I don’t care for Hilary Clinton as a candidate for the U.S. Presidency for reasons I will shortly make clear, but I admire her attempt to overcome the male hogwash that has so long been part of our national life.
What sort of male hogwash? I sometimes try and realize the obstacles that the prejudices of pigheaded men have put in the path of Hillary from the beginning. In our national history, women have been consistently slighted, underrated and slandered. We have all heard the arguments. Women are not on an equal footing with our glorious males. A woman was worth only 3/5th of a man. (You can add up any way you wish, but the total remains the same.) Women were not made for strenuous mental or physical efforts. Women are childish, silly and shortsighted. A woman’s life is supposed to be trivial and easy going. Women cannot reason; women are not able to reflect. They are inferior to men in terms of things like fairness, honesty, conscientiousness, and insight. Women are mental myopics. Women don’t have original ideas. They get their ideas from men. Women are incapable of being objective. Women have a tendency to run away with their feelings. Women are guilty of perjury much more than men. Women are a stunted, narrow shouldered. Broad-hipped and short-legged breed. And even when women band together, they don’t command the mental power of men. A woman’s whole purpose in life is to propagate the race.
All of this is vile.
On the other hand to elect a woman to be president on the ground that she is a woman, strikes me as racist. We should vote for merit and not sex.
But to elect a woman to the Presidency merely because she is a woman, strikes me as a racist view.
Unscrupulousness as Policy
The want of any sort of moral principle or intellectual scruple is often the main engine that drives a candidate’s rampant desire to become a dominating public figure. The politicians who thirst and burn for distinction are very often commonplace in those areas sheltered from the public view. In fact, the inner characters of such leaders display their deficiencies by the very nature of what they yearn to have. The leader who wants to succeed at any price, like Hillary Clinton, is a slave of the concepts of Public Eminence, High Station, the Worship of Collective Human Power and Military Force. Such leaders hunger for fame in bold, proud letters; they hunger to see their names plastered atop every official building and every monument.
There are few things as ugly as this rampant self-worship. Under its gaze, ordinary life shrivels and diminishes. The vast universe contracts to a mere tawdry bauble kicked to and fro by contending rivals. Hillary has eyes only for those circumstances, facts and incidents that suit and confirm her own biases and which advance her own designs, however morally dubious they may be. Self-worship like hers is not blind in the least– her temperament, her disposition, her power of analysis, enables her to select people whose ideals and ambition and desires are similar to her own. A political leader estimates his or her allies based on their usefulness in furthering the leader’s designs and schemes. Think of the people who occupy high positions in her campaign: her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, or her deputy chiefs, Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan, loyalists all, all working to cover up the e-mail scandal, a scandal that clearly threatens Hillary’s viability as a candidate. Staffers like hers bend the rules until they break. One suspects that aanything or anyone that doesn’t serve Clinton’s appetite for public power is cast aside, belittled, scoffed at, undermined or marooned. A political leader like her, sees people as furniture, objects to be moved here, moved there, placed where they will do the leader the most good. A close supporter of a leader has no will or desires or designs of their own. They suspend such things in the hope that their subjugation will be generously rewarded. They accept that their purpose in life is to be used by someone greater, someone who will prove a generous giver of favors, advancement, money and prestige. In other words, their destiny is to be the tool of another’s more powerful and decided will.
Leaders like Hillary despise the minds of the people that they court. She sees her supporters as a means, not an end. Hillary coldly gauges their gullibility, their credulity and addiction to hearsay and vague, incomplete ideas of life and the trivial events as conveyed by the TV news. Unfortunately, her public has become receptive only to the obvious because they sadly lack the culture and knowledge and wit that would enable them to cross-examine and discredit the spurious things she asserts. This is why her fans applaud and approve whatever nonsense she utters. They are blank sheets to be written on.
The sad and inevitable fact is that members of any political party always end up firmly in the grip of its leader. Members of a crowd don’t dare to diverge from what its leader asserts. There is a kind of mental contagion that prompts them to support the self-proclaimed strong against the feeble and weak. The followers seem not realize that any Government is a kind of barter system, a vast connivance, an organized trading of favors in a rigged game. The strength of a party leader is not talent — it consists mainly of access to inside information. The leader knows when or where a big gain in support is coming and from what quarter, and who is going to deliver it. There are only a few choice spots open to the ambitious, but with the right backers and influence, you could be one of them. And of course, once a choice position was gained, its occupier will use it for the ruthless furtherance of his or her own personal interests. The Hillary followers know from the beginning which side is safe to back. They know who works the levers that set the whole machine in motion. If the party had performed its work efficiently, almost all the guesswork had been taken out, everyone figuring out a way to sell everyone to everybody.
