Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues The Trump Administration Post-Election Mischief

It really does beg an answer doesn’t it? The hatred towards Hillary Clinton does not on its face make sense. If we consider how thoroughly Mrs. Clinton’s background has been scrutinized in efforts to discredit her, what is remarkable is how little scandalous material her opponents have found.

She is clearly not a “crooked” politician and using a personal email account does not rank up there with the great scandals of Presidential politics.

But regardless of how one feels about what her opponents do allege none of it is the kind of stuff that would be expected to generate the intensity of the hatred they express towards her. And yet people so hate Hillary Clinton that almost half of all Americans are voting for a man who is widely considered the most unqualified and even dangerous person ever to run for the Presidency.
So just how do we explain it?

As I explained in my book, State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind (St. Martin’s Press, 2008) if we threaten people in the areas of sexual identity, then swamp them with feelings of envy and paranoia we can do a pretty good job of disabling their mental apparatus. They then become irrational and vulnerable to a demagogue who appears strong and promises to deliver them from their panic. This is what has been done to the American political right.

The American mind has been under assault in all three of these areas, and Hillary’s candidacy has become the perfect lightening rod for the trifecta of sexual confusion, envy, and paranoia that is assaulting it. As a society we are not paying enough attention to the combined impact of these forces especially the impact they are having on the most psychologically vulnerable.

Of course, for a nation in which millions of white men are terrified that to lose their gun is to lose their masculine security, having a woman President is very threatening. This is especially true when they have just learned, quite conclusively, that an African American man can make a better President than they can. White men who are hating Hillary so irrationally are terrified that they will lose the significant scaffolding that artificially inflated and discriminatory sexual stereotypes play in their very core self-definition. The more destabilized they feel by this, the worse the problem becomes.

Losing special status is painful, unpleasant, and shamefully exposing. Naturally, most men who feel this way do not acknowledge or even understand the feeling. It becomes an inchoate feeling of dislike for Hillary, a feeling-state awaiting explanation. With millions of American males needing to explain their hatred of her to themselves, any alleged flaw will do, real or imagined, to “explain” their visceral reaction. Thus, whatever is thrown against Hillary tends to stick. No politician in our lifetime has had more false or trivial accusations stick against her than Hillary Clinton.