@snood,
Quote:Hillary supporters can't rationally be categorized as "worshipers". Trying to create that false image is ridiculous, and speaks of someone bitterly ax grinding.
That's an interesting rhetorical move, isn't it. I first began thinking about it when Limbaugh, eight years ago, began his snide smear on Obama as "The One". If we'll all recall, this arose out of an election rally where Obama said "
We are the ones we've been waiting for" (a line which has an earlier history in civil rights). What the line actually means is just about the exact opposite of what Limbaugh's smear tried to suggest.
What gives "worshippers" heft as a rhetorical tool is that it implies supporters are not making a rational choice. They are victims of a ecstatic state of mind (which, oddly, is quite OK when it happens in a sports arena with an evangelical lunatic screaming at the top of his/her voice).
And the deeply ironic aspect here is that no other political figure in US politics is as deified and mythologized as Ronald Reagan.