Thread by @StrykrSeven

THE DESTRUCTIVE DECEPTION OF THE HIGHEST GLASS CEILING
There are many theories about why Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 — some seemingly plausible, some more outlandish, others surely insane.

They’re all wrong.

2/100 The truth is that we stopped Hillary Clinton from becoming our President because she flaunted her own comfort with the most appallingly offensive personal trait a government official can have — competence.

3/100 GLASS CEILINGS ARE REAL AND WE MUST BREAK THEM
Metaphors we ascribe to cultural challenges have a strong influence on our shared understanding of their ideal solutions—this is frequently an effective way to build political willpower necessary to enact a difficult solution.

4/100 However, if an imperfect metaphor becomes embedded in public consciousness, collective efforts to resolve the issue may prove ineffective, or may even exacerbate the challenges we were trying to overcome in the first place!

5/100 It is well established in our culture that underprivileged groups — such as women and people of color — tend to encounter significantly more difficulty ascending to executive leadership positions than is typical for white men.

6/100 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 representation in top leadership.

7/100 A broadly shared progressive ideal is that glass ceilings, regardless of where they exist, are unfairly discriminatory toward lesser privileged groups & thus morally defensible to actively endeavor to increase those groups’ numerical representation among those at the top.

8/100 There is a clear moral virtue and predictable outcome when a glass ceiling is successfully “shattered”, which is that the underprivileged groups that were held underneath it achieve increased access to the levers of power previously held beyond their reach.

9/100 The privileged classes who previously benefited from reduced competition above that societal barrier may likely be extremely unhappy with this outcome, and covertly seek to subvert the new order.

10/100 However, explicit retaliation against the newly empowered is generally not tolerated, and may result in punitive consequences for the privileged aggressor as our society becomes more aware of their actions.

11/100 Decades of effort from progressives, liberal activists & many others have proven successful at breaking these barriers & increasing representation of many historically underprivileged groups — from the executive boardroom, to the court bench, to the halls of Congress.

12/100 SEVERE DAMAGE CAUSED BY FALLING GLASS
Regardless of whether such progress could ever be considered *sufficient* in the eyes of history, it is undeniable that considerable progress has been made over the past century in nearly all areas of society but one: the Presidency.

13/100 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.

14/100 Hillary Clinton finally succeeded in shattering the highest glass ceiling mere moments before Donald Trump declared all of reality null and void…suddenly the Presidency itself doesn’t seem to deserve so much power and respect for some reason.

15/100 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 & 2016, each time with a candidate who was not a white man.

16/100 However, each time Democrats won the popular vote, 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!

17/100 What actually happened was that we — with astounding consistency — suffered punishingly brutal electoral losses in each subsequent midterm election in direct retaliation for our popular vote victories in the preceding presidential race.

18/100 After enjoying historically large majorities in both houses of Congress for a very short period before 2010, we were then handed crushing losses up and down the ballot in election after election.

19/100 After 2016, Democrats had lost over 900(!) state legislative seats and Democratic political strength had been decimated to the lowest level in more than a century.

20/100 Rather than our victories resulting in the collective empowerment of underprivileged groups, expansion of civil rights, and increased acceptance of progressive ideology, our contemptible and unapologetically corrupt adversaries actually gained immense political strength!

21/100 They then used their newly acquired misanthropic authority to swiftly destroy or critically handicap much of the progress we had made toward core progressive ideals such as protecting reproductive freedom, ensuring gender equality & deconstructing structural racism.

22/100 Seemingly driven entirely by hateful spite, they quickly enacted an avalanche of intentionally cruel and inhumane policies to punish the very citizens we had been trying to lift up from the bottom of our broken society.

23/100 As citizens of the nation that many used to believe was the greatest in the world, what kind of lesson were we meant to learn from the horrors of the past decade?

