Hi everyone! (all three of you reading this article) This week I am responding to an old Odyssey article “Who are Hillary’s “Deplorables”? You may have read it, you may have not, it was about as convincing as this.

So I can't imagine that you did read it. But you probably should so here it is: Who Are Hillary's Deplorables?

Let’s start with the definition of the word at the center of this problematic article: 'Deplorable'. The Merriam-Webster dictionary, the gate keepers of the English language, define the word as: “Very bad in a way that causes shock, fear or disgust…deserving censure or contempt” OK good, so it’s clear to see that deplorable actions are the type of things you wouldn’t do in front of your grandma, unless your grandma is anything like this.

Now that we have the word covered, let’s move on to who said it and the context in which it was uttered. On September 9 Hillary Clinton was speaking at the “LGBT for Hillary Gala” in New York City, championing her “special commitment” to the LGBT community. (Yes, I know, she has flip flopped on the issue of gay rights throughout her career, this presidential election is a true dumpster fire, and in my humble opinion we’re better off all evacuating the country, leaving Clinton and Trump behind to fight to the death while we can come back and try this whole thing again in four years). Clinton did the easy thing in her speech and launched a series of ad-hominem attacks against Trump. Using Trump’s obscene tweet history as a staging area, she attacked some of his supporters. She called half of them deplorables. In fact, here’s the quote: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Drumpf's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that.” *gasp*

Let’s break this down, obviously not half of his supporters are deplorable, she even prefaced that by admitting that she was being “grossly generalistic” and in the art of the argument that is the oral equivalent of using a freaking turn signal, she straight up said, I’ll be using a hyperbole now. Despite this, people are still losing their minds. But it’s a freaking hyperbole people.

Now, the author of the article in question seems to take offense with Clinton calling half of Trump’s supporters deplorable, conflating their actions with their socio-economic class. Clinton was not calling blue collar workers deplorable. No, she was calling the actions of certain supporters deplorable. A comprehensive list of violence at Trump rallies can be found here (yes there are negative actions taken by anti-Trump protesters too, they’re deplorable too, get over it).

Regarding their actions, to cherry pick a few, shouting “sieg heil” and “light the motherfucker on fire” is what we would regard as an action deserving contempt. Right? Punching, kicking, and choking someone is not something you would do in front of grandma. Correct? Sucker punching an individual who is being escorted out of an arena is something that causes disgust. Yeah? If you answered yes to all of those, congratulations you scored 100%! If you got 0% stop reading this article, you can’t be saved, go play No Man’s Sky and perhaps find a new planet to populate.

You guys still with me? So we can see that yeah, a lot of Trump’s supporters have carried out deplorable actions, which in turn make them deplorable, as actions speak louder than words. So this leads us to the conclusion that, given it was a hyperbole, Hillary Clinton was pretty justified in her statement. Now whether or not it was a smart move can now be questioned. And the answer is: No, no it was not a smart move.

ANYWAY now that we have established who the deplorables are and what makes them deplorable, let us move on to the author’s other claims in the article in question. Would Clinton be without food? Well my grandfather was a farmer, and outside of the boxing ring never attacked anyone like Trump's supporters have, so yeah she’d probably have food because not all farmers follow the description of the deplorable individuals given above. Would she be without electricity? Yeah I’d freaking hope that not all electricians would conduct (pardon the pun) themselves so poorly. Would she be living in her mansions? Let’s be honest, even if all construction workers were as vile as the people in the above list (spoiler alert, they’re not) she could still pay a non-construction worker enough money to learn how to build a house.

The important take away here is that it was a hyperbole, by definition a gross exaggeration, and not half of Trump’s supporters are deplorable, but there has been enough violence and chaos at his rallies that it’s a pretty appropriate hyperbole. Additionally, she’s not attacking blue collar workers, she’s attacking those barbarians who thought it appropriate to resurrect notions of the NSDAP and Jim Crow. Jam your hype, she’s trash talking people who did disgusting things.