Political campaigns clearly retail all sorts of hollow promises. The supporters of a leader forget that any party acts at its own peril. They may embrace the current promises, but the outcome is not preordained. Political alliances are a way to escape the perils of uncertainty which is why supporters work so frantically to elect their chiefs. The philosopher John Dewey observed that in most people, “…judgment and belief regarding actions to be performed can never attain more than a precarious probability.” In other words, any practical activity, domestic or foreign, deals with individualized and unique situations which are incapable of being duplicated, yet to a voter’s mind, faith in a leader is fundamentally connected with a desire for a certainty which shall be absolute and unshakeable. Yet history proves again and again, that any leader is brutally surprised by the unforeseen challenges that attend their triumph.
I believe that if Hillary is elected as President, she will become more domineering and unscrupulous. Her will is imperial. She is ambitious as Macbeth. She not only wants to rule, she wants to reign. One can only imagine how docile, obliging, suppliant, and weak her cabinet officials would be, and how quickly they would hand over any store of their own critical judgment and self-reliance to her. It is clear that Hillary suffers from a temperamental impatience which renders her more peremptory and shameless. She and Trump suffer from the same defects. They are brusque with inferiors because either they are tools, or, if not, they merely stand in their way. In Hillary’s case, her chief interest is her career and her family. She loves money, however it is obtained. Since her habitual thought aims at station and power and subjugation, such things as honor, conscience and humanity merely stand in her way.
Will her election change Hillary? “The designing knave may sometimes wear a visor to beguile but watch him narrowly, and you will detect him behind his mask,” Hazlitt said. Success will not act to change Hillary from a hard, unfeeling, insolence character and transform it into one of openness and generosity because of improved circumstances. Again, as Hazlitt noted, “A flat face doesn’t become an oval one or a pug nose into a Roman one” because you have acquired a new office. Successes endorses your usual way of thinking and doing. “Things won are done,” said Shakespeare
Hillary is at heart vulgar soul. She is never going to be convulsed by conscience. She does not want to be mild, just and beloved; in fact, she despises such things as weakness. She is immune from contrition. Nothing — no setback, no defeat, no attack, no annoyance or scandal is going to move her to relinquish her designs, to abandon her shady deals or odd connections. She embodies a narrow single track of combative will. A fixed pugnacity sits at the center of her nature.
It is deeply unfortunate that our political candidates never talk from the heart. They don’t unveil their deepest urges or traits. What they say is fashioned with a purpose – it doesn’t have to be true because its real purpose is to convince. Hillary would have us believe that the popular is the profound. The truth isn’t really true because in an election, it only needs to sound like the truth. One is prompted to wonder how much Hillary knows about the workings of her own mind. If Ambition erases the ability to have second thoughts, Success obliterates them entirely. Hillary’s desires may prove triumphant, but one suspects that they are founded on the corrupt, the greedy, the exploitive, the ruthless, and the unsound. Hillary reads the terrain of political conflict better than her rivals. But she is devoid of the ability to question herself.
Hillary touts her wide experience. She praises her powers of judgment because of that spacious experience. But having experience doesn’t make you smart, and the new leader has to have a mind free from stubborn prejudges if you want to achieve real insight. Only the gifts and capacities of the candidates mind, if they are excellent and outstanding, can they provide the ability to administer foreign policy. The standout qualities of Hillary as a leader is her immense, pitiless and stubborn will, a will that wants to carry the day, in spite of the fact that the triumph will bring unexpected dilemmas and perils. The key question that should be asked, has her experienced produced in her any strategic soundness? Look at Libya. Look at Iraq. The brazen hollowness of Hillary’s, "We can do it" attitude may sound brave and vigorous, but such an attitude can disguise her own incompetence and persistent defects of analysis. Banal slogans like “keeping the country safe, upending the Iran deal, snuggling closer to Israel, shows how little we have advanced in the debate over how to advance actual U.S. national interests versus our compulsion to impose democracy in foreign countries.