24/100 Do you remember 2008? Do you remember the way we felt after Obama won? Do you remember the surge of pride we felt when we finally proved — if even just once — that we were capable of judging a man entirely by the content of his character and not by the color of his skin?

25/100 Do you remember the 2016 election? Do you remember how hilarious it was to see the Mad Hatter’s illiterate understudy rip off the arms of each of his ivory-tower trust-fund secret-society rivals and then feast on their organs on live TV?

26/100 Do you remember how Democrats & Republicans watched the circus sideshow, both sides secure in the knowledge that the bellowing lunatic claiming center stage would never *really* be allowed near the controls of the most powerful nation in the history of the world?

27/100 Do you remember how vindicated we felt right before the 2016 election, when every rational human on the planet expected the star of The Great Orange Screeching Circus to lose in a landslide to the person best identified in a line-up as “dignified competence in a pantsuit”?

28/100 Do you remember the sense of sheer *relief* that after back-to-back midterm losses that decimated us at every level — karma conspired with mercy to punish the party that cynically put its faith in a transparently unfit charlatan?

29/100 Sure, Trump was more effective than expected steamrolling the old guard Republican conservatives that swore to resist him, but he was no real threat to us--it was clear he was going to lose.

30/100 Not unreasonably, more than a few political pundits had begun drawing historical comparisons between the impending 2016 election outcome and the legendary Democratic landslide of 1964. Everything we knew about the world up until then pointed to victory.

31/100 DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN THE WORLD MADE SENSE?

32/100 We now know from a decade of direct and unambiguous hindsight observation that if we had accurately predicted the true collective motivations of the American public, we would have understood the nightmare that was looming...

33/100 We would have understood the popular vote victories of Hillary & Obama would have each resulted in immediate, sustained, and brutal retaliation against Democrats as a whole and significant personal hardship for those in our society already most marginalized and vulnerable.

34/100 In hindsight we also know the most prominent cultural benefit would be the feeling of shared inspiration & historic achievement of representing an underprivileged group in our highest office. We experienced this in 2008 & for a much shorter time before the 2016 election.

35/100 Those victorious experiences in 2008 & 2016 also now inform us that the extensively romanticized feeling of overjoyed satisfaction from achieving such a cultural milestone is likely to be fleeting.

36/100 The real consequences of that achievement, however, will continue to be inflicted upon the groups least able to escape from it, and will continue long after our moment of unbridled elation has faded.

37/100 I know this is an extremely sensitive topic for a lot of us, 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:

38/100 If the predictable outcome of candidates "breaking" the highest barrier for their identity group is a fleeting moment of cultural satisfaction in exchange for that group’s increased exposure to hardship & malice, what is the moral justification for supporting them?

39/100 Really 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?

40/100 But could the ethical and moral implications of such a monumental decision really be that clear? Are we really to believe that in order to best protect the innocent and most vulnerable groups in America, we must allow white men to hold the presidency hostage forever?

41/100 Monumental decisions of such immense consequence are never that easy. Nobody wins a painful and divisive debate about race, age, or gender identity--not the majority group who believe it's their right, and not the minority who believe it's their time. No one.

42/100 Supporting a white man for President today because innocents may be harmed if you don't (or because we might lose) is not more morally righteous in any meaningful way than supporting a candidate who isn’t a white man explicitly because you wanted that identity to win.

43/100 In our era, neither choice is *inherently* more morally defensible than the other — both choices are similarly exposed to corruption that could be exploited by unscrupulous opportunists as a means to gain the power to control our actions, or cause harm to others.

44/100 Divisive political candidates of all shades are willing to weaponize this false choice against us. The first candidate manipulates by fear. The second candidate manipulates by greed.

What matters most of all is the moral character of the candidates we choose to support.

45/100 THE AUTOPSY OF THE 2016 ELECTION
So, what in the holy hell actually happened?

46/100 We didn’t think the 2016 election would even be close because Hillary Clinton’s qualifications so VASTLY exceeded those of her witless opponent. If there was EVER someone destined to shatter that highest glass ceiling, it was her, in that exact perfect moment in history!

