During the final days before the election, I had a discussion which turned into a heated debate with one of my older American friends. She was and remains a devoted supporter and apologist for Hillary Clinton, so I imagine the result hasn’t fully sank in yet. I on the other hand, come from the young generation which recognised that Bernie Sanders is what America and the world needed.
We were discussing each issue bit by bit and I found that as I put facts across and presented many interview videos from leading progressives and intellectuals on the dangers of a Clinton-presidency, more and more vitriol was unleashed against me. I highlighted Mrs. Clinton’s disastrous record on free trade deals, her support for imperialist “liberal interventions” into other people’s countries, her hawkish stance against Russia in Syria (which would have led to World War 3), her financial dealings with the individuals and governments which have been funding ISIS, her demonic reaction to the death of another human being (Col. Gaddafi), her support for racist legislation and oppressive measures against the black community and lastly, her constant inconsistency when it comes to declaring her stance on virtually any political issue.
The response I got from my friend was actually shocking. Julian Assange and John Pilger were not exaggerating when they spoke of the McCarthyite hysteria and witch-hunting that the Clinton campaign released and encouraged against Hillary’s detractors. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that my age (25), my gender, my lack of having worked or travelled all around the world (like some jet-setting philanthropist) and the fact that I live in a country which has a history of conflict (including “leaders who could not agree for ever so long”) and few minorities, all mean that my take on the election was somehow lesser to her’s. She went on to say that me showing her videos of Julian Assange discussing the undenied crimes of Hillary Clinton and her evident sickness relating to obsession with ambition, renders me some sort of mouthpiece for Moscow. I was inundated with the allegation that Russia has thwarted Hillary’s campaign and chances from the beginning. I was told that Republican obstruction in the legislatures for the past several years is responsible for Trump’s rise (when most of them don’t even like him). I was chastised that if only the millionaire-lifestyle Democrats had held the Congress for a few more years than they did following Obama’s election, America would be an immensely better country.
I couldn’t believe how personal some of the things were that I was being confronted with – a so-called “progressive” making ageist, elitist and arguably racist, remarks to a young Irish lad because he supports Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton? I had always thought this person more open minded. She even went on to say that, on the issue of tax avoidance, she believed Hillary Clinton could and would sit down with the big bad banks and corporations and tell them, like mother dearest, “come on guys, time to pay up”. Despite this woman being bought and paid for by Wall Street. I reminded her that America is a Republic and not a Monarchy, when she said explained that she didn’t know why Hillary would want to take on all the extra trouble to “do this job for us”. Hillary is apparently “the most suited candidate to be President in our entire history”, I might add.
But needless to say, the election result and statistics verify what will inevitably be the death of her kind of identity politics – that just because Hillary is a “woman” she “should be President”, irrespective of the social class and power structures which she owes her endorsement to – she didn’t like when I put that question to her, asking why she didn’t vote for Sarah Palin as Vice President in 2008.
I actually still find it hard to believe someone would so fundamentally espouse these kind of sentiments. That they would take offence at the presentation of facts about Hillary Clinton as somehow insulting their intelligence, when Clinton herself hasn’t even denied these sordid things. I thought that those older in society were meant to encourage young people.
I have no doubt that they find the election result extremely difficult to accept – any statistical data presented by me has gone ignored – for they cannot fathom that elitist liberalism cannot possibly compete with right wing populism and expect to win, particularly after 8 years in power. What is clear to me is that if people on the so-called “Left” continue to attack other progressive minded people with that sort of accusatory and McCarthyite tone, then they will be responsible for consistent defeats by the Right of this world – that includes the Owen Smith’s and Angela Eagle’s of the British Labour Party . If you want to know, abstractly, why Clinton lost, then you have only to analyse the rather deluded mindset of her supporters, including the one I have mentioned. I treat everyone with equal respect regardless of their skin colour, religion, gender, background, sexuality or ethnicity – these things mean nothing to me – but I vote according to the social class they will represent. Is that really too hard to understand? I’m not sure these liberal elitists don’t comprehend it, but I do suspect that they cannot accept it.
Comments are closed.