The gigantic and fatuous ocean of trite statements issued daily by the media, the unending tiresomeness about “the aspirations of the Iraqi people,” or “giving the Iraqis or Syrians democracy and a free market economy,” or “Give freedom to Syria’s opposition,” only make us gag. They numb the mind. The phrase “Syrian people,” used by U.S. politicians, is especially annoying because it is a species of theft, the infirm product of some mentally limping office-seeker who is laying claim to the authority to speak for millions of foreigners when in fact they know only a minute and obliging scatter of them. Frankly, the phrase “American people” is for weak-kneed and semi-literate phrase. The great poet Paul Valery once said that the only word that truly defined the phrase “the French people” was the word “mixture.” The latter word deflate a lot of grandeur from of the phrase, but it act to let the air out of common bombast. Deflating bombast is sorely needed in today’s world where so many shrill, tinsel voices often blare their loud rhetorical bugles while sitting on their high horses.
Indeed, Hillary has learned a lot from working n a man’s world, says my wife.
How is it that we “know” all this about HRC – and in such exquisite detail, please.
Hillary isn’t being elected for being a woman. Democratic voters despite their protests are basically the same as their Republican counterparts despite their protests to the contrary. Hillary is perceived as the legitimate claimant to the throne of the Democratic Party and is dominating among voters who likely voted for Bill in 1996. It’s not quite clear what the age break is, but Bernie is dominating among under 40 women. An 18 year old in 1996 will be 38 this year. 8 years ago, Obama dominated Hillary among women 30 and under. The “women” excuse much like “national debt” and “defense concerns” claims is an excuse that usually ends or alerts an argument. Hillary supporters like so many before them use the women card to avoid acknowledging their tribal loyalty.
In 1996 and 2000, African-American turn out was at all time lows, and despite Bill being framed as the first black President, African-Americans weren’t so loyal despite a relative skepticism of Obama. This is why black voters abandoned Clinton Inc. They weren’t loyal in the first place.
The women explanation is an excuse. The Hillary campaign hopes to peal off some low info voters and a few well to do morons who are worried about bucket lists not monthly bills. We tend to focus on women when discussing Democrats because the majority of Democratic voters are women. They are voting for Hillary because women by and large as shallow and deranged as men.
Plenty of the same young Sanders supporters would likely hyperventilate if you noted how like Hillary Obama is because they voted for Obama.
https://goo.gl/VfO3R5
I would have preferred Jim Webb. But since he is out, then Hill has my support in the caucus.
It is hardly a surprise that Richard is immune to Hillary’s charm – he’s not seeking an ambassadorship to some Ruritania in the sun. Amazing how many men around Washington claim to find her disarmingly endearing. I know 3 of them personally – each was promised the embassy in Prague (no sun, but charming).
For those who are still trying to figure out what a “caucus” is, here’s a primer from The ONION:
The votes cast in the IOWA caucuses on Monday night mark the official beginning of the 2016 election season, but the specifics of the state’s selection process can be confusing to voters who don’t live there. Here, The Onion answers the most common questions about how the Iowa caucuses work:
Q: What is a caucus?
A: A caucus is a system of voting for people who wish casting a ballot could be three hours longer and include being lectured to.
Q: How do caucuses work?
A: Local representatives from each presidential campaign make impassioned speeches about which corner of the Grace Lutheran basement voters should stand closest to.
Q: What’s the difference between a caucus and a primary?
A: In a primary, the presidential nominees are chosen by the 6 percent of eligible voters who bother to participate, while in a caucus, the nominees are chosen by the 2 percent of eligible voters who bother to participate.
Q: Why do the Iowa caucuses matter?
A: They provide the first real gauge of whether candidates have been worthwhile investments for corporate and individual megadonors.
Q: Who can attend the Iowa caucuses?
A: Registered party members Level 7 or higher.
Q: How many precincts are there?
A: There are 1,681 official precincts, though there are rumored to be thousands more off the books.
Q: How are winners determined?
A: At the end of the night, votes from all precincts are placed in a jar together, and whichever candidate comes closest to guessing the total number of votes is awarded the state’s delegates.
Q: How can I find my closest caucus location?
A: Place a child of hearty disposition upon the palisade where the woodcock nests. By dawnbreak, you shall have your answer.
Q: When do they start?
A: At the sound of my whistle.
Q: When will we know the winner?
A: Once all the voters have gone to bed, results will be tabulated and left under each constituent’s pillow for them to find in the morning.
Q: Will I have the opportunity to say “Aye” or “Nay”?
