Thread by @StrykrSeven

THE DESTRUCTIVE DECEPTION OF THE HIGHEST GLASS CEILING by @StrykrSeven

1/ The metaphors we ascribe to our cultural challenges have a strong influence on our shared understanding of their ideal solutions—this is frequently an effective way to build the political willpower necessary to enact a difficult solution.

2/ However, if an *imperfect* metaphor becomes embedded in public consciousness, collective efforts to resolve the issue may prove ineffective, or even exacerbate the challenge we were trying to overcome in the first place!

3/ It is well established in our culture that underprivileged groups—such as women & people of color—tend to encounter significantly more difficulty ascending to executive leadership positions than is typical for white men.

4/ The metaphor widely used to communicate this dynamic is the “glass ceiling”—an invisible yet impassable barrier preventing those of lesser privilege from climbing above a certain level of representative leadership.

5/ It is a broadly shared progressive ideal that glass ceilings, regardless of where they exist, are unfairly discriminatory toward lesser privileged groups and thus morally defensible to actively endeavor to increase those groups’ numerical representation among those at the top.

6/ There is a clear moral virtue and predictable outcome when a glass ceiling is successfully shattered, which is that the underprivileged groups held underneath it achieve increased access to the levers of power previously held beyond their reach.

7/ The privileged classes who previously benefited from reduced competition above that ceiling may be extremely unhappy with this outcome. However, explicit retaliation against the newly empowered is generally not tolerated & may result in punitive consequences for the aggressor.

8/ Decades of effort from progressives have proven effective at “breaking” these ceilings & increasing representation of underprivileged groups from the boardroom to the halls of Congress. Significant progress has been made nearly everywhere—except that is, for the US Presidency.

9/ By extension, the presidency is therefore widely characterized as “the highest glass ceiling”, an allusion to the fact that (circa 2007) all American presidents have been white men.

10/ We now have a full decade of direct observation of how our society has responded to the highest glass ceiling being broken in 3 consecutive presidential elections as Democrats won the popular vote in 2008, 2012, and 2016.

11/ Each time the Democrats won the presidential popular vote, the public reaction did NOT increase opportunity for the underprivileged as expected, NOR did it result in the begrudging tolerance of the newly empowered ideals of the Democratic party.

12/ What actually happened was that we—with astounding consistency—suffered punishingly brutal losses in direct retaliation for our popular vote victories in the presidential race, up and down the ballot.

13/ Rather than our presidential victories resulting in increased empowerment of underprivileged groups and expansion of civil rights & opportunity, our cynical and morally bankrupt antagonists actually *gained* immense political strength!

14/ They used it to successfully destroy much of the progress we had made toward advancing gender & racial equality, & enacted an AVALANCHE of intentionally cruel, inhumane policies to punish the very citizens we had been trying to lift up from the bottom of our broken society.

15/ Remember the way we felt when Obama won in 2008? Remember the surge of pride we felt when we *finally* proved we could judge a man entirely by his character and not by the color of his skin?

16/ Remember 2016? Remember how hilarious it was to see the Mad Hatter’s illiterate understudy rip off the arms of his stuffy Republican adversaries, and swallow their corpses whole?

17/ Remember how vindicated we felt the day before the election...that after back-to-back midterm losses that decimated our party, fate conspired with mercy to drive the entire Republican party insane in order to deliver us a landslide so massive it would put 1964 to shame?

18/ We now know from a decade of direct, unambiguous observation that it *will* result in immediate and sustained retaliation against the Democratic party as a whole and significant personal hardship for those in our society already most marginalized and vulnerable.

19/ We also know the most prominent cultural benefit would be the feeling of shared inspiration and historic achievement of representing an underprivileged group in the nation’s highest office.

20/ We know what feeling of satisfaction the achievement would create, as we experienced in 2008 and in the run-up to the 2016 election. However, we also know from those years that the feeling of overjoyed satisfaction from that achievement is likely to be fleeting.

21/ I know this is an extremely sensitive topic for a lot of people, but we must ask ourselves a very difficult and uncomfortable question that strikes at the very heart of who we are as Democrats and as citizens:

22/ If the real, predictable outcome of a candidate breaking the "highest glass ceiling" for their identity group is a fleeting moment of shared cultural satisfaction in exchange for that group’s increased exposure to hardship and malice...

23/ ...what is the actual moral justification for supporting that candidate? How can we defend supporting that candidate when the clear implication is that we believe *our* moment of satisfaction is worth *their* years of suffering?

24/ But is that really all there is to it? Our only real choice to protect the innocent and vulnerable in America is to allow white men to hold the Presidency hostage forever?

25/ Absolutely not. Supporting a white man because you’re afraid of what might happen otherwise is not any more morally righteous than supporting another because you *desire* that identity to win. The first candidate manipulates by fear. The second candidate manipulates by greed.

26/ In our era, neither choice is inherently more morally defensible than the other. Both moral choices are exposed to corruption that could be exploited by unscrupulous agents as a means to harm ourselves and others. Divisive candidates of all shades harness this false choice.

27/ In the wake of breaking the so-called “highest glass ceiling" (3 times in a row!) the outcome was so diametrically contrary to our expectations—and in such a consistent manner—that it becomes necessary to ask: is the Presidency even a glass ceiling at all?

28/ Is there a better metaphor that reflects our belief in the virtue of diversity, while acknowledging the perverse reality that the very act of prioritizing any candidate’s potential achievement of an equality milestone will likely result in direct harm to vulnerable groups?

