June 10, 2008

From the Mail Bag: Post-Mortem Hillary-Bashing, Entitlement, Projection, and Godwin’s Law

Received this morning:

Name: BJ

emailaddress: bradley1138@—.com

Message: Here’s the thing - part of being a strong, independent woman is a) knowing when you’re the wrong person for the job, and b) knowing when to capitulate. Hillary knows neither. She is simply the wrong person for the job - her quest for the Presidency is nothing more than a massive ego-stroke for her. She feels *entitled* to it, and that is the reason why she lost her bid. It has nothing to do with her gender - it has everything to do with her character. Feminists need to understand that there is a wide gulf between disliking a candidate because of her gender, and because of her character.

My question to you is this: Why are you still harping on Hillary? You got what you wanted — Obama.

Hillary conceded — unequivocally, and unconditionally — and has thrown her full weight behind Obama. She capitulated (like an obedient little wifey is supposed to, right?). What more do you want? Public self-flagellation? An apology for the little old lady refusing to get out of the way of the big young man?

Here’s the new rule: In any discussion of the 2008 presidential race, Hillary-bashing is now equivalent to Godwin’s Law, specifically:

The Law is generally used on Usenet as an indicator of whether a thread has gone on too long, who’s playing fair and who’s just slinging mud, and who finally gets to “win” the discussion.

I suggest that if you want your candidate to actually win this thing, you focus your attention on November — not February, and not 1992.

I also suggest — strongly — that if you don’t want to push non-Obama-lovers any further away than you already have (if that’s possible), you cease lecturing women on what it means to be “a strong, independent woman.”

If you are a male (which appears to be the case per the name in your email address), you are no authority on the subject, and your opinion carries no weight. (If you’re a female, you should just be ashamed of yourself for attempting to tell another woman — me — what feminism means.)

If you belong to a minority group and want to tell me all about what that means, I’m all ears. If you don’t, then you have no place to tell me what feminism means — and, male or female, you have no place to judge Hillary Clinton’s motives for running.

“Entitled,” indeed. Do you know the meaning of the word “projection”? No, really — do you?

Psychological projection is the phenomenon whereby one projects one’s own thoughts, motivations, desires, feelings, and so on onto someone else (usually another person, but psychological projection onto animals, parents, children, neighbors, other drivers, political figures, racial groups, states and countries, also occurs). … The principle of projection is well-established in psychology. …

It is “the operation of expelling feelings or wishes the individual finds wholly unacceptable — too shameful, too obscene, too dangerous — by attributing them to another”.

Projection concerns externalizing the issues that we need to deal with ourselves. Usually we project onto others issues and problems that we need to address within ourselves, or are unable to manage properly. Projection is irresponsible behavior as we dump our problem onto somebody else. We justify these projections by blaming someone or something outside for the emotions we do not want to feel. We project our disappointments and problems onto other people, it is somehow their fault, we become a blamer. Ultimately it is the person who projects that loses, as they never really sort out their own problems. …

You’ve seen parents raging at their children demanding they meet requirements the parent has failed to achieve themselves. This is projection. The parent trains the child to do all the negative behaviors the parent has repressed for a lifetime. … They see their own behavior mirrored back in the child and then rage against their own projection trying to get the child to change what they are not yet willing change and face in themselves. We try to change everything outside us when we are not willing to go inside and do the work we need to do to change ourselves. You see this with so called progressives. They try to change everything in the world rather than do their own inner work. …

Classic racism is an example of psychological projection; “It’s all their fault that I feel they way that I do,” says the racist. I am a victim of another persons thoughts or actions.

Classic sexism is another example.

Barack Obama appeals, across the board, to a generation of young Americans who embody the word “entitlement.” The young voters so enamored of Obama are the ones who have no clue what it means to lose, and lose graciously (or win graciously). This is the first generation that grew up expecting a “participation ribbon” — a damned trophy just for showing up.

(No wonder Obama is so readily forgiven for his “present” votes — he showed up, didn’t he?)