47/100 We were all shocked when Hillary lost. Not because it was merely unexpected, but because it was INCONCEIVABLE she would lose. Even hours after the polls closed, thousands of supporters waited excitedly in a crowded auditorium for a victory speech that would never come.

48/100 So what, in all sincerity, could have possibly happened? Without question, Russia stole Hillary's electoral college victory. But they couldn't have stolen her electoral strength in state legislative seats across the entire nation -- something else had to be at play.

49/100 Yes, OF COURSE Russia interfered in the 2016 election with a barrage of disinformation against Hillary & yes, ALMOST CERTAINLY caused a couple hundred thousand “ballot tabulation errors” in WI, MI & PA that outright stole her very legitimate victory (prove me wrong, FBI).

50/100 You’ve probably heard the obtuse statistical assurances that it was juuust barely possible Trump's victory could have happened by pure random chance without Russia directly manipulating a single vote.

I respect quantitative analysis and all, but THAT IS PURE HORSESHIT.

51/100 While my comments about Russian espionage could be easily dismissed as merely a nobody's crazy opinion, I think I’ve put together an equally reasonable counter-argument:
SHOW ME THE SECRET WISCONSIN CLONE FARMS OR SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT OUR "CRUMBLING" BLUE WALL.

52/100 Doesn’t it sure seem awfully CONVENIENT that had Hillary won those 3 states (WI, MI, PA) WHICH DEMS HAD WON IN EVERY ELECTION AFTER MONDALE—she would've won *273* electoral votes, despite more than a few VERY suspicious faithless electors in the final count?

53/100 So we’re to believe the genuine personal magnetism of a shockingly sociopathic, traitorous, admitted serial assaulter is what ALL 3 STATES had been waiting for since Poppy Bush to finally pull them away from their historical affinity for pro-union Dems? REALLY??

54/100 In the absence of genuine omniscience, I’d be willing to bet any amount of money that each & every one of those faithless electors supposed to cast electoral votes for Hillary was due to overt Russian coercion. But we don’t even have time for that now, so let’s move on...

55/100 Anyway, that even can't have been all it was. Electoral shenanigans caused by foreign espionage which ALSO goes nearly undetected by our many teams of independent statistics nerds (i.e. those not able to be silenced by G-men) can at most alter a vote outcome by a few pts.

56/100 Beyond more than a few points, systematic data falsification becomes near impossible to hide as the patterns within the data reveal the outcome doesn't follow the natural laws of random chance that we conclusively know to exist. This is very similar to what I showed above.

57/100 So the real question isn’t “how did Hillary lose to Trump?” SHE DIDN'T! The real question is WHY WAS THE ELECTION SO CLOSE IT COULD BE STOLEN?

After all, these weren't identical politicians. It was more like an esteemed burning intellect vs. an intellectual dumpster fire!

58/100 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!

Source: literally any late-night comedy show in the 1990s.

59/100 Hillary was made for that moment, and although she wasn’t particularly *entertaining* as a candidate, it was undeniable that she took the challenge and historical importance of the moment EXTREMELY seriously.

60/100 In polar contrast to Hillary Clinton, her opponent was laughably unqualified for public service at any level. Intellectually, he was frequently barely functional. He was even so keenly aware of his unfitness for office that he himself later admitted he expected to lose!

61/100 Unless we were all sucked into an alternate universe sometime around 9:00 p.m. on election day in 2016, the series of events that actually occurred should not have even been POSSIBLE, let alone at all likely.

62/100 Hillary wasn’t just *likely* to become the first female President — she was so perfectly positioned for the task, so uncompromisingly committed to its completion, and so overwhelmingly expected to achieve it that an incredible (yet strategically tragic) thing happened...

