Thread by @frodofied

No Troll. No.

I am very consistent.
I am very loud.

Yes, I often tweet as I speak and live, in the superlative, but that does not mean I exaggerate.

Not about that, and never about her.

AGAIN,

To be clear, yes, #ImStillWithHER and, yes that is a real act of #resistance. /1

Why? Have a look at my TL. It's filled with reasons. Thread after thread. Find them, read them. As I've said many times before Google and search are your friends, and I'm not your teacher.

But you are wrong. It is resistance. It is subversive. And I'm happy to explain why. 2/

In your entertaining "critique" of the #resistance movement (and your far too kind appraisal of me as a person) you used a lot of big words like propaganda, groupthink, and prerequisite and you used all of them wrong. You are often wrong I think.

Let's begin. 3/

re·sist·ance rəˈzistəns/
noun

1.the refusal to accept or comply with something; the attempt to prevent something by action or argument.

In 2003 @HillaryClinton wrote a book called "Living History" but I doubt that even she understood that her-story had really just begun. 4/

How could she have? She had already lived an extraordinary life. Her significant place in our collective history, impressive.

For well over a decade the American right wing had made Clinton the central focus of their vast anti-liberal conspiracy.

She had named it herself. 5/

"Vast right wing conspiracy."

They had ridiculed her almost immediately. Some because they didn't believe it, and others because they had a been a part of it.

But she had been right.

It would not be the first time she spoke the truth that too few would listen-nor the last. 6/

How the right wing has managed to simultaneously spend so much time trying to destroy Hillary Clinton and also convince the masses that she is an unaccomplished nobody is beyond me.

Tell me troll. How is that possible?

Millions upon millions of dollars? So very much effort? 7/

The arbiters of accepted right wing demagoguery have turned hatred of this "insignificant lightweight" into a cottage industry. Many have made their fortunes selling it.

In a normal world, viewed w/o the corrective lenses of political association the incongruence is obvious. 8/

But there is nothing 'normal' about how people look at or judge Hillary Clinton. There never has been.

There is only one other person who has enjoyed the full brunt of right wing paranoia and hate in a way anywhere near comparable to Hillary Clinton and it's not her husband. 9/

No, that prize goes to her former boss @BarackObama.

And Clinton and Obama have a lot more in common than either could have imagined when they battled each other for the 2008 Democratic nomination for the U.S. Presidency. And party affiliation is the least of it. 10/

Together @HillaryClinton and @BarackObama represent the biggest threats to American white supremacist patriarchy that has yet existed. They are the existential answer to the question of how much longer is left on that tired clock.

To borrow from another movement, times up. 11/

Clinton and Obama are living nightmares for many in the power class who understand their days are numbered.

Ironically, however, both manage to simultaneously validate the mechanisms of liberalism while also proving the central tenets of modern conservative philosophy. 12/

This too ignored fact is precisely what makes them dangerous. It's also why the right wing efforts to bring them down has been so concerted, coordinated, and visceral.

On one hand both prove that Democratic social policies do as promised.
13/

They are absolute evidence that as the playing field becomes levelled women and minorities will advance and with that advancement demand more input into the mechanisms of governance.

They prove that the pivotal social protections that grew out the Depression & the CRM work. 14/

But this represents only a small part of the problem for the enemies of progress.

Beginning w/ Reagan, conservatives, who were coming to understand the nature of the threat liberal policies posed to not just the system, but to it's very existence, developed a new strategy. 15/

Framed around that most hyper-American of frauds, rugged individualism was weaponized against the incoming tidal wave of progress.

(Note: Pardon the slow progress of this thread. I'm street preaching for #TheResistance while I tweet.)

'Merit based' & 'individual responsibility' were the keywords of the new vocabulary for the radical right's war against social progress.

The arrogance of white supremacy suggested to them that merit would necessarily block access.

Even here our heroes proved them wrong.