There’s a blogger named John Hines, Jr. I don’t know anything about him — his politics, his religion, whether he loves Teh Gays or hates us — but I know I agree with him on something he wrote last year, which I bookmarked, because he sums up the phenomenon as well as anyone:

You’ve done this to your own children

Susan is watching a bunch of losers from Seattle and points beyond make fools of themselves on the latest round of tryouts for American Idol. …

The difference between me and those people who show up at the American Idol auditions is a simple one. I have self-limiting controls based on my experiences in early childhood and adolescence. These poor contestants don’t have those controls. …

There is a disturbing trend in America. I don’t know when it started. It wasn’t prevalent when I was in school (class of 1988, baby), but it was by the time my son started school in 1997. Somehow in nine years, everyone went crazy.

I played T-ball as a very small child. I sucked at it. I couldn’t hit the ball off of the T. Just in case you’ve never seen this, what happens is a baseball is placed on a rubber pedestal in front of a youth holding an aluminum baseball bat. The child in question then gets three attempts to hit the ball from the T. After that, the rules are a lot like baseball. Run the bases, slide, throw, etc.

I think I mentioned some suckage. I’m here to admit I couldn’t hit the ball. It was presented to me on a pedestal and I could take all the time I wanted to aim, but I couldn’t do it right. I would either hit the pedestal, or the bat would pass harmlessly over the top of the baseball, having no effect except to corkscrew me around like the Tasmanian Devil in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Our team came in last place. Both years. Do you know what we got? Nothing. No trophy, no participation ribbon. Nothing. “Better luck next year.” Losing was part of the game, and no one thought anything of it. I don’t think I scored a run. I sucked, I promise. But I still had fun. Somehow, even with someone keeping score, I still look back on those games fondly. They were happy times, not diminished in the least by the fact we lost.

Today, you won’t see that in T-ball. First, no one keeps score. It damages the self-esteem of children to keep score. Second, everyone gets to swing until they hit the ball. It doesn’t matter if it takes all afternoon. Third, everyone runs all the way around the bases every inning. Everyone gets to cross homeplate, even if they were “out” by the time they got to second base. It’s a travesty. It creates the wrong expectations in children. “No matter what happens, I’m going to succeed.”

Bullshit. Everybody fails at something. Dragging kids through a life where they never have to deal with the disappointment of not being good enough doesn’t do them any favors. It creates a sense of… I’d say “entitlement,” but that’s not quite the right word. A sense of “inevitability of a positive outcome.” There, that’s better. I don’t know if there is a phrase for that condition, other than, say, “hopeful impetuousness.”

It is because of this “everyone is a winner” attitude we have things like American Idol, and the train-wreck of those first auditions. And by “first auditions,” I mean “public exposure of gross inadequacy and over-inflated self-esteem.” It’s sickening. But, at the same time, it’s fun to watch.

“Fun to watch,” maybe, if we’re talking about William Hung — but utterly pathetic (and sickening indeed) when it comes to people who cry and stomp their feet when they don’t get what they think they’re entitled to — like far too many Obama supporters, who got what they wanted, and still want more — what, I just don’t know (and I’m not sure they do, either).

Maybe down deep, they know that just by becoming Democrats, they’ve joined the losingest team around, and are setting themselves up for a lifetime of disappointment. Only twice — in 1992 and 1996 — have I ever been on the winning side; the rest of the time, I was with the losers, the Democrats. (And I’ve never gotten a “participation ribbon” — only a lot of grief.)

Obama supporters had better get used to being losers. Obama may win the general election, but he may lose — and his supporters haven’t begun to come to grips with that possibility, nor with the very real fact that even if he wins, they are going to be sorely disappointed by his presidency. I guarantee you that disappointment: The pedestal his supporters have put him on is so impossibly high, he cannot reasonably live up to half the expectations put upon him. I’d almost feel sorry for the guy, if it weren’t obvious that he’s bought into much of his own hype.

There’s a rude awakening coming — and a great deal of it will come when Obama supporters finally realize that no amount of Hillary-bashing is going to have any effect on the way Obama conducts himself as a candidate, or as a president.

Hillary-bashing is a futile exercise now — but legions of Obama supporters cannot let go of it. You lecture us about “moving on,” when you yourselves cannot.

That’s projection.

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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