No. Seriously. Let that boiling pot of shit sink in.

***

I was still celebrating single digits on my birthday cakes when Bill Clinton first ran for president. It would be another twelve years before I began to pay any attention at all to what my school liked to call “current events.”

But I can look back. And I can see what happened to Bill’s wife — Hillary Rodham Clinton.

She was confident. She was assertive — no, aggressive. She had an opinion, and she wouldn’t mutter meek nothings to keep attention from being centered on her. She was a woman with a purpose, and she wanted to Do Something, not just sit back and pretend to be domestic (who really thinks that the First Lady is the one baking the brownies in the White House?).

And for it, she became the She-Devil. The haggard. The shrew. “The bitch” (verbatim).

I cannot think of a single public figure — one who is alive and still actively involved in the aforementioned “current events” — who is more hated, made out to be not sub- or super-human, but outright demonic.

I can see one in the making, though.

I guarantee you this. Give it four years: The word “Michelle” will be just as evocative as is the word “Hillary,” emphasis on the single name (no middle or surname). It will call to mind the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth.

Only this time, it’s not just a woman who doesn’t Know Her Place(tm).

It’s an Uppity Negro(tm).

And trust me: we will see it. From the minutemen to the Congressmen. We will see Michelle transformed. We will see racism, the most overt having a new purpose in her, and their hatred spreading upward, feeding the fear of the foreign in “normal” America. We will see the n word and the b word, both, harridan, shrill, and all the others. And we will see people who Aren’t A Racist(tm) but who just have a distaste for her, because [insert one: she's too pushy, she's taking over the White House, she wants to make a black supremacy and oppress the white race, she's posturing, she's calculating, she's in with the foreigners and will sell our souls to some scary middle eastern leader, she's cold-hearted, frigid, she wants to cut off our balls, she's manipulative, she's "playing the {insert one or more: gender, race} card," she doesn't mind her boundaries, or some past quote or issue that can be conveniently used to describe why she is so awful to avoid charges of bigtry -- etc.].

Here’s an exercise. Imagine every racist and sexist cliche you can think of. Bring the worst invective to mind, the things that would automatically make someone A Racist(tm) if they expressed it today.

Then think of a way to disguise that invective, to strip it of any direct reference to race or gender. Rationalize.

Then commit that thought to memory.

Because you’re going to hear all those rationalizations in the coming years.

I guarantee it.

(image via, via. white feminists: read both posts.)

ETA: Check this out. And keep it in mind as the campaign goes on…