Ah, to hear the lamentations of their women!

And also the lamentations of their women-like men.

Spiked's Brendan O'Neill has a marvelous roundup in the libertarian journal Reason of the hilarious hysteria of the liberal elites over the Nov. 8 election results:

Ever since Donald Trump won the presidential election, all eyes, and wringing hands, have been on the white blob who voted for him. These "loud, illiterate and credulous people," as a sap at Salon brands them, think on an "emotional level." Bill Moyers warned that ours is a "dark age of unreason," in which "low information" folks are lining up behind "The Trump Emotion Machine." Andrew Sullivan said Trump supporters relate to him as a "cult leader fused with the idea of the nation."

What's funny about this is not simply that it's the biggest chattering-class hissy fit of the 21st century so far — and chattering-class hissy fits are always funny. It's that whatever you think of Trump (I'm not a fan) or his supporters (I think they're mostly normal, good people), the fact is they've got nothing on the Clinton cult when it comes to creepy, pious worship of a politician.

As O'Neill explains:

…I mean the Hillary machine—the celebs and activists and hacks who were so devoted to getting her elected and who have spent the past week sobbing and moaning over her loss. These people exhibit cult-like behavior far more than any Trump cheerer I've come across.

Trump supporters view their man as a leader "fused with the idea of the nation"? Perhaps some do, but at least they don't see him as "light itself." That's how Clinton was described in the subhead of a piece for Lena Dunham's Lenny Letter. "Maybe [Clinton] is more than a president," gushed writer Virginia Heffernan. "Maybe she is an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself," Nothing this nutty has been said by any of Trump's media fanboys.

"Hillary is Athena," Heffernan continued, adding that "Hillary did everything right in this campaign… She cannot be faulted, criticized, or analyzed for even one more second."

There's more:

As with all saints and prophets, all human manifestations of light itself, the problem is never with them, but with us. We mortals are not worthy of Hillary. "Hillary didn't fail us, we failed her," asserted a writer for the Guardian. The press, and by extension the rest of us, "crucified her," claimed someone at Bustle. …

All that stuff about her emails and Libya was pseudo-scandal, inventions of her aspiring slayers, they told us again and again and again….

Then there was the reaction to Clinton's loss. It just wasn't normal chattering-class behavior. Of course we expect weeping, wailing videos from the likes of Miley Cyrus and Perez Hilton about how Clinton had been robbed of her moment of glory; that's what celebs do these days. But in the media, too, there was hysteria.

"'I feel hated,' I tell my husband, sobbing in front of the TV in my yoga pants and Hillary sweatshirt, holding my bare neck," said a feminist in the Guardian. Crying was a major theme. A British feminist recalled all the "Clinton-related crying" she had done: "I've cried at the pantsuit flashmob, your Saturday Night Live appearance, and sometimes just while watching the debates."…

Then there was Lena Dunham, who came out in hives—actual hives—when she heard Clinton had lost.

O'Neill points out–quite correctly–that America's voters saw right through "St. Hillary" and the "new secular religion of hollow progressiveness" that she represented. But that's not all of it. For some inexplicable reason–or perhaps a highly explicable reason linked to the DNC's heavy machinery–the liberal establishment placed all its eggs into a basket with a lot of holes relating to character, competence, and just plan political attractiveness. Voters rejected Hillary Clinton not just because they didn't see her as a secular messiah but also because they saw her as someone they didn't like. The Democrats needed to pick a candidate with less baggage, a candidate whose sole justification for running for the presidency seemed to be her own feeling that it was "her turn." Choose smarter, liberal women and men, and next time around there may be fewer lamentations.