The real Hillary

I seem to be referencing Melissa McEwen of Shakesville a lot today. There is a good reason for that. She has spent a great deal of time studying the whys and hows of oppression. And there's a big reason for that – she's been on the receiving end of a great deal of it. She now devotes her blog to calling it out.

In one of today's posts McEwen takes a look at why young people have mostly gone for Bernie and not Hillary. Many young will say there is something vaguely untrustworthy about her.

Hillary entered the national stage as Bill ran for and won the presidency in 1992. Both were progressives, thus drawing the ire of conservatives who assumed they were supposed to be in charge. Hillary got an extra dose of misogyny thrown at her. She was characterized as a monster, an idea that mainstream media perpetuated.

That garbage started 25 years ago, sometimes as a whisper, sometimes as a shout. "This decades-long, relentless campaign to create a supervillain, led by the GOP and abetted by the media, is so insidious and ubiquitous that we don't even see it." Which means this noise has been in the background (and sometimes not all that far back) for the entire lives of these 25 year-olds. No wonder they don't trust Hillary.

Remember those emails that Hillary released? McEwen actually read a few hundred of the 3,000. They reveal a woman "who is running for president because she genuinely cares about people." Quite a dramatic contrast from the portrayed monster. And when people meet her, like this one (sweet picture!), they find someone fundamentally different from how she is portrayed.

Will the young voters see the real Hillary? If they do will they face up to having been brainwashed? Or will they continue the untrustworthy narrative?

There are reasons to oppose Hillary. I don't think she will push hard enough on such issues as gerrymandering and corporate money in politics. But arguments against her can be made without invoking the monster created by misogynists. And there are a great number of reasons to support her, including the grace she portrays while all this misogyny is thrown at her.