63/100 PEOPLE ACTUALLY STOPPED CARING ABOUT THE CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HER ASCENT TO THE PRESIDENCY! Therefore, to her vast legion of marginal & reluctant supporters, the immense cultural significance of the election ceased to be a motivation to vote for her! In other words:

64/100 HILLARY CLINTON DIDN'T FAIL TO SHATTER THE HIGHEST GLASS CEILING, SHE IN FACT SHATTERED IT *SO HARD* THAT SHE BROKE THE PUBLIC'S ABILITY TO COMPREHEND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THAT ACHIEVEMENT IN THE FIRST PLACE!

65/100 Like smartphones & broadband internet, to younger generations the *inevitability* of the ascent of a supremely talented woman is such a certainty that they no longer need to prioritize achieving those kinds of milestones for fear that otherwise they would never happen.

66/100 Like every generation before them, today's younger generations simply have no need to concern themselves with abiding by the rules and limitations of a bygone era their society will never return to.

67/100 Younger generations are rightfully confident in such an outcome in no small part because of the historic moment many of them contributed to personally—the previously inconceivable ascent of a brilliant & magnetic black man, who for many of them, was their very first vote!

68/100 Although Hillary Clinton won’t be the first one addressed in the Oval Office as Madam President, she dedicated her life’s effort to breaking down our worst societal barriers so that our children could inherit a better world from us than we inherited ourselves.

69/100 Regardless of any official title, Hillary Clinton has absolutely succeeded in her noble goal, and remains a role model of great admiration to all good people.

Our country, our society, and our very humanity are all the better for her lifetime of public service.

70/100 THE AWFUL TWIST: IT'S NOT EVEN A GLASS CEILING ANYMORE, IT'S A CASTING CALL
Three times in a row Dems have "broken" the highest glass ceiling & each time the outcome was so diametrically contrary to expectation, the conclusion is now inescapable--the metaphor isn't right.

71/100 There is a better metaphor that reflects our belief in the virtue of our diversity, while acknowledging the perverse reality that the very act of prioritizing identity milestones in the Oval Office will very likely result in significant harm to vulnerable identity groups.

72/100 The election of Trump revealed in no uncertain terms the presidency isn't a glass ceiling at all, but more akin to that of a casting call for a fictional US President in a Hollywood blockbuster. This may even be the most consequential realization from this nightmare!

73/100 What Trump’s successful capture of the presidency in 2016 definitively proved was NOT the vindicated legitimacy of his self-proclaimed grand master strategic intellect and crazy-like-a-fox-but-without-the-fox campaign instincts.

74/100 Nor did the election prove Hillary’s loss was clearly due to her numerous campaign blunders--self-inflicted wounds such as failing to simultaneously cure cancer and end world hunger, bring peace to the Middle East, and record a platinum album with Jay-Z.

75/100 It should be noted that all this effort Hillary was expected to put in — this impossible gauntlet we demanded she alone endure — was for the purpose of persuading the deplorables to consider she MIGHT be a better steward of our arsenal of Earth-ending nuclear weaponry.

76/100 Any reality in which someone like DONALD TRUMP could legitimately win an election on merit against someone like HILLARY CLINTON would quite obviously be located deeply in Hell.

77/100 In reality, Hillary was simply passed over for the role of “US President” because she wasn’t magnetically entertaining enough to overcome the unfortunate hurdle of being outside the full-sized white male demographic the voting public expected to be cast.

78/100 What Hillary & Trump proved in 2016 was not how capable political candidates are systematically withheld authority by unchecked privilege of powerful white men—they proved that the real, actual competence of leadership DOES NOT MATTER WHATSOEVER to the American electorate.

79/100 That is, the appalling sociopath in the White House didn't become president because he was a white man — he became president because he was supremely entertaining in the role of “US President” in the fantasy blockbuster the voting public calls “American History”.

80/100 We knew incompetence assured chaos. Hillary lost in 2016 because of the tragic reality that we sane, misguided souls believed the American electorate valued COMPETENCE more than it desired ENTERTAINMENT.

