Look: There’s a solid chance what I’m about to write will freak you out. It concerns people abandoning all reason on the Internet. It contains references to topics and events that have reduced even the best of us to red-eyed, vein-popping, sputtering madness. So perhaps it would be best if we get all our freaking out done here, in these opening paragraphs.

Here goes: Oh, sweet Lord, good gravy, hold the phone, angels and ministers of grace defend us, Hillary Clinton was mean to Bernie Sanders again.

There! Done. Now, if your taste for freaking out hasn't yet been met, please proceed directly to Twitter.com, where your people will surely find you. In the meantime, the rest of us can talk about how the endless and somehow even more bitter sparring over the outcome of the 2016 Democratic Party primary is harmful to everyone involved — including, but not limited to, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, multifaceted public people who deserve far, far better than to be trapped in the amber of one presidential race for the rest of time.

Much of latest uproar concerns Hillary Clinton’s forthcoming book, What Happened. To be precise, it concerns a couple of brief excerpts, since the book itself does not go on sale until September 12. This week, Clinton supporters with advance copies tweeted out photos of passages where Clinton appears to blame Sanders for her loss in the general election.

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SWEET JESUS HILLARY HAS NO MERCY! God I love this. pic.twitter.com/FZomIui7t0 — Adam Pick A Senate Race Smith (@AdamJSmithGA) September 4, 2017

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Wow - "I am proud to be a Democrat and wish Bernie were, too." #ShePersisted pic.twitter.com/jSv7ilP5Nv — Tom Watson (@tomwatson) September 4, 2017

[Sanders] didn’t get into the race to make sure a Democrat won the White House, he got in to disrupt the Democratic Party,” Clinton writes. She claims that Sanders smeared her character, which “caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign.” She accuses Sanders of hollow one-upsmanship, leaving Clinton and her team to craft detailed policies while he promised a nebulous “more” he didn’t have a way to deliver: “We would propose a bold new infrastructure plan or an ambitious new apprenticeship for young people, and then Bernie would announce basically the same thing, but bigger.” Finally, she quoted a Facebook post which commented upon that dynamic by substituting the names of specific policies with the word “ponies.”

People really hated the part about the ponies.

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Comparing the right to affordable healthcare and education to "wanting a pony" tells you everything you need to know about Hillary Clinton. pic.twitter.com/Znnymxr2tR — Amir (@AmirAminiMD) September 5, 2017

So, so much, they hated the part about the ponies.

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can we talk about how condescending it is to use "pony" or "puppies and rainbows" to describe programs that every other rich country has? pic.twitter.com/qmz9vJQRnE — Natalie Shure (@nataliesurely) September 5, 2017

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Why she lost: She would have never fought for us -healthcare, education=ponies.

BTW, Chelsea had many ponies I bet https://t.co/6RtYBp1Ggz — RoseAnn DeMoro (@RoseAnnDeMoro) September 5, 2017

Bon Iver got involved! Bon Iver probably hates the ponies!

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Hillary coming out and saying Bernie disrupted the Democratic Party, when all she did was represent the Status Quo… infuriates me. #disrupt — blobtower (@blobtower) September 5, 2017

Also, David Sirota and noted political expert Justin Vernon of Bon Iver got mad at Hillary for making these points “this week,” raising the alarming possibility that at least one of them actually doesn’t know how books work. (They are typically written in advance.)

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Above all, for her to come out on a day like today, in a week like this and talk about this, is SO self-centered. Just like the dem party — blobtower (@blobtower) September 5, 2017

Yes, Clinton appears rough on Sanders, and it’s understandable that staunch Sanders supporters would be upset. It’s less understandable that we’re getting an avalanche of stories and cable news segments (for example, “What Hillary Clinton Still Doesn’t Understand About Bernie Sanders,” and then there's, “Hillary Clinton’s Subtly Savage Takedown of Bernie Sanders”) based on two out-of-context pages from a substantial book, which presumably devotes much of its word count to topics other than Bernie Sanders.

And we have to discuss the widespread mockery that former Clinton operative Peter Daou’s new website, Verritt, has engendered; a platform which he has described as one “that posts facts and quotes and centers Clinton voters,” and which Clinton herself has endorsed.

To do justice to Daou’s detractors, the content he describes as “fact” is pure opinion, much of it vehemently anti-Sanders. Tidbits like “Hillary Democrats are the heart and conscience of America…. it is a travesty that they are treated with such disdain and disrespect” are not “facts.” They’re encomiums to a failed presidential campaign that ended 10 months ago, and they’re frankly a little embarrassing, especially given that Verritt, a “news” site, appears to be devoid of original reporting.

Yet Daou is correct that many of his critics dislike him because he supported Hillary Clinton. And more, they seem to despise Daou in the same breath that they decry Hillary Clinton’s continued existence as a public figure: “Verrit is intended to defeat the ‘Hillary-hating frenzy’ and trumpet that ‘Hillary is not going to be erased,’” Gizmodo wrote. “Where’s the future in that?” Meanwhile, in a piece titled “Hillary Clinton Is Not A Movement,” VICE wondered “[w]hat unique crusade can Clinton, or Verrit, for that matter, lead? Anyone who was ‘with her’ has no shortage of new champions to look to. What does she still have to offer?” It’s precisely these not-so-subtle pleas for Hillary Clinton to disappear into the woods that drive Clinton partisans up the wall and make the — yes, bad — idea of a “pro-Clinton news source” seem attractive in the first place. So it’s no surprise that the #StillWithHer crowd is up in arms.