A: Oh, boy, get ready!
Q: How do I engage with other people at the caucus?
A: Just go right up and talk to them. No need to be shy; just say who you are and be yourself. You’ll do great!
“On the other hand to elect a woman to be president on the ground that she is a woman, strikes me as racist.”
WTF? Women and men are different races?
Sale neglected to mention that the biggest boost to HRC’s career was being married to a President, and that career-boosting marriage is more common for women than for men. Of course she put up with a lot of crap most wives wouldn’t in order to keep the marriage together. Maybe she had extraordinary loyalty or maybe she was making career decisions.
When I think about the debacles over Iraq, Libya, and Syria that Hillary was at least partly responsible for, a certain set of genitalia doesn’t provide much cover.
If your wife is right (and she’s on to something), then all the candidates suffer from the vile conditions you describe. Ne C’est Pas?
Is this interpretation of her personality based on actual experience of interactions? I am stymied trying make any estimate. All I find so far is the results of 25 years of serious money dedicated to making her look bad. Lots of impressions, but the facts that can be known usually turn out to be trivial (or just wrong). Recently Katherine Parker wrote a Washington Post column about Hillary’s lying, but came up with only two trivial examples. If there are indictments I will be interested. The state department says the emails in question contains information that was not classified at the time they were sent. Sounds weird, but I’ve been inside that system and have no respect at all for it. To the point that this actually seems plausible to me.
Anyway, I will be interested if you can attach some actual detail to these impressions.
Edith Gault [Wilson’s second wife] ran the country for over two years IMO!
I confess to wasting time clicking through some of those “25 best ____” lists Yahoo frequently posts.
The most recent list was the 25 most powerful (or wealthy — pretty much the same thing) women in the world.
Most striking thing that a majority of the listed women had in common was that they were widows of, or ex-wives of, or children of, very powerful men. I don’t think there was one instance of a Most Powerful Woman having created the source of her wealth and power.
One of the talking heads on the Sunday gabfests had a rare moment of insight: younger women are not supporting Hillary; older women support HRC **because she is a woman and they want to see the first woman president.**
The insight was that younger women are not aware that (we) older women have come through several enormous cultural changes. My daughter-in-law has an advanced degree and is director of a second-tier corporation and teaches at a university; she’s not yet 35. When I was her age and scored high in maths I was told by my school guidance counselor that “educating a woman is a waste of time.” College was about getting an MRS. I was not able to hold my own checking account, I could not buy a house (get a mortgage) in my own name. When I was her age I applied for a job at Naval Academy and was turned down because “you are of child-bearing age and will likely have children ….” In the next interview I was asked, “Do you plan to have children?” I lied. I got the job. I also got pregnant within a few months and was terminated. If that happened today — well, it would not happen today.
Those were the facts of women’s lives a very few years ago. They are alien to the experience of the last two +- generations of women in USA.
Interesting. Thank you for writing this Mr. Sale.
I can’t claim to have any insight into the working of H. Clinton’s mind, but I think observing her behavior gives generous indication of what makes her tick. Clinton has been a participant in more than a decade’s worth of pooch-screwery in foreign policy, which in any objective person would produce some self-reflection, yet she enthusiastically jumps onto the “confront Russia” bandwagon. The very best interpretation of Clinton’s continued brainless hawkishness is that she reads the mood of the electorate as belligerent and is happy to slip a harness on that temper if it propels her to the White House. Even this spin says awful things about her character, given the consequences the US (and the World) has paid for the strategic blunders of this century.
I think you are right, Mr. Sale, I don’t think becoming President will change Hillary’s mental calculus one iota.
Thirdeye – you write “Of course she put up with a lot of crap most wives wouldn’t in order to keep the marriage together. Maybe she had extraordinary loyalty or maybe she was making career decisions.”
I believe the latter. Evidence in favor of it comes from an account of Bill and Hillary’s life even BEFORE they were married, quoting a now-deceased witness who fell in love with Bill while working on his first campaign, for Attorney General of Arkansas, and who was dealt with by Hillary. Did things actually happen this way? I find it plausible. Here are the Daily Mail’s bullet points and a link to the article.
