While her looming, lurching, lunatic opponent
I was thinking what L. V. Anderson says at Slate: that Clinton’s ability to stay calm, cheerful, reasonable, and coherent during that trainwreck of a “debate” on Sunday is a kind of superpower. I was thinking the whole time how totally impossible I would find that. I was thinking about the years of experience she’s had, as a practicing lawyer as well as a campaigner and politician, that must have helped train her, but also that it’s still a superpower.
Trump was as ugly and uninspiring as usual. But here’s what people haven’t been saying in the days since the debate: Hillary was inspiring as all get out.
Yes, I’m familiar with all the arguments against Hillary as inspirer-in-chief. She’s part of the establishment. She’s laden with potential conflicts of interest. Her judgment during the whole email thing was poor. She seems, to many observers, wooden and robotic. Fine. The fact remains that Hillary stood onstage and calmly and persuasively made the case for her candidacy while her looming, lurching, lunatic opponent attempted to humiliate her in front of the entire world. If Hillary can do that, then the rest of us can do whatever we put our minds to.
Or, in fact, if Clinton can do that, she has extraordinary abilities. She didn’t quake, she didn’t turn red, she didn’t sweat, she didn’t lose it and start yelling – in the face of the shocking anomaly of having to deal with a raving barely-literate narcissist bent on insulting and threatening her as the other candidate for that job. That takes a lot of discipline.
What would you do? If I were Hillary, I would blubber incomprehensibly through my rage-tears for the duration of the debate, if I lasted onstage that long.
Exactly. So would I.
I am not saying Hillary deserves credit just for showing up and getting the job done. I am saying she deserves credit for showing up and getting the job done while a psychopath invaded her personal space, lied repeatedly, attempted to degrade her in the basest and vilest terms, and threatened to jail her for the crime of being a successful woman in the public eye.
Or to put it another way…when they go low, we go high.
And her years of experience being humiliated, insulted, degraded, and trashed by the Republican establishment, in barely more civilized terms than her current opponent. It is possible she may one of the few people in the world who has the appropriate experience to stand up against Trump because of that. She practiced so long taking abuse with grace that it may have become second nature to her now.
That too, yes. Lucky women, to get so thoroughly trained!
“Superpower” is the word for it. I boggle every time I think about what she withstands. And when I see her, rolling over boors with the calm of a huge river, I usually find my jaw has dropped.
I’ve spent my professional life in academia where I’ve had to do a bit of that myself. Compared to her, call it one microHillary unit. For me, that felt huge. I don’t know how she does it, but so much gratitude that she does!
microHillary units. This may be the most powerful new measurement available for human interpersonal relations.
I can muster about one to two microHillary units at any given time; any more is totally exhausting. I can’t imagine what it would require to get up to a full Hillary unit.
I have (very) mixed feelings about all this…
It’s _is_ incredible to watch Ms. Clinton do this. And there is a beautiful, vengeful karma in the fact that, it is as a byproduct of the utter vileness of her attackers we are so impressed. Thank you, assholes, for being such nasty pieces of work. You require her to be amazing to stand up to you, and the world sees her do it. I very much suspect that’s a part of why this thing has become so lopsided. I know Hillary’s negatives dropped especially at least after the first debate. I think that’s part of it. People watching it, thinking, damn, _that’s_ what she has to stand up to? And look at her doing so, all the same.
And it’s horrific she has to.
Sure, she’s running for an incredibly powerful position; you expect some chop. But geez if it doesn’t look all over like the standard work six times as hard for half the credit thing. Mediocre men _have_ taken this office (some of them, mediocre seems kind). Ms. Clinton, were she anything less than nearly indestructible, probably wouldn’t have had a chance.
It _is_ heartening that people are rallying around her, though. I’m really liking that. There’s been this noise that she’s going to have one hell of a fight even if/when she takes office, much depending on how congress turns out, obviously, but I suspect even independently of that. Judicial Watch and their backers will still be there, you can bet, churning out paper. She’ll _need_ a nation behind her.