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Trump could start death camps and Tim Miller would still be tweeting stupid, sexist shit about Hillary Clinton & her supporters pic.twitter.com/cUpSNsniBf — molly (@isteintraum) September 5, 2017

And whether you’re one of them or not, it should be obvious there’s a double standard here. Plenty of media — from podcasts to magazines — has been created to cater to Bernie Sanders supporters’ sensibilities or to tell them what they want to hear. Plenty of Sanders supporters read Clinton in bad faith or mock Clinton’s points by hyperbolizing them beyond recognition. Their quips aren’t fundamentally different from Verritt and pony jokes. It’s just when they reinforce your worldview, they’re less likely to earn your scorn.

We’ve begged the woman to stop mincing words for decades, and now we’re dinging her for being rude.

And, of course, Sanders supporters have a reason to keep the primary debates and divisions alive, at least because some believe it will lead to a Sanders-led takeover of the Democratic Party and help elect more populist candidates within its ranks. Hillary Clinton supporters — and Hillary Clinton herself — may blame Bernie Sanders for Donald Trump’s win, but the blame is mutual. A mere four days after the election, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks recorded an eight-minute video entitled “Why We Still Have To Fight Hillary Supporters.” Not exactly the moment’s most pressing issue, Cenk.

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Why We Still Have to Fight Hillary Supporters https://t.co/6ru34U0z0q — Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) November 13, 2016

Finally, it is ridiculous to argue that Hillary Clinton should not be allowed to talk about her own presidential campaign or claim that she doesn’t have the right to sound angry. Clinton cannot “just go away;” she’s one of the most famous people on the planet, and the last time she tried to disappear, strangers with cameras flagged her down in grocery stores. Given that several high-profile books have already been written about what went wrong with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, she’s got every right to add her take to the pile. You may not agree with her, but if you were looking to read an anti-Hillary-Clinton take on the 2016 election, a book by Hillary Clinton is an odd place to start.

Yes, the sections about Sanders are harsh, even impolitic — but last I checked, Hillary Clinton was routinely raked over the coals for having too much of a filter. We’ve begged the woman to stop mincing words for decades, and now we’re dinging her for being rude. At a certain point, this endless list of complaints begins to sound less like we have specific objections to how Clinton uses her voice, and more like we object to her having a voice at all.

Hillary Clinton will be just fine. This is true both immediately — What Happened has shot to the top of the bestseller list — and in the longer term. She is an immensely compelling figure, especially if you’re interested in how we view gender and power; this would be true even if her career had ended after her time as First Lady, which was essentially a two-term drama entitled Oh, No, Second-Wave Feminism, or: Why Does That Shrew Want A Job? The fact that it didn’t stop — that she went on to serve in the Senate, to play a critical role in yet another presidential administration, to be the first female nominee of a major political party — is why we’ll probably be discussing and debating her for decades. Hillary Clinton has done as much as anyone to change our expectations of female candidacies and raise the ceiling for women in politics; she has earned her place in history. The Sanders base does themselves no favors by minimizing or denying that.

Clinton deserves to graduate into a phase of her career that concerns itself with the establishment and consolidation of her formidable legacy.

But it also makes sense that they treat her as Sanders’ opponent, given that Clinton supporters continue to act as if she’s running against him. It’s normal for Sanders to continue to act like a presidential candidate — pundits expect him to run in 2020; he essentially is one. In contrast, Clinton deserves to graduate into a phase of her career that concerns itself with the establishment and consolidation of her formidable legacy. She is of course entitled to reclaim disputed portions of her own narrative, which is what What Happened evidently seeks to do. But beyond that, we should talk about Hillary Clinton as someone who spent over three decades as one of the most prominent and powerful female politicians in America. Instead, her own supporters have conspired to keep her stuck on pause in the very last part of that career, an ugly and polarizing campaign that dragged her credibility and achievements through the mud for over a year.

Until some very vocal Democrats and Independents give up on the idea that Hillary Clinton’s continued public presence is an active threat to their ambitions, Clinton will never be given the respect she deserves. And Bernie Sanders, no matter how ardent his fans, will never win a Democratic Party primary, let alone a general election, unless he wins over Clinton’s voters — lots of Clinton’s voters. Beneath all the media hype and “momentum,” the raw numbers show that he lost that primary badly. The endless re-litigation of the battle between them isn’t just unpleasant. It’s actively sabotaging both politicians, and it makes it more likely that Democrats will carry a damaged, fractious, continually and viciously discordant base into 2018 and 2020, when all attention should be aimed on defeating Donald Trump. If you remember how that dynamic paid off last time around, now would be a very good time to freak out.

Sady Doyle Sady Doyle is the author of 'Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear ...

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