Of all the things we've learned from the flood of Hillary Clinton-related emails dumped on the web by WikiLeaks, one theme stands out: the Clinton campaign's shocking disregard, bordering on open contempt, for the very people whose votes they seek.
It's clear that disdain for average people seems to be a feature of modern American progressive leftism. They see the mass of Americans — particularly those who don't live in the elite high-income, information-economy enclaves on both coasts — as little more than sheep to be herded in the right ideological and political direction.
At times, this has taken the form of open mocking of some Americans — such as when Hillary Clinton said that half of Trump's supporters were a "basket of deplorables" who were "irredeemable" for any political purposes. Or when President Obama described small-town Americans as those who, when upset, "get bitter ... (and) cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
As the most recent trove of WikiLeaks emails from Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta's account shows, they'll pander for your vote, but don't ever think they respect you — or really even want your opinion.
Get instant access to exclusive stock lists and powerful tools on Investors.com. Try us free for 4 weeks.
And when it comes to religion, Catholics, Jews and evangelicals in particular seem to invoke their ire and ridicule. But never fear — they also dislike Southerners, "coal people," Latinos, Bernie Sanders followers, and others as well. Talk about diversity.
The emails taken from Podesta's account show a surprising amount of vitriol and anger toward foes and even friends. Sen. Bernie Sanders' followers are called "self-righteous whiners" in one exchange, for instance, while Hispanic leaders were described as "needy Latinos."
In one exchange, Hillary Clinton's campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri swapped emails with Senior Fellow John Halpin at the far-left Center for American Progress (CAP), founded by Podesta. The topic was Catholics, but the discussion wasn't genteel.
They describe the conservative movement as being dominated by "powerful elements" within the Catholic Church, a bit of religious paranoia that should serve as a warning to the church if Hillary is elected.
"It's an amazing bastardization of the faith," writes Halpin, in one email. "They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backward gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy."
Palmieri responds: "I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn't understand if they became evangelicals."
Do they realize that Catholics have given half or more of their votes to Democrats in each presidential election going back to 1988?
But sneering at religion wasn't the half of it.
Podesta also had an exchange with Neera Tanden, CAP's president, about Southerners and the Miss America beauty pageant.
"Do you think it's weird that of the 15 finalists in Miss America, 10 come from the 11 states of the CSA (Confederate States of America)?" Podesta asks.
"Not at all," replies Tanden in a September 2015 email chain, "I would imagine the only people who watch it are from the confederacy and by now they know that so they've rigged the thing in their honor." Somebody needs to tell Tanden and Podesta that the "confederacy" no longer exists — and hasn't for 150 years.
Donald Trump has often said that Democrats take minority votes — in particular, blacks and Latinos — for granted. That's pretty clear from an Aug. 15, 2015, strategy memo whose subject line said: "Needy Latinos and 1 easy call," which refers to Podesta convincing New Mexico's governor, Bill Richardson, and other key Hispanic Democrats to support Hillary.
We wish that were all. But Hillary's closest aide, Huma Abedin, whose family has deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, in one email expressed her disdain for American Jews, and even urged Bill Clinton not to speak to a meeting of the centrist, pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Council, saying, "u really want to consider sending him into that crowd?"
That crowd? On average, since 1960, Jewish voters have cast 73% of their presidential votes for Democrats.
Of course, all of this racial, religious and class talk by so-called progressives should be no surprise.
While people like President Obama, Hillary Clinton and their legions of aides today talk about "change" and "progress," their actual beliefs hearken back to the earliest days of progressivism at the start of the 20th century.
Then, Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt and others pushed the notion that average people were too contemptibly ignorant to manage their own lives. What average Americans needed, progressives said, was a cadre of brilliant technocrats — hand-picked by the progressive elite, of course — to manage their lives for them.
"In other words, the government — politicians, bureaucrats and judges — are to intervene, second-guess and pick winners and losers in a complex economic process of which they are often uninformed, if not misinformed, and a process in which they pay no price for being wrong, regardless of how high a price will be paid by the economy," wrote economist and philosopher Thomas Sowell in a piece on progressivism's authoritarian vision.
Exactly. And that has been the progressive dream ever since. It shows in their contempt for those whom they would govern.
Recent Blue Posts
Season of Discovery Hotfixes - 23 April
Season of Discovery Hotfixes - April 23
AI-generated Fan Art Megathread - Create and share your character!
MMO-Champion
Recent Forum Posts
Originally Posted by sarahtasher
