Ship's Librarian

Anyone who grew up in the rural Midwest in the 1990s can tell you exactly why Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. It wasn't the Bernie Bros staying home, progressives voting for Jill Stein, or even Hillary's stupid choice to not make one more appeal to voters in the Rust Belt. It was Hillary herself, and her husband.

Seriously, one can't overstate just how hated they were and still are. The rightwing vitriol spouted by Rush Limbaugh and the conspiracy theories about the role they played in Vince Foster's suicide wormed their way into the rural Midwestern consciousness with an effectiveness that rivals today's social media-fueled disinformation—and lest we forget, this was at a time when one's family upgrading their dialup modem from 28k to 56k was a big deal. No amount of post-presidential comraderie with the Bushes or competency as Secretary of State was ever going to undo the damage done in those years, and Bill and Hillary never really attempted to adjust their public image to counteract it. It was so frustrating watching Hillary deal with the whole email server debacle; nothing about that server violated the law even if the optics were horrible, and yet she acted guilty, confirming rural Midwesterners' opinions of her and dooming us all to the madness that's followed.

Equally difficult to overstate is the glee within Evangelical circles when Bill's relationship with Monica Lewinsky came to light. His perceived lack of morals went on full display, giving Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and James Dobson ammunition to go on the attack, preaching in the media about how somebody who could do that was unqualified to be president, that the nation's leader must be a moral leader as well. Just thirteen in 1998, I didn't understand the particulars of the scandal, but I still trusted the word of religious authorities—if they deemed Clinton's behavior was unbecoming and warranted removal from office, then I accepted that. It wasn't a hard sell; I broke down crying on Election Night 1996 when Dole had already lost by my bedtime.

And you know what? I still find Clinton's actions reprehensible, just not for the religiously-tinged platitudes the Evangelicals used. His relationship with Lewinsky was an abuse of the power he held over her, and I despise it every time the Democratic Party still trots him out as an elder statesman. At the time, though, I was carried away on the tides of the Moral Majority's rhetoric, too young and naive to understand that they didn't really care about Clinton's behavior. If I knew then what I know now, I would've seen the punchlines at Lewinsky's expense as indications that it was never about morality.

No attention to subtlety is exactly necessary now. Evangelicals have thrown their full-throated support behind a bully that calls for his perceived enemies to be jailed and murdered, complains constantly about each wrong he thinks has been done against him, and has painted targets on the backs of women, the LGBTQ+ community, and immigrants. He is the embodiment of every single thing that Christ preached against, and yet they make excuses and allowances for his every flaw and failing.

Growing up Evangelical, my belief came as naturally as breathing air. The hypocrisy of the faith leaders who were supposed to be pointing the way took its time to sink in, but little by little it robbed me of the beauty and purity of that belief. They cared only about power and control, not my soul or anyone else's, and with their bully they've gotten exactly what they wanted. I'd like any of the people of faith I respected as a child who have been able to support him to tell me why, to give me a rationalization that isn't about how we're all sinners or that God works through weak vessels. Because I don't think I'll ever get over the betrayal of that child who only ever wanted to feel secure in Christ and was cast into the wilderness instead.