Thread by @frodofied

America got almost everything wrong in 2016.

It was a terrible year.

We were collectively ridiculous. We made terrible decisions. We did terrible things.

Like some drunk teenage white dude we bullied the smart girl and crowned the entitled dumb jock.

Damn.

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Turns out that our own latent misogyny was even stronger than our aversive racism.

And that is a sad mouthful right there.

We hate smart, powerful women so much that we were willing to pass over one of the best them for one of the worst examples of men conceivable.

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When one looks back at the ease with which so many were willing to embrace the worst unsubstantiated rumor about @HillaryClinton whilst simultaneously ferociously defending @realdonaldtrump's many cataclysmic abhorrencies, it is easy to be rendered speechless.

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@HillaryClinton @realDonaldTrump For fuck's sake we were electing the next President to lead a diverse population during a time of great global unrest, not voting for class fucking clown.

People trying to label this year the most important election in history are off by four years.

Been there, done that.

#4

@HillaryClinton @realDonaldTrump Now, I'm not trying to argue that it's not vitally important, nay, critical that we defeat Trump in 2020 and remove him from power as quickly as possible, Only that it was more important that we never invited him through the doors we now hope hope to lock behind him.

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At the very least it was, given our current situation, unsmart to give a hard pass to the candidate who was addressing systemic racism and criminal justice reform in Apr 2015 in favor of one was was nearly concurrently calling all Mexicans rapists and ridiculing #BLM.

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Words are powerful things, they matter. Intentions matter.

When a political body chooses this:

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

Over this then something is deeply, deeply wrong with with our body politic.

google.com/amp/s/www.busi…

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That was the first policy speech Hillary Clinton presented for her second presidential campaign. And its a fair here to insist that few were listening & fewer were willing to give her a shot, or even a break.

The study in contrasts between she and Trump was only beginning.

/8

I am talking about this now because four years later I am not convinced that all of this won't happen again.

Sadly we can't rely on the vast majority of the voting age public to either show up on election day or get it right if they do.

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The entire future of the republic, and possibly, in fact, whether it continues on as one, will rest with the moods, actions and hopes of about five to ten percent of us.

Unfortunately, few of us, neither me writing this, nor you reading it are among that group.

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Because, in the end, if these issues matter to you at all, if you're taking the time to read this then you're likely, like me, and we are part of the partisan brigade on either side of the spectrum. We are the reliable subset of the political body who will always show up.

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That is not to say that we don't matter, because we do, we are critical. But we can, on one level, be taken for granted, and that's actually a good thing.

Can you imagine every politician starting at the very back of the line every election?

Nightmare.

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