29/ What if the election of Trump showed it’s not a glass ceiling at all? What if the more appropriate metaphor is a casting call for a movie?

30/ What if the most important deciding factor in the eyes of the voting public was the entertainment value they believed a candidate would bring to the role of President of the United States, regardless of their actual qualifications or professional competence?

31/ Without a supportive Congress, a President is essentially powerless to advance legislation on their own—and in the wake of the Trump nightmare, it is clear now the Presidency is still too powerful for our democracy to be sustainable!

32/ How many millions has Trump made much worse off because we based our electoral priorities on the wrong metaphor? There’s no doubt Hillary was better suited for the responsibilities of the highest office than the garbage fire that actually “won” the election.

33/ We didn’t think the election would even be close because her qualifications so vastly exceeded her opponent’s. If there *ever* was someone that was destined to shatter that highest glass ceiling, it was her, in that exact perfect moment in history!

34/ We were all shocked when she lost. Not because it was merely unexpected, but because it was *inconceivable* she would lose! Even hours after the polls had closed, thousands of her supporters waited excitedly in a crowded auditorium for a victory speech that would never come.

35/ What, really, could have possibly happened? Her unstoppable and powerfully competent ambition to become the nation’s first female president was so widely apparent that comedians had been joking of her inevitable inauguration *decades* ago.

36/ She was made for this moment, and although she wasn’t particularly entertaining as a candidate, it was undeniable that she took the challenge of this test of history *very* seriously.

37/ In polar contrast, her opponent was laughably unqualified for service at any level. Intellectually, he was frequently barely functional. He was even so keenly aware of his unfitness that he himself later admitted he *expected* to lose, & was disappointed that he actually won!

38/ Unless we were all sucked into an alternate universe sometime around 9:00 pm on election day in 2016, this particular series of events should not have been *possible*, let alone at all likely.

39/ Hillary wasn’t just likely to break the highest glass ceiling. She was so perfectly positioned for the task, so uncompromisingly committed to its completion, and so overwhelmingly expected to achieve it that an incredible thing happened...

40/ ...people actually stopped caring about the cultural significance of that particular achievement, & thus it ceased to be a motivation to vote for her! How many women gave a collective yawn when the topic was the inevitability of her recognition as the first female President?

41/ In other words, Hillary Clinton didn’t *fail* to shatter the highest glass ceiling, she in fact shattered it *so hard* that it broke the public’s ability to comprehend the cultural significance of that milestone in the first place!

42/Like smartphones & broadband internet, to the younger generations the ubiquity of acceptance of a woman Pres—much like a black Pres—is now such a certainty that we no longer need to prioritize the achievement of those milestones for fear that otherwise they would never happen.

43/Although she won’t be the first person to be addressed in the Oval Office as Madam President, she dedicated her life’s effort to the shattering of that highest glass ceiling so that future generations could inherit a better society from us than we inherited from our forebears.

44/ Hillary Clinton absolutely succeeded in her noble goal, and our society is all the better for her lifetime of dedicated public service.

45/ In reality, she simply lost out on the role of “US President” because she wasn’t entertaining enough to overcome the hurdle of being outside the white male demographic the voting public expected to be cast.

46/ Using the “casting call” metaphor, our recent presidential elections make a lot more sense. In 2008, Obama overcame his casting handicap by being far more interesting than his opponent’s uninspired performance as an emotionally disengaged elderly white man.

47/ In 2012, Obama faced “movie-handsome” Romney & didn’t win by as much. Romney had a natural advantage for the role as a photogenic white man with a chiseled face, but failed to translate that bias into victory because of his boring personality and lack of “common man” appeal.

48/ In casting calls, the candidates’ real-life qualifications matter little against characteristics like charisma & entertainment value. In that respect, it shouldn’t have been surprising that Trump won. Many people voted for him precisely *because* he was an entertaining idiot!

49/ There are a few important lessons we can learn from the casting-call metaphor. First, it tells us it is possible for a woman to win against an idiot like Trump by being entertaining enough herself, but a “boring” woman probably won’t, no matter how qualified she is.

50/ Second, we have been radically overvaluing the significance of this particular cultural milestone. This has encouraged us to aggressively pursue achievement of this milestone at the expense of actual sustained progressive change everywhere else in our society.

51/ In our age, casting calls can be race or gender neutral, but there *does* exist significant, deep imbalances between the level of ease with which the average candidate wins a role when they’re outside the privileged demographic.

52/Our government is made up of humans constrained by the same types of societal pressures and intrinsic biases we see at play in the entertainment industry. Throughout our history, underprivileged groups have proven themselves worthy of the same privilege we afford to white men.

53/ Representation in Congress is the *true* benchmark of racial and gender equality, and it is there we should rightly revel in each progressive milestone. We must remember going forward that the Presidency is no more than a casting call for a sufficiently compelling actor.

54/ We must never again allow ourselves to be lured away from our efforts to shatter the many TRUE glass ceilings in Congress & elsewhere in our society by the prospect of landing the role of U.S. President with an “unorthodox” casting decision.

55/ The prospect of electing “THE FIRST ______ PRESIDENT” is nothing more than a red herring that cynical white men have successfully used against us to prevent us from attaining power where it *truly* resides: CONGRESS.

56/ If you want final proof the Presidency is no more meaningful today than a casting call, ask yourself this: who was the most legendarily successful and most revered Republican President in a generation, despite lacking all qualification for the office?

57/57 The answer: Former President of the Screen Actors Guild himself, Ronald Reagan.