===================================================================
the experiences of Marla Crider, a rival for Bill’s affections at a time prior to the Clintons’ marriage – from the Daily Mail of 19 January 2016
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3396589/Anonymous-phone-calls-fears-stalking-veiled-threats-power-hungry-Hillary-torpedoed-torrid-affair-Bill-Clinton-21-year-old-campaign-worker-threatened-destroy-master-plan-president.html
EXCLUSIVE: Anonymous phone calls, fears of stalking and veiled threats: How power-hungry Hillary torpedoed the torrid affair between Bill Clinton and 21-year-old campaign worker that threatened to destroy her master plan to become president
Long before the ‘bimbo eruptions’ and Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton cheated on Hillary with university student Marla Crider
Crider worked on Bill’s first political campaign in 1974 and they fell hard for each other
In an explosive interview, she told author Jerry Oppenheimer: ‘Hillary was like a cat, marking her territory’
Bill was crazy about Crider, but told her ‘[Hillary] gets me started, kicks my butt, and makes me do the things I’ve got to do’
When Hillary learned of their affair things turned ugly
Crider saw a letter Hillary wrote to Bill saying: ‘I know all your little girls are around there…if that’s what it is, you will outgrow this’
Hillary and Bill had a ‘secret pact’ for their future that one day he, and later she, would be elected president
The first two paragraphs are duplicated.
I think your observations also applies to women in politics as well to a large extent.
I think Margaret Thatcher was the exception that proves the point.
You are exactly right. This analysis could be applied to any of the candidates.
you are crediting Jerry Oppenheimer quotes of some quondam bimbo’s near death bed locker room-equivalent reminiscences of hosing around with a now famous person back in the day when she was an Arkansas beauty queen?
Babak – Margaret married the successful millionaire Denis Thatcher – the route to all sorts of connections. She fitted Richard’s profile – pitiless and stubborn with no ability to question herself, and no empathy to understand others.
Thank you! I remember all of these and more. I am not a Hillary supporter but my reasons are not that she didn’t leave her womanizing husband. I think she is smart, hard working, tough, and shrewd and that she understands politics and government. I think she is certainly qualified for the presidency for those reasons – not because she is a woman. I also think she would be more of the same but way better than George W. and better than Obama. Her hawkish stances worry me. However, I would vote for her before I would vote for Cruz for whatever that is worth.
Again, thanks for your comment.
Why, exactly? Seeing as James Webb and Hillary Clinton have exactly nothing in common? I don’t know if one could find two more polar opposites in American politics today.
JM –
Well they are both sane which is saying a lot compared to Cruz and Trump. I believe they would both work for the benefit of the American people. What are my other choices? Sanders’ pie-in-the-sky pitch will never pass congress, and many of his devotees are too radical for me. They smack of some of the same fanaticism as Nuland, Samantha Power, and some other extremists back in Dubya’s administration
O’Malley appears to be only running for Vice.
In the other party, the only one I would consider would be Kasich. Paul sounds good but his Libertarianism is a nogo. The rest are a pack of raving morons IMHO.
Have you thought about an editor?
The tie in Iowa probably means no Presidency for HRC or Bernie. Only the MSM will try and make primaries before Super Tuesday in early March important. And IMO Bloomberg will join the race.
There was a big hunt to find such tales. Find any links really, sex, corruption, drugs, murder, info via bought troopers…
I don’t get over Lewinsky’s dress. Ever, I guess. To be kept as trophy?
The mails may be a bit different though.
On the other hand, if you work long and hard enough, you may be more lucky at one point. Minus the private server, to what extend is this business as usual? 😉
Croesus, I basically agree. There is not much awareness of women’s history.
Two point though:
A good friend of mine opened a bookshop and a small publishing firm. In the early really difficult times of his business two female employees went into child-leave. Got him into serious financial troubles as startup. In one case the woman was about 2 or 3 month pregnant, he hadn’t thought about asking that. But had he asked, I suppose even if she had lied, she would be saved by law, since the question is not considered legitimate.
Curious item:
German TV had a short report on the IOWA pre-election setting.
Among others they showed two mid-age nurses from Chicago, working for the Sanders campaign. A short squence showed them at the door of an elderly couple. They were not open for the Chicago campaigners, Bernie was too old, they told them. 😉
Jill,
“Her hawkish stances worry me.”
that would be my basic concernment, not whether she’s woman or not.
****
Sometimes there is no ideal decision?
mgj
nit picker. pl
Thank you very much. I am writing about her “hawkish stances.”
Richard
I want to apologize for having repeated two paragraphs. I had deleted the article than found an earlier version.
