Essay From Twitter

Below are @GothamGirlBlue ’s tweets, in order (edited for ease of reading, no content/meaning was changed). I felt that her essay came very close to how I have felt since November. With HRC’s book coming out these feelings have come up again!

Enjoy, I hope you appreciate it as much as I did!

“I've been seething all day about the response to Hillary's book, and I feel like I've finally channeled it into a coherent thread. Every last thing we're experiencing now was predicted by Hillary during the campaign. And like Cassandra, we refused to believe her. I shouldn't use the word "we" because I was a member of her coalition. I believed her and I believed in her. She represented her coalition ably, if not perfectly. She talked about issues that mattered to us. She made sure to express empathy.

For that, she was heckled, harassed, attacked, dismissed, ignored and mocked by the very people who were supposed to inform us. And every time someone wrote about how unlikeable she was, or how she didn't talk about what really mattered, or how it's her fault... They were really saying it about our coalition. *We* were unlikeable. *We* didn't really matter. It's *our* fault that Trump won.

This backlash is really about the idea that neither Hillary as a person nor the coalition she represented has any right to public life. She was supposed to stand for white supremacy and patriarchy. She was supposed to put the priorities of white rural voters above all. She was supposed to back down when shouted at. She was supposed to mold herself into something likeable.

It goes without saying that white men determine what is likeable. They say its voters, but they mean white male voters. And we are seeing the backlash of not placating those who want our silence, our submission, our obeisance in their presence. Y'all get distracted when a GOP presidential candidate retweets white supremacists, but you can find all the time to harass Hillary. Trump is out here weaponizing the ICE into the goddamn Gestapo, but you can find time to tell Hillary her voice isn't wanted.

You ignored Cassandra as she begged and pleaded with you to listen, but she carries all the blame for your closed hearts and minds. And us, those who shared in her warnings and now feel the brunt of the brutality, we're told that we had our shot and we wasted it. White men can make a president from a treasonous sexual predator who dreams of being a half-wit, and we ask what they want and need.

But POC, women, urban voters who are responsible for 2/3 of the American economy? We should shut up and go home. No one wants us here. It's very clear that the storytellers of this age are interested in protecting the narrative of white-dominated Americana. That it's a myth, a cruel one devised to obscure crimes of blood and death that cannot be absolved, is precisely why it's so beloved. And anything that would puncture that myth, or their gutless, cretinous protection of it, must be assaulted and destroyed.

Hillary is speaking about what it felt to be on the ramming end of that myth. She's speaking *our* truth, the one of her coalition. She's taking on the very narratives that people are using to shield themselves from their ignorance and poor judgment. And she's reminding us that likeability is a damn lie. You never would have liked her no matter what she did because she challenged you.
Just as we, the coalition, challenge what priorities should be at the forefront of politics and what America looks and sounds like. You want us to go away. You want us to internalize her loss as our inferiority. You want our silence, our return to the back. We will not return. Neither will she. We deserved to win that election; we deserve her Presidency; we deserve *your* silence. You, who downplayed white supremacists. You, who accepted Trump's lies and stupidity. You, who would accept our debasement.

It is your fault that she's got the time to write a book instead of leading our nation. You're going to listen to us now, damn it. And maybe, mercifully, there will be the self-awareness to accept your portion of culpability and double your portion of silence. /fin”

“Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or soften the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.”-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

1st Amendment - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.