THE HORRIFYING IMPLICATIONS OF THIS ARE MANIFOLD.

81/100 The most important deciding factor in the eyes of the voting public now is not a candidate's qualifications, fitness for office, professional competence, vision, intellect, or even ideological consistency. It is simply who best plays a convincing "President of America".

82/100 Donald Trump won the Presidency because he was more entertaining than Hillary Clinton — full stop. This is our new reality. It is beyond horrifying, but this is our world now, and we must adapt to survive.

83/100 In the casting call metaphor, our recent elections make a lot more sense. In 2008, Obama overcame his casting handicap of being a black man by being far more interesting than his opponent’s uninspired performance as an emotionally disengaged elderly white man.

84/100 In 2012, Obama faced movie-handsome Mitt Romney. Despite Obama’s incumbency advantage & lengthy list of real achievements for the middle class during his first term, he didn’t win by nearly as much as he did in 2008. At the time, pundits & strategists couldn't explain why.

85/100 Romney had a natural advantage for the role as a photogenic white man with a powerful voice, chiseled face & touch of gray in his perfectly kempt hair. In hindsight he failed to leverage those assets into victory due to his dull personality & lack of “humble" awareness.

86/100 In casting calls, actors' 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 lunatic!

87/100 WE MUST LIFT THE VEIL OF DECEPTION TO PREVENT OUR OWN DESTRUCTION
There are a few important lessons for 2020 we can learn take away from the more accurate casting call metaphor. First, it tells us it is possible for a woman to win against an entertaining lunatic...

88/100 Unfortunately, however, it's likely only by being entertaining enough herself. Similarly, a “boring” woman would probably face much more difficult odds, regardless of how qualified she was.

89/100 Secondly, we have been *radically* overvaluing the significance of this particular cultural milestone. We are much too easily seduced into aggressively prioritizing this milestone at the expense of actual sustained progressive change everywhere else in our society.

90/100 How many millions have been made to suffer at the hateful whims of a madman because we based our electoral priorities on the wrong metaphor? There’s no doubt Hillary is better suited for the responsibilities of the highest office than the sociopath that actually "won".

91/100 In our age, casting calls can be race or gender neutral, but there does continue to exist significant, deep imbalances between the level of ease with which the average candidate wins a role when they’re outside the privileged demographic.

92/100 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.

93/100 Throughout our history, underprivileged groups have proven themselves worthy of the same privilege we afford to white men, but rarely do our actions ever actually match our words when it comes time to give them the respect they have earned.

94/100 We must recognize what is truly important now in this "brave" new world. The prospect of electing “THE FIRST _____ PRESIDENT” is nothing more than a red herring that prevents us from attaining power where it truly resides: CONGRESS.

95/100 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.

96/100 We must never again allow ourselves to be lured away from our efforts to shatter the many *true* glass ceilings in Congress by the prospect of landing merely one specific role with an “unorthodox” casting decision.

97/100 Still believe the US President deserves to be more globally respected than the actor who plays James Bond?

Q: Who was the most genuinely beloved, massively influential, & electorally dominant president of the modern era, despite lacking all qualification for the office?

98/100 A: The smooth talking, dashingly handsome Former President of the Screen Actors Guild himself, Ronald Reagan.

99/100 EPILOGUE: NOW IS THE NUCLEAR WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT
We now recklessly expect our presidents to be entertaining movie stars rather than competent public servants, so the functions of the office itself must be reformed to align with that reality.

https://twitter.com/StrykrSeven/status/1164708711736238082?s=20

100/100 Among the horrifying realizations of the Trump era, this one is CRITICAL: He has failed to enact even a fraction of the monstrously evil agenda he has yearned for, ONLY because he is an unbelievably incompetent leader.

WE WON'T BE SO LUCKY WHEN TRUMP 2.0 GETS THE NUKES.