Clinton has fought hard, through decades, for women and children and minorities, up front and center. You like Bernie? Great! But try, for one lousy minute, to understand and appreciate the actual achievements of Ms. Clinton. You really are allowed to like Bernie without having to completely deny that Hillary Clinton has done anything positive. Really. Stop trying to lift up your candidate by denigrating the other. Or, if you aren’t capable of that, please do leave the Democratic Party and register Independent. Which is what your candidate has been until he decided to run for President. That’s a fact, as much as you hate it being pointed out to you.

      Thank goodness I live in California.

  23. to Dee – You may ardently support Mr. Sanders – that’s your right. You may wish for a different election system that works with more than two parties – and you may work for it in the future. However, that is not the system we have, nor will it arrive in time for this election cycle (if ever).

    Remember what happened when perfectly rational, thoughtful people decided that Ralph Nader was the only candidate they could morally support? The Supreme court allowed the election of GWB, a splintered and explosive middle east followed and now rocks the world. The rise of the Republican right wing(nuts) caused the roll-backs of many hard-fought social and environment fronts, and will, unchecked, lead to more. It also led to the startling cast of characters we now see offered on the Republican side.

    Please don’t allow your frustration to keep you from voting. Please don’t allow the wingnuts to win because the system we live in doesn’t fit your ideals.

  24. I totally agree with you for the most part, but the problem is, not everyone feels this way. If Hillary wins the nomination I will support her, but I will be devastated. I will be devasted because I believe Bernie is so drastically different than any other candidate we have ever had in my lifetime. He is Teddy Roosevelt, he is Lyndon B. Johnson, for crying out loud, he is even Eisenhower who was a republican but was still way far left of any of the republicans of the last 50 years. Bernie has been consistent throughout his entire lifetime on his views; he has never flip-flopped to sway with the times or what is popular. He may well be the very LAST honest politician! HONEST and POLITICIAN in itself is an oxymoron, and should never be used in the same sentence unless it is something like “the politician is not honest” so you can understand the enthusiasm. People don’t trust Hillary. She started out her campaign criticizing Bernie’s ideas with her “No we can’t” dialog. When that didn’t work, she began copying the things he promised but saying she would do them differently. People are not stupid. And Hillary is far more right than most any democrat I have seen in my lifetime. I always said to myself, if there was a woman in the whitehouse, there would be no wars. I may just eat my words next year. Maybe because she never had sons? I don’t know, but she is hawkish. All of the things you said above about the differences between the democrats and republicans are true except the part about “perpetual war” and although Hillary won’t “carpet bomb” the middle east, she is responsible for the continued war there, through her years as secretary, and her voting record. She has already said she will continue with Obama’s strategy, where as Bernie has said he will make changes; he will use more intelligence strategy. But the most important reason of all, to support Bernie Sanders, is the very reason you are writing this article. If Hillary wins the nomination, then yes, democrats will most likely support her. But only 29% of the country today identify themselves as democrats. 26% identify as republicans, and 42% identify as independents. Even if ALL the democrats vote for Hillary, she still won’t win. The independents are the majority in this country, and THEY will decide this election. Trump is only getting 35% of the republican polls. So who do you think most of the 42% of independents will vote for? Some of these independents may be libertarian, or other small parties, but most of them are the young people, the same ones who supported the Occupy Wall street movement in 2011 that grew into the Occupy movement all over the world. If Bernie is tied with Clinton in states where the primary or caucuses that are closed and winning by 22% in states where they are open, that is a big red flag that most of the independents will vote for Bernie. If the popular vote is close, and the superdelegates hand it to Clinton, they will be pretty much handing the election over to the republicans, because most of those independents are NOT going to support her; they will be angry; they will write in “Bernie Sanders” or they will stay home in protest. I have even heard some die-hard republicans say they will vote for Bernie Sanders, the intelligent republicans, the ones who are disillusioned with the way the republican party has deteriorated. The republican party 50, 60, 70 years ago was the party for working men and women. the middle class, and the democrats were the party for the poor people on welfare. So some of these old republicans like what Bernie wants to do for american workers and the middle class. There just isn’t this kind of support for Clinton, this kind of revolutionary enthusiasm.

    1. Revolutions sound great on the campaign trail. They go nowhere in DC: our system of government was designed to be slow to change, installing sufficient checks and balances to prevent one person or even one branch of government from throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Hillary was *right* to label a lot of Bernie’s plans as non-starters; even some Democrats wouldn’t go for them all. And Bernie will get a GOP Congress to pass his needed bills? Please.
      General election polls this far out are *useless*. The GOP hasn’t even started thrashing Bernie yet, and there are entire generations of Americans who are allergic to the word and concept of socialism. Why do you think the GOP tried so hard to nail the word to Obama’s back? And now there is a guy who doesn’t have a huge history of working with either party and CLAIMS the word socialist. The GOP will have a blast bringing up every historical sin committed by socialists, and Bernie will say… what? “Yeah, but I’m different.”
      Your hero worship of Bernie sounds exactly like parodies of Obama’s supporters in 08.
      Hillary is responsible for the wars in the middle east? A multi-century hotspot of war and oppression, and it’s a Clinton’s fault, and not the Republican who lied us into (the latest) war? Right wing troll, aisle 4, needs cleanup.

      ” I always said to myself, if there was a woman in the whitehouse, there would be no wars.” That was a facially ludicrous statement and belief, and it’s not Hillary hurting you – it’s reality. Have you even heard of Margaret Thatcher?

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