Sorry for the sloppiness.
Richard Sale
Clinton will “work for the benefit of the American people”?
Hoo boy. I have to wonder how many election cycles it will take before a meaningful percentage of the American electorate figures out that no mainstream candidate from either primary party will work for other than corporate/moneyed interests.
Richard Sale:
Can you name any person, belonging to either party in US, whom you could consider to be a better fit for the office of the Presidency of the United States?
Put another way, these complaints about the quality of candidates or even previous US Presidents – are they not, in essence, point to a systemic problem in the United States, or UK, or France or Italy?
In other words, can any decent, competent, knowledgeable, honest person be elected to public office in any of these 4 countries: US, UK, France, Italy?
nice way to play the geri card.
ironically they can also stigmatize Bernie via his youth support by making him the darling of the Social Justice Warriors. Everybody hates SJWs. Could compound that with the yoni card in the form of a Melissa Click endorsement.
Damn you. You are forcing me to defend Hillary Clinton, and I do not want to.
I disagree with your characterization for a very simple reason: There have been no tell-all insider books published by people who work closely with her.
Even Bill had a few while president, and if one of Hillary’s acolytes had an axe to grind, they would get a 7 figure book advance from Regenry or other right wing publishers.
If she used people as you asserted, there would already have been such a book published.
Heck, it would have been published in the mid 1990s.
I don’t like Hillary, because she is a member of the largely Ivy League elites of this country who populate Washington and Wall Street and commute via a revolving, and she cannot conceive that “Her People” are a part of the problem. (The same applies to Barack Obama)
We either need someone who does not see these folks as “Their People” like Sanders, or someone who actively eschews “Their People” as Roosevelt did in the 1930s.
She is no more a narcissistic sociopath than anyone else who is a mainstream presidential candidate, which I know is a lot like saying, “Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play.”
“can any decent, competent, knowledgeable, honest person be elected to public office”
IMO, this is an issue of idealism versus reality. As a realist I find this question rather quaint as this is politicians we are talking about. Additionally one must think about how one ascends into higher positions of power in any country, which always involves accepting at least to some extent the groupthink of the group one wishes to be a part of.
Babak, I thought you were a realist.
There were two candidates in Iowa that needed a big win. One was Trump. More so HRC! Trump may yet make it but not HRC IMO. Why? She has been deserted by young woman who don’t care if there are still GLASS CEILINGS!
I don’t know if that shoe precisely fits Sanders, rjj. His natural inclinations clearly run more in the direction of economic justice than social, as evidenced by his lukewarm response to the BLM-type protesters. I also don’t see any of this hurting him in the Dem primaries.
Gonna post this here. Was wondering where are the stories about the Dem party outcome in Iowa. Is CorpsMedia FICing (gicing it the Fart In Church treatment)?
checked Google news timeline of articles.
https://news.google.com/news/rtc?ncl=dSd0UcXPYpGGKlMNs_RCfkh1HXKEM&authuser=0&topic=h
may not be significant. worth noting, tho.
They do indeed.
Richard
Have you?
Richard
They point to deep, systematic failures in U.S. politics.
We are a great nation. Are Hillary and Trump the best Americans do?
Richard
Wow. Well said. Well and powerfully said.
All politicians at that level must have a significant amount of ambition and vanity. But, of a nasty bunch, Hillary is far and away the most toxic. I have wondered that she does not get more support from the corporate press etc. – for someone like Obama, the email scandal would have vanished without a trace, and Bernie would get mentioned on page 37 next to a human interest piece on water-surfing squirrels, if at all. If I may indulge in a little ‘Kremlinology”, I think that Hillary scares even many of our corrupt elites. At least Obama and Biden etc. do as they are told. We have made the presidency very nearly imperial, the president can do almost anything without congress, and heaven help us all if Hillary Clinton gets her hands on that kind of unchecked power.
I can’t think of anyone currently running for president that is more terrifying than Hillary. Trump is a loudmouth but bottom line is that he can make deals and work with people and he has no apparent desire to bankrupt the nation in order to spread chaos across much of the world. Cruz has a lot of rough edges but in the end he’s a realist and Wall Street likes him so he’s not as out there as he lets on, I should think. Rubio is a lightweight pretty boy corporate shill who won’t rock any boats as he says one thing and does what he’s paid to do. Bernie is far from perfect (the ghost of Woodrow Wilson haunts all overly-idealistic presidential candidates) but he may be the best of the bunch.
