I lost a hero yesterday. Oprah Winfrey, in one of those typical sleazy, gaslighty mental feats of illusion that Clinton supporters have become famous for, told people who are having trouble bringing themselves to support Hillary that they don’t have to like the illicitly-nominated Democratic nominee, but they do have to vote for her.

“She’s not coming over to your house! You don’t have to like her,” I read my former soul sister say in this infernal Politico article to the sound of my heart ripping in half.

Like that’s the problem. I don’t support Hillary because she’s not the sort of person I’d want to have over for tea. It’s got nothing to do with her corporate cronyism, her consistently disastrous warmongering, the way she’s dragging America kicking and screaming into a military confrontation with a nuclear superpower, or the fact that her election will mark the official time of death of democracy in the United States. Nope! It’s that she’s not the sort of person I’d want to have over and watch reruns of Friends with on the couch.

Listen Oprah, you horrible, cruel, beautiful goddess of a woman, I would gleefully live with Hillary Clinton if it would stop her from becoming president. I would happily live as her roommate until whatever weird diseases she’ll inevitably succumb to get the better of her, if that would save my kids from having to grow up in a world where that woman is the Commander-in-Chief of the greatest military force on the planet. That was a nasty, manipulative lie you told your adoring fans with your silky smooth voice, and I’ll never forgive you for it.

Another good woman down.

Crap.

I’m getting so sick of this. Treating people who won’t support that evil woman like we’re the problem, when we’re the only ones with our eyes still open. And I’m not just talking about the people who’ve done their research and can conceptually articulate what a force of destruction she is, either. Even the everyday Americans who don’t have time for political obsession, but who are still in-tune enough with their primal intuition to know a predator when they see one, are beacons of light in the darkness, because that intuition is immune to the toxic manipulations and mind viruses the neoliberal think tank has been frantically trying to stuff into their heads. At least, as long as they trust that intuition more than they trust the people trying to convince them to abandon it.

But that’s precisely what Oprah was trying to do. She was addressing that “Ewww” feeling in our belly that she darn well knows is there because she obviously has it too, and trying to trick us into laughing it off and ignoring it.

“Oh, your animal body goes into fright mode whenever you hear her voice? That ain’t no thing.” After years and years of getting us to dig into our intuition and trust our guts, Oprah is now saying we should press “override” and vote for the woman that everything in our being screams “NO!” at.

That’s what all of those awful people are trying to do. The talking heads on the news, the fake comedians on Comedy Central and HBO, all these faux progressives acting like they’re somehow being rebellious and outspoken when all they’re doing is trying to gaslight Americans into abandoning their inner vision to prop up the Walmart/welfare system for the benefit of billionaires.

People who refuse to be bullied and manipulated into falling in line are not the problem, they’re the solution. The clear-eyed rebels are the only ones left with any hope of dragging us out of this mess, because everyone else is marching headlong into a more pervasively-bolstered corporate kleptocracy and a probable World War III. Despite all the deceptions being sown by Hillary’s goons in the corporate media, we’re the ones who’ve managed to plant our feet in the surging tsunami of deceit and begin collaborating with the basement dwellers, the Bernie-or-Busters, the visionaries, the mystics, the healers, the true artists, the Greens, the whistleblowers, the transparency advocates, and yes, even the “deplorable” victims of the Walmart economy on the political right, to bring the light of truth to the forefront of social consciousness.

We’re not going to stop, and we’re not going to fall in line. And in the end, we’re going to win. We’ve reached critical mass now, and the age-old power structures have been forced, in desperation, to extend themselves way too far into the light in order to keep things under control. What we’ve seen cannot be unseen, and we’re going to keep shining brighter and brighter and dragging all the structures of manipulation and control into the light to break the spell the rest of society has fallen under.

In the end, the machinations of oppression will be shrugged off like a heavy coat on a warm day. We won’t expect a thank you for our efforts, but hey. You’re welcome in advance.

[Featured Image by AP Photo/Stephen Chernin]