The Nightly Show on Hillary BLM.

[tblue37]

22. A site with interesting analyses of body language by an expert:

bodylanguage success.com

As a severely hearing-impaired person, I rely heavily on body language to understand people. I often watch TV and videos with no sound if I don't have good closed captioning or my hearing aids to help me understand the words. People would see and understand a lot if they would watch w/o sound sometimes. You can see that what people say does not always match what their body language and facial expressions are expressing.

Hillary is an alpha. She is extraordinarily smart and talented. She has been in dominant roles her whole life, and she is accustomed to being deferred to by underlings. She is also used to being admired by crowds of strangers, and everything I have read indicates that she is also dearly loved by those who get close to her. Bill is a natural politician, and people love his public persona, but most of what I have read about him suggests that Hillary is the one who is actually warm and caring--and also that she is much more committed to liberal principles than he is.

But she is not a natural performer like Bill, not a natural politician. She's a brilliant, talented wonk. He is, too, but his wonkishness and interest in complex policy detail has mostly been a vehicle for his egoism, because he seems to be a black hole of emotional need, whereas her interest in such things is her real focus.

I used to be married to a brilliant man who had emotional needs like Bill's, caused by similar childhood sorrows and family circumstances. My ex's intellectual pursuits were a vehicle for career success and social status and acceptance, not something he loved for their own sake. Even though he (brilliantly!) taught language and literature in college, wrote a lot of books and articles, and has always presented as charming, both in class and in social situations, I never saw him read for pleasure. He read what he needed to read for his career specialty, as well as keeping up with current events so he could discuss them in social situations. If a book became the talk of the town, as it were, he would read it (not necessarily all of it, though) so he could join the coversations in social situations, but in his down time, when he was not interacting with friends, acquaintances, colleagues, or students, he watched TV--pretty much all the time. He was always either watching TV or working on books or articles. We had little interpersonal interaction at home. Bill always has reminded me of my ex.

I believe Hillary is the true liberal in the family. Unfortunately, though, I think her desire to be president has often led her to compromise her principles. She has taken votes and actions that she felt compelled to take in order to protect her political opportunities. The Clintons' coziness with big money probably serves several needs. Because of his childhood, Bill needs to be wealthy and to feel important, admired, and well-loved. He also desperately wants to be included by the "in-crowd," and Hillary is a devoted wife and mother, so making sure her family is well provided for and satisfied with life is probably high on her priority list.

But she also, unlike Bernie, feels certain that she needs a ginormous war chest and the backing of as many of the wealthiest, most powerful, and most influential people and groups, institutions, organizations, and corporations as she can get. She is a powerful woman and a strong, dominant personality, but unfortunately those traits tend to be viewed negatively in women, which she is all too well aware of.

I believe that she is driven not just by ambition (though she really does want to make history as the first woman president), but also by her conviction that she needs political power and position to effect liberal policies and programs needed to help those--especially women and children--who are marginalized and oppressed in this country and around the world.

In the film The Seduction of Joe Tynan, Alan Alda plays an idealistic politician who seeks power and position specifically because he wants to help those who need help. Unfortunately, though, he is forced along the way to make so many compromises to achieve politically powerful offices that by the time he has done so, he discovers that he has painted himself into a corner. Ostensibly he now has the power and influence to help those he wants to help, but in reality he can't do anything because those with less altruistic inclinations have sunk too many hooks into him.

(I think that happened to Obama, too, and that he is rushing now to accomplish as many of his original goals as he can since he no longer needs to keep his political options open. But I also think that becoming president so early in his national political career probably protected him from at least some of those compromises.)

At heart Hillary is a policy wonk and an alpha leader. She feels sure she knows what needs to be done, and it frustrates (and annoys) the heck out of her when people who have not put in the time to understand the issues, or who lack her sheer intellectual wattage for understanding such complex material, keep throwing obstacles in the way of getting things done (especially when their motivations are obviously corrupt and malicious, as is so often the case).

Unfortunately, no matter how hard she tries not to show it, her body language and her tone of voice often reveal how frustrated she is when she feels that people either cannot understand or deliberately refuse to acknowledge her good intentions. She truly wants to do good, and she is sure she knows what needs to be done, but everyone just keeps getting in her way and refusing to listen!

The exasperation in her voice and her face when she said, "With all due respect, what does it matter?" at the Benghazi committee hearing is a stark manifestation of what I am referring to. She tries hard to keep those feelings under the mask of shallow affability that we demand of our politicians (who are required to come across like game show hosts!), but that mask does not fit her well at all, so it keeps slipping and revealing how she really feels. I also think that the awkwardness and stiffness of her public persona results directly from having to keep her real feelings so tightly controlled all the time. Everyone who sees her and talks to her one-on-one (even people who are her political opponents) gushes about how charming and warm she is in person, how very different from the way she comes across on the political stage.

I see a certain amount of that frustration and annoyance in Bernie, too, of course, but unlike Hillary, he didn't have such lofty ambitions, so he didn't feel pressed to make as many compromises and missteps along the way, so he has much more freedom to say what he really means and what he really wants to do.

BTW, I don't mean any of this analysis as a slam against Hillary. I admire her and believe in her liberalism and good intentions, though I do think she has, at least to a significant degree, compromised herself into a corner the way Joe Tynan did in the movie.

As for her annoyance and frustration at those who through ignorance or malice keep getting in her way, I can't really fault her for that, either. Sure, it damages her politically, especially since women are expected to always make nice, but I often feel and react the same way when misunderstood or blocked in situations where I am certain that I know what needs to be done.