But Hillary is toxic almost beyond precedent in American history. I think in part she gets away with it because, if you consider her record objectively, it seems unreal, it’s hard to believe in it. She overloads our ability to make critical judgements and we recoil as if from a bad dream.
One was confused until one realized thou wast using the royal first person pronoun.
I am not talking things as they are. I am talking about things as they are made out to be by CorpsMedia opinion misleaders.
Who would Bernie run WITH? HRC would actually be OK as vice-presidential candidate.
Thank you for speaking up. I was thinking of saying something similar but couldn’t motivate myself to defend Hillary as I am not a fan (will be voting 3rd party).
One thing I noticed even back in 2007-8 election, was Hillary seems to trigger “monsters from the id” in people who don’t like her… or should I say who hate her. Have always been amazed at the level of emotional spewing disguised as rational analysis.
She’s an ambitious, arrogant and power hungry elitist who has a crony network of similar elites. Well… how is this so unusual at her level or in the world as it is (as opposed to how we’d like to see the world). Also she and Bill have become quite rich since they first got in to politics, and I think many people resent them for this. This reminds me I need to look back in history and see when it was that people started expecting their politicians to be do-gooders or honorable noble public servants.
There is a parallel with Eastern Europe under Communism. Because of the brain drain and intellectuals leaving societies where there was little scope for them to flourish professionally and academically, what you had was not only and so much the ‘Communists’ being in charge, but the imbeciles being in control… And I mean it.
Intelligent people would refuse to join the Communist Party (CP), unless they were particularly cynical and opportunistic, in which case they would sell out. They would stay outside the Establishment and, more often than not, try to emigrate.
The CP would fast-track working-class members, bus drivers, etc. to the top, so that you ended up, more often than not, with mediocre conformists lording it over the rest of the population.
Eventually, you had armies of cretins in charge of the system, and the majority were not even ideological Communists by 1970/1980: they were just opportunists. You joined the CP as you join the civil service, for a quiet life and for power and privileges.
Perhaps the electorate among NATO States no longer values high-achieving independent thinkers among its political representatives, even more so women: that’s not what the electorate wants or expects.
“Sanders’ pie-in-the-sky pitch will never pass congress”
Seems to me “that it will never pass congress” is a feature and to whom it appeals is irrelevant.
Richard:
Wonderfully powerful post. Thank you for correcting it.
rjj:
I saw your link and I’ll raise you this one:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2016/02/02/some-democratic-precinct-results-unaccounted/79682184/
Neither Cruz nor Trump appear to be insane to me, I just disagree with their politics. As for referring to anyone running for president as “raving morons,” I will take that as hyperbole, but labeling candidates as “morons” does not lend credence to anyone’s position.
I simply do not understand how anyone can look at Hillary Clinton’s life and actions, and draw the conclusion that she “will work for the benefit of the American people. She will certainly work to benefit herself, her family, and those whose assistance she needs to advance her career. That much is obvious, based purely on her past actions.
Apparently you put no stock in COL Lang’s assessment (shared by pretty much every military and intelligence professional in the world) that Hilary’s email “issues” are problematic.
I have spent 25 years in the military/intelligence sector. This “email” thing is a big deal…a very, very big deal. She faces the possibility of thousands of years in prison, and deserves just that.
De Oppresso Liber…
JM Gavin
Yes, people don’t understand how big a deal it is. DOL. PL
62 year-old labor Democrat (yes, they exist) and a dedicated Sanders supporter. Ronald Reagan made me a Democrat. Bill Clinton made me a sceptic.
On the subject of Hillary: I just don’t get the vitriol. Feverish thirties-style invective, gossip, innuendo and pure invention. Redolent of anti-Rooseveltian (?!) tirades from the past. Black conspiracies, treason, money, murder, sex, power. Gawd, on and on.
She’s a pol. Why is she special?
She’s a politician. It’s her nature, I wouldn’t begrudge her that. Like any other politician. I know what to expect. I’ve watched her for these twenty-odd years like anyone else has. We’ve all had the opportunity. Like any other pol.
I’ve never seen her do anything political more deserving of condemnation than any other politician. They’re mostly all cut from the same cloth. She did some good work in the Senate in the short time she was there. Love to see her go back.
