The American voter’s capacity for self-delusion is pretty impressive. If you thought Trump was anything other than a lewd, low-minded grifter whose only talent is self-promotion, you were simply fooling yourself. We have known that Trump is a lewd, low-minded, self-promoting grifter since 1985 or so.
Over the last few months I’ve been watching on Facebook as my left-leaning friends and relatives who started off hating Clinton as a soulless corporate shill, warmonger, and phony feminist, talk themselves into supporting her by means of memes and shared Vox articles, another exercise in self-delusion. Clinton is what she always was, a greedy, grasping, mean, crooked old machine hack politician for whom lying is second nature and whose only political achievement of note was the systematic public humiliation of women who accused her seedy husband of sexual assault and rape.
I’ve been reading a few Trump supporters who claim to know full well that he is a fool and a fairly bad man but support him anyway because they hate Clinton.
I haven’t read any Clinton supporters who will admit to themselves that Clinton is a rape-enabler. All you ever hear from them is constant, embarrassing apologetics about how she isn’t really as corrupt and evil as we know she is.
The American voter’s capacity for hypocrisy is about the same as his capacity for self-delusion. People condemn Trump for claiming to behave like Bill Clinton, as an excuse to vote for Bill Clinton’s enabler.
Meanwhile, the same people who said Bill Clinton was unfit for office are now lecturing us that the Bible tells us not to judge others. Left-leaning Evangelicals (yes, they exist, usually in official church positions) used to make the exact same argument for Clinton as if we were deciding whether or not to admit a man to heaven, not deciding whether or not he was a fit public employee.
The driver of hypocrisy and self-delusion is the lust for power, and political power is not about doing good – that too is a lie – but the power to punish and destroy, and hopefully get rich along the way.
Lust for power is the unspoken (and sometimes spoken) belief that our side has the right to humiliate other side and exact rents from them by virtue of our education, class, moral superiority, race, or (nowadays) our historical and quite possibly fictitious victimhood. We are True Americans, or The Middle Class, or The Working Man. We are Those Who Have Vaginas and The Oppressed. We are Conservative Christians or Atheists Who Alone Think Freely. We laugh with John Oliver and John Stewart and never miss House of Cards or Game of Thrones and catch all the right TV shows, because TV makes you soooo fucking smart and gives you all the knowledge you need to run a nation of 330 million people.
Lust for power is why politically correct speech is defined not by what someone says, but by who says it. It is why an off-color joke by a black Clarence Thomas is a reason for public humiliation while sexual assault by white Bill Clinton is to be excused, or sexual assault is a reason to vote against Hillary but not a reason to vote against Trump.
You can only start to be an honest human being when you give up the desire to rule.
Truth and Tolerance 
This mess is horrible,like watching a trainwreck in slow motion, but I cannot take my eyes away.
It’s totally tragic and darkly humorous, but Trump could and has denied the need for salvation, and he could well begin to eat puppies on live television, and we would be willing to over look those flaws, but he has now taken it too far, he has now revealed the ultimate sin, that he actually lusts after beautiful women, but worse, so much worse, many of those women respond positively, apparently sexually drawn to his sloppy hair piece and his wealth and fame.
So Trump has now committed sexual assault, at least in the realm of ideas, at least in his own mind, against imaginary victims that do not yet exist. I am uncertain where this little melodrama will take us, but this criminality shall not stand, I tell you, we are now indignant and outraged, because while selling our souls to this adulteress man is all well and good, we did not realize that he would be literally claiming to have the power to seduce our real life wives in ways only a billionaire can.
What a sordid affair, and I say that with all dark gallows humor.
We’ll live.
So you think they’re on par? Equals? Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump? Equivalent?
The self delusion of their supporters is more or less equivalent. Each candidate is, to me, disqualified for different reasons.
In the case of their supporters, it’s certainly true; but in regards to the candidates themselves, not quite. Mrs. Clinton has been one of the most scrutinized public figures in modern history. Everything she’s ever done at work, in business and in private has been analyzed- and the only case in which her opponents were able to prove a misdeed was regarding how she handled classified information. And it turns out other secretaries of state, including Powell, were just as careless.
As I see it Clinton is in the same league as other politically influential families in America. The Bushes, Kennedys etc. They all have some seriously questionable episodes, but at the same time they have a sense of public service. That’s what I think has gone missing from the political scene. Politicians seem to be all about their egos, above and beyond anything else. From Sarkozy to Corbyn to Trump.
Other sec.s were not equally careless, if you can define setting an insecure server in your bathroom and doing all your business on it in order to avoid oversight as “careless”.
Publicly humiliating women who credibly accuse a man of sexual assault and rape is evil.
Big difference between the Kennedys / Bushes etc and the Clintons: the former two families were filthy rich, then they got into politics. The Clintons got into politics, and made themselves filthy rich. Who is serving whom?
You don’t honestly think the email thing is that serious, do you? I’m pretty sure that sort of thing goes on all the time. I see it more as a technical crime. Like today I was walking by a nice plant on the street and I took a branch to propagate it. Technically it’s theft, but nothing bad actually happened.
As for her husband’s sex life, I don’t know what I would have done had I been in her position. I think one wants to believe the person they’re married to isn’t capable of assault. I imagine my reaction to such a thing would probably be rather hostile.
And you’re right, the Clinton’s have made money after getting into politics, but they also seem to have a sense of service. Compare what their foundation does to Trump’s foundation. Say what you want about them, but the Clinton foundation gets very high ratings from the watchdogs.
It is serious: it is exposing sensitive information and people lose their jobs over it or face prosecution.
The Trump foundation lets Trump be generous with other people’s money, the Clinton foundation is a slush fund for the Clinton family. Both are odious.
So you mean something bad could have happened although there’s no evidence to prove it did?
And are you questioning the charity watchdog rates on how much of a charity’s money actually ends up being used for charity?
So being highly irresponsible with government documents in order to evade oversight and knowing damn well it is a crime is OK because there still no evidence that they were hacked?
Ordinary government employees go to jail for that sort of thing, this one didn’t because the FBI is not going to indict their future boss.
I’m unaware of charity watchdog ratings. But if your main job is running a charity and you are filthy rich there is a problem.