"Why this socialist is for Hillary."

[forjusticethunders]

9. Woo I can actually respond to this now, thanks again Cha

Last edited Sat May 28, 2016, 12:25 PM - Edit history (1)

I think one fundamental barrier for me was that I bought too hard into the whole "Lady Macbeth" caricature of Hillary, so I assumed that Hillary was well, "Shillary". Once you get into that frame of mind, anything she does can be spun to be some kind of nefarious plot. I also had hard feelings from 2008; I thought her embrace of Obama was wholly cynical after that campaign. But that's the power of doing research.

Also I got too much of my political info from clickbait leftism outlets, places like Counterpunch and Alternet. And don't get me started on Revleft.

Finally a lot of my change was coming on here and reading more mainstream liberal/left thoughts and actually seeing a variety of views; so much of politics on the Internet is an echochamber by design, built to reinforce what you think you already know.

I'm still not 100% with Hillary in the sense I don't support everything she does (I despise Kissinger as much as any Berner, that hasn't changed for example) but it's really, really selfish to throw out the baby with the bathwater just because there are aspects things you morally disapprove of, ESPECIALLY since the other candidate will be 10x worse. Trump might invade ALL of the Middle East within 100 days, and that's just the start. And really, has anyone 100% agreed with a politician, even ones they liked? I didn't agree 100% with Obama, hell maybe not even 50%, but I love the guy because of what he has accomplished in the face of unprecedented hatred, and done it with style and grace.

And in the end of the day, we're talking about revolution, we're talking about huge structural change in America, and who is for that? Who has been the drivers of that in American history? POC, particularly black people, particularly black women. Guess who they are voting for? And the thing about Hillary is that she listens and that was one of the biggest pleasant surprises. She listens. When you do your own research, it becomes clear that those 25 years of "vetting" worked, because it was designed not just to make you believe wrong things about her, but to associated her (and Bill) with bad shit on a subconscious level (GOP propaganda will be examined by future historians the same way they examine that of totalitarian dictatorships).

And any "revolution" that ignores POC, women, LGBT and other marginalized groups isn't one at all. How do you build socialism without the people who would presumably be uplifted most driving it? How do you say to us "Hey, this movement is gonna liberate you, now get out of the way so we can do the liberating"? Sounds like white man's burden to me. How are you going to get moderates and people who associated socialism with the Soviet Union when you just scream at them and tell them they're shills and corporate w****'s? I'll take the conciliatory, reality-based approach of the Hillary movement, thanks. And it is a movement; it may not fill stadiums, but it does fill voting booths, and that's what counts.