17/

The problem for the right is that @HillaryClinton & @BarackObama are not only exceptional, they are frequently the best.

Hillary Clinton might have gotten accepted into Yale Law as a side effect of liberal policy, but that had nothing to with her graduating first among many. 18/

mi·sog·y·ny məˈsäjənē/
noun

dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.

Hillary Clinton's life should be celebrated as an example of the American dream in it's most eloquent expression.

It should be admired by all.

Instead...misogyny.

19/

I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who could have predicted the darkness that would over take the 2016 election. The insufferable darkness.

As I write this, "Have You Ever Seen The Rain" by Creedence Clearwater Revival is blasting in my ears and I am bawling. 20/

I still find it unsettling that I get so emotional about it all. But for me these represent the darkest of days. For me 2016 was truly my annus horribilis. So much loss.

Our national soul was one the year's earliest victims. And it's hard not to mourn.

Still. 21/

The darkness revealed perhaps too much about our national psyche. Too much about whiteness. Too much about racism. And too much about misogyny.

I say too much not because we will not win, but because some of us were not prepared to fight battles we thought we'd already won. 22/

Confronting it all was and continues to be overwhelming, and it's meant to be. This allows them a greater range of movement, and ensures less resistance. They know that some will shut down. Others will factionalize themselves into ineffectiveness. 23/

By it's nature their methods are meant to divide. These issues are some of the most difficult any culture can face.

Racism.
Homophobia.
Misogyny.
Economic fairness.

Each in their own way tribal. Who will fight for what when?

I think we are still trying to answer that. 23/

But the deep, acidic racism that flooded us in the twilight of Barack Obama's Presidency was, it turns out, superceded by an even more entrenched & darker strain of misogyny.

It must've been a daunting monster for black women, the forever heroes of 2016, to face. I can't... 24/

The torrent of unabashed, ridiculous and fucking dangerous levels of no hold barred misogyny @HillaryClinton faced affects me physically. And all of it was made so much worse because so few recognized it for what it was. So few were willing to even admit it when forced. 25/

The media men who so openly revelled in their baseness were too numerous to recount here, but their number was obscene. The language used, the narrative shaping, the co-mingling of political opposition's, the nature of the coordinated attacks were all part of the wall.

26/

The wall built against Clinton will always sound unlikely, even fictional. But it was real. And it was both well planned & well built.

Misogyny was the wall she must climb...

But she scaled that motherfucker my friends, & nearly alone.

On misogyny:

twitter.com/i/moments/9088…

The double standards @HillaryClinton swallowed every single day would have choked almost any other candidate.

It started in the primary. Almost as soon as the first person smiled pretty at the old white guy. And though gobsmacking for it's obviousness, so few recognized it. 28/

Hillary Clinton was forced (again) to atone for a war vote that none of her Democratic colleagues were. She was held more responsible for a crime bill she did not write, only spoke in support of a few times, than Biden who wrote it, her husband, or Sanders who voted for it. 29/

How the fuck does that pass as logic?

It doesn't. That's unless your viewing it through misogyny colored lenses.

In that election @HillaryClinton faced two prime opponents both of whose speech styles amounted to red-faced screaming and guess which one was criticized? 30/

Neither.

Ever.

You know who was criticized almost constantly however?

The one with the vagina.

The media, with few exceptions, not only supported these tactics, but seemed to enjoy employing them.

Again. It's was not terribly surprising that any of this happened. 31/

What was surprising was how often the various iterations dominated the whole narrative.

And that so few questioned. And the ease with which all of it was accepted. And how so few women seemed to really see it or hate it.

No, this wound is not healed. It's still bleeding.

32/

Oh Troll. Are you tired? Are you still following along?

Because there is still Russia. Misogyny even played itself into that deck.

Still doubt? Let's look.

Facts: Russia is our adversary. This was as true in 1960 as it was in 1983 as it is right now. It was always true. 33/