Scott Adams originally predicted the hamfisted "deplorables" comment would have no real effect on voters. After Clinton's collapse from "pneumonia," he's less sure:
In our rational minds, we are good people who use data and reason to arrive at our decisions. We need to maintain that untrue self-image to stay happy. Clinton’s collapse at the 9-11 event creates an uncomfortable dissonance in us. On one hand, we don’t think anyone should be penalized for a minor illness. And we don’t wish harm on anyone. Our rational minds want to NOT care that Clinton collapsed on the 9-11 anniversary. That’s who we are. We’re rational people who can put stuff like this in context.
But in our irrational minds – the part that actually makes decisions – we really, really don’t want a commander-in-chief who is so frail that she might sneeze-fart herself to death in the Situation Room. Realistically, and rationally, we know that isn’t a real problem.
But…it…feels…like one.
Minus the implicit moaning about how we're probably being unfair, this strikes me as a fairly realistic assessment. On the other hand, I suspect a lot of voters may be looking for a more concrete and comprehensible reason to reject, not the sickly old lady, but the steaming eruption of
lies that issues continually from Clinton's mouth, so numerous and varied that it's gotten hard to keep track. Many voters may be deciding that, however they feel about Trump, he's not bad enough to make them swallow Clinton.
Adams' agonizing over not wishing ill on an ill person in juxtaposition of his agony over not wanting an ill person for our President reveals a deplorable Progressive, professional victim mindset, and it reveals his hypocrisy about wishing ill but not wishing ill.
ReplyDeleteThere is no conflict between sympathizing with the ill person and not wanting that person to be President because she's too ill to serve.
Being President isn't a right. It's a privilege conferred by We the People. Not conferring that privilege is not an ill, except in the minds of professional victims.
Adams knows this.
Eric Hines
Adams isn't talking about people like us anyway. We made up our minds about Hillary Clinton circa 1993 or 1994. For me, her first attempt to nationalize health care into an arcane bureaucracy told me what I needed to know about her political instincts. I'm open to the idea that people grow with experience, but only that they possibly can, not that they do necessarily. I haven't seen anything in the twenty years since to suggest that she's rethought this basic notion that power should be centralized in the Federal government, eternally to be ruled by her ideological allies, for the purpose of ruling over the intimate details of all American lives.
ReplyDeleteIt's the real downside of "the personal is political" as a principle: the political ends up ruling over the personal in everything, all the time. I would have been opposed to her if she were upright and honest. That she is corrupt and dishonest is just another reinforcing reason to oppose her ascendancy.
Adams is just talking about the kind of people who, in twenty years of watching her, have never come to the conclusion that she is completely unfit to be entrusted with power. That kind of person might be motivated by subconscious imagery, but only because they were somehow still open to the idea of voting for her as President.
I loved the "Realistically, and rationally, we know that isn’t a real problem." I think I'm fairly realistic and rational, and I sure as heck think it's a real problem. It's not my primary motive for refusing to vote for her obviously, but it won't hurt my feelings if a lot of other people vote against her for that reason.
ReplyDeleteBeing President isn't a right. It's a privilege conferred by We the People.
ReplyDeleteNeither a right nor a privilege, I would think: it's a job.
The question is, do we want to hire Hillary Clinton? We might feel bad for a physically frail person who is interviewing for a stressful and physically demanding job, but his or her health would certainly be a minus if not a disqualifier anyway.