TRUMP

196 ANATOMY OF A MONSTROSITY
Heffernan’s reaction, while unusually extreme, showed the general
direction of the reaction among Clinton supporters after the election:
away from, rather than toward, self-examination. The election did not
mean that one should figure out how Democrats could have acted differently,
or whether it was a mistake to run the kind of candidate they
had run. Instead, it was an excuse to double down: to insist that if the
Democrats had lost, it had not been because of anything they did, but
because they were the victims of external forces beyond their control.
For Heffernan, Clinton supporters should not have “reasoned with
anyone.” Instead, they should write “hagiographies” about Clinton, i.e.
refuse to acknowledge any single fact about Clinton that might undermine
the conception of Clinton as “light itself.” That means dismissing
every single one of the reasons that progressives might have for not caring
for Clinton (e.g. Haiti, 614 Libya, 615 Iraq, 616 Wall Street 617 ), as well as
every legitimate reason why voters more broadly might not have liked
her (e.g. an FBI investigation, promising to shut down mines, pretending
their problems didn’t exist, calling them all deplorables).
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Liberal messaging hadn’t gotten any better after the election,
either. Confirming every possible stereotype Trump voters may have
held about out-of-touch elites, Meryl Streep used the opportunity
of the Golden Globes award ceremony to deliver a broadside against
Trump. Streep insisted that her fellow Hollywood royalty were “most
vilified segments in American society right now” (the scores of young
black men in America’s prisons might object to the idea that the stars of
blockbuster films are the most disdained and despised of demographics).
She dwelled on Trump’s impersonation of a disabled New York Times
reporter and declared that without Hollywood, “you’ll have nothing to
watch but football and mixed martial arts… which are not the arts.” 618
It was a moment perfectly encapsulating every misguided aspect of