“What A Waste of Brains.”

Really?! Well…fuck you!

Following the 2004 Presidential Election, I was devastated after John Kerry’s loss to George W. Bush. This was less about any emotional attachment to Kerry — and moreso regarding Bush’s dutiful ability to whip up the Religious Right into a salivating frenzy.

After all, as we were constantly told by the mainstream media: “Evangelicals are now getting to flex their muscles.”

We were also told that Hillary Clinton was “inevitable” as the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2008, and that she was the consensus savior for the Democratic Party as well as for liberalism and progressivism in America.

Of course, over the next few years, Barack Obama would complicate that sloppily-crafted narrative. But let’s back up to a point in time before Obama announced his own presidential run….

Clinging to “Conventional Wisdom”

On balance, I’d say I was less upset about the absence of a President Kerry than I was about the gains made by knuckle-dragging neocons and paleocons in 2004’s U.S. House and U.S. Senate races. The threat of fascism that exists today began first showing its claws eighteen years ago. Or, as my then-frenemy Chris gloated:

“We’re almost at sixty seats.”

Meanwhile, the media framed New York’s then-U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton as the perfect “Goldilocks”-style candidate: skillfully balancing liberalism with centrism, shrewd in the words she chose when communicating, a deep listener — and, apparently, the only woman in the entire universe with “a realistic shot” of becoming President.

While I didn’t loathe Clinton as the “Feminazi” caricature that Rush Limbaugh made her out to be…I also saw through the “liberal crusader” mantle that her worshippers were trying to create and maintain on her behalf.

I viewed Clinton as a fairly competent senator, but someone who didn’t really go above-and-beyond her colleagues in terms of legislative solutions. I think the lore of her infallibility was driven by two main factors…

First, many people wanted a woman elected to the White House. Clinton had been framed as their default option.

Secondly, from a psychological vantage point, certain rank-and-file Democrats wanted to find a way to sneak Bill Clinton back into the Oval Office (based on feelgood nostalgia from the 1990s).

Throughout 2005, I was trying to promote (and publicly “draft”) U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln (of Arkansas) as an alternative to the “hypothetically-inevitable” Hillary Clinton candidacy. I’ll admit, in hindsight, I was naïve: Lincoln herself would go on to completely derail her own political career leading up to the 2010 midterms.

But this was early-2005. George W. Bush, back then, was today’s equivalent of Donald Trump.

At one point, in early-September of that year, I went around emailing bloggers (and blog commenters) an article I’d slapped together that laid out my case for a Blanche Lincoln presidential run…while simultaneously describing the downticket losses that could result for their party with Hillary Clinton at the top of the ticket (and, ironically, the results of the 2016 General Election cycle — more than a decade later! — ended up vindicating my theory).

I did this out of a sense of desperation. I could see where the pro-Clinton media narrative was heading. Due to the lack of public influence I’ve wielded throughout my life, I felt utterly helpless to stop that moving train.

But many of the people whom I’d emailed were angry at my intrusion into their precious cyber-existences. Several of them wrote about me with icy and toxic levels of contempt.

One of them even went so far as to conduct a Google search perusing my past online activities. They apparently recognized my name from previous college op-eds I’d penned. They also noticed that I’d written and published fanfiction in the sci-fi genre.

To which they sneered about me, digitally:

“What a waste of brains.”

Alternative Solutions

Yes, it hurt. It’s one thing to criticize me because they were annoyed I’d sent them an unsolicited email message. But it’s another thing to paint my entire character and mindset as juvenile simply because I had an interest outside of politics (i.e., creative writing) that didn’t align 100% with how they individually felt I should have been using my time.

But it wasn’t just a matter of “hurt feelings,” on my part.

It was also rightful indignation.

It pissed me off. I believe what they were really objecting to was that I refused to identify as a loyal Yellow Dog Democrat. And I was challenging their “magic-bullet” blueprint to taking back the White House.

By refusing to digest the media’s veneration of Bill and Hillary Clinton as political deities — I was, apparently, by default, pushing the agendas of Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Falwell, and the entire Republican Party establishment.

I could also play the Coulda/Shoulda/Woulda game with myself. Maybe if I’d established a popular blog of my own, I could have laid out more persuasive arguments with greater frequency?

Except that blogging was fairly new, back then. There was no guidebook on how to use one’s blog to accumulate millions of readers (there still isn’t!).

Maybe if I’d invested in camera equipment and video-editing skills, I could have gained an early foothold on YouTube well before the social-influencing trend had taken off?

And it wasn’t like I was “Blanche-Lincoln-or-Bust.” There were several other Democrats whom I viewed as non-Clinton options for the 2008 Presidential Election: then-Governor Mark Warner (now a U.S. Senator) of Virginia; 2004 candidate General Wesley Clark; then-Governor Brad Henry of Oklahoma; and recently-retired U.S. Senator Bob Graham of Florida.

But, ultimately, none of these people probably would have been able to match the energy and excitement that freshman then-Senator Barack Obama (about whom I was also skeptical, as a presidential candidate) brought to the race.

Nor would have Hillary Clinton herself.

Protecting Privilege

Above all else, “What a waste of brains” was a passive-aggressive way of saying that I wasn’t being enough of a conformist for my ideas and opinions to matter.

A big part of this has been the sectarian privilege to which the Clintons and their ilk have clung, for decades, within the Democratic Party.

The fact that I am a centrist Independent has made me persona non grata amongst many Democrats (offline and online) ever since I began “getting political” at the age of ten.

I’m too populist and straight-shooting for Blue Dog and Third Way Democrats. They view me (and others who express similar sentiments to mine) as a loose cannon.

But I’m not “politically-correct” enough for the self-described “progressives” (those who would later come to embrace Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris — in different combinations, of course!). They’re upset that I’m not performatively flogging myself for having white privilege and male privilege — all while they take their own varying magnitudes of heterosexual privilege, beauty privilege, age privilege, neurotypical privilege, class privilege, wealth privilege, celebrity privilege, and/or religious privilege for granted.

Oh, and did I mention their sectarian privilege? Because Democrats are morally-superior upstanding citizens — and everyone else is trash.

That’s all okay.

These “wasted brains” are going to keep harping on solutions and new paradigms that, hopefully, upcoming generations of politicians won’t be so timid to embrace.

Let’s start with agri-sustainability and food security, shall we?