It’s the same old same old misogyny. Susan Faludi laid it all out in her 1991 book Backlash. The more women have gained, the more push-back there is from the forces ever arrayed against progress.

It’s the same old same old for Hillary. No other American politician has endured anywhere near the unrelenting vicious attacks heaped upon her day after day, year after year.

The July 20, 2016 Freakonomics podcast was about the gender gap. I was reminded (no surprise) that competence and assertiveness in men inspires confidence, and competence and assertiveness in women provokes dislike. In Hillary Clinton’s case, her competence and assertiveness has inspired a generation of hatred.

We have only to watch video of her 11-hour testimony before one of the multiple tax-payer funded Committees regarding Benghazi to see just how strong she has become as a result of those unrelenting attacks. She has been tempered. I don’t know if it will be enough to win her the presidency, but I hope so. Not only because Drumpf is such an embarrassment, but because I do believe she will have her LBJ moment when the White House is hers: she will cast off the cloak of expediency that so many of us think is the raiment of the selling of her soul, and reveal herself to be at heart a warrior for those of us who have little or no voice.

You go, Girl!

And while we’re on the subject of Benghazi, why does no one ever bring up the fact that the Republicans blocked requests for additional funding to bolster security at embassies in hostile areas such as Benghazi in Libya?

As for those emails, and the server in the basement: Colin Powell did the same thing.

I am weary of Republicans pretending that their garden variety misogyny is anything else. Can we please join the twenty-first century, and the rest of the civilized world?