State Dept? Well, let’s see… Competent, capable, more sanguine that I would like, didn’t let any make too big a fool of her. Unintimidated, I’ll give her that. I think she could deal with Putin. Hehe.
That or The Court. Forget Obama. Put Hil on the Court. Yowza.
It’s beyond trash-talk. It’s unreasoned something. Is it the Clinton thing? Is it the woman thing? Is it just a Democrat thing? Is it a blonde thing? Skirts? Pantsuits? I just don’t understand the fear and hatred this woman seems to generate and the willingness and zeal with which it is propagated to… whom?
True believers? Why bother, they already believe.
The Persuadable middle? Good luck
I always figured Bill for the villian in this play. Happily voted for him twice. Railed passionately against his financial policies. And Russia policy – badly botched and still haunting us. Bill didn’t do us many favors.
I’m working for Bernie, but if it’s Hillary in the end. OK. In either event, I’ll make my X with a sceptical eye.
pl
The best description I’ve seen for why its a big deal is that Marines at embassies and consulates are asked to die to protect such information.
Then add Hillary’s feigned cluelessness and obfuscations. What difference does it make? Depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is?
JM –
I have a great deal of respect for the vast majority of Colonel Lang’s assessments and opinions. As far as those email problems being considered problematic “by pretty much every military and intelligence professional in the world”, I take that as an exaggeration. I spent almost two decades in the MI field myself and understand about the sensitivity of classified material. I also understand about overclassification which is out of control and has been going on for half a century or more. Are you telling me that as an intel professional you never ever took some unclassified portions of a secret or top secret or even a codeword document for distribution under a lower heading? I also understand about classification after the fact. And whatever happened with those emails it seems to me she did it for the right reasons, unlike Dick Cheney who deliberately leaked classified info for political reasons and skated free.
You are certainly free to believe that she “will certainly work to benefit herself, her family, … based purely on her past actions”. I consider her reputation to be as clean as any other current candidate. Please show me one of them who has is not a grifter. The only reason Hill takes flak is based on a quarter century of right wing BS. Whoever said “no lie can live forever” is dead wrong.
mike
Do you know her? You have every right to be her partisan. I would caution you against assuming that what was declassified and transmitted was over-classified and unimportant. pl
President Obama has a secure Blackberry. I have a secure Blackberry. Hillary Clinton fell somewhere between the President and I on the continuum of important folks working for the USG. She is considerably closer to the top than I am. If I rate a secure Blackberry, so did she. She chose not to use a secure Blackberry. I deal with DoS folks all the time who rate secure Blackberries.
I don’t judge what is over-classified. I conform to the classification of the originator. If I raise the classification, I mark it as such. While I do sometimes see traffic that may appear over-classified, I also understand that I may not know the whole picture, so I respect the classification. That is my duty, and I am legally bound to honor it…just like Hilary Clinton was legally bound.
I also bear in mind at all times that my email is subject to monitoring. I am aware that using a personal account to conduct official business places all traffic on that account subject to review and FOIA. So, no, I do not sometimes cut and paste and eliminate headers, and I would never advise someone else to do so.
While the other candidates may be grifters, Hillary Clinton is the only one that has spent so much time in the last 30 years being investigated for criminal wrongdoing. The “vast right wing conspiracy” thing is getting old. Right now the DoD, DoS, DoJ, NCS, and FBI are dominated by Democrats or folks that lean that way.
not good that. in fact double double ungood! thanks for the link.
JM Gavin,
Succinctly explained. I guess the idea of carrying two Blackberries was just too onerous for Madam Secretary. DOL
I won’t vote for Hillary anymore than I will for Cruz or Rubio. From what I can tell, Bernie is the only candidate running for what he considers the public good and not to feed his ego. In this sense, I don’t think Hillary is any worse than the Republicans. Because Richard’s post is not about the emails but about her character, I won’t address them.
Hillary is a hypocrite, liar, narcissist and everything else Richard says she is. The biggest narcissist is Trump. One telltale sign of a narcissist is how he relentlessly attacks, through insults, the character, the appearance, the failures of a person that challenges his self-perceived supreme position at the top-of-the-heap. Most of Trumps speeches consist of insulting the other candidates, especially anyone gaining on him. That hasn’t been amusing since eighth grade.
Still, I’d vote for Trump over Cruz. Ted reminds me of wht Sinclair Lewis: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” After winning the Iowa caucus he said, “All glory to God.” It is presumptuous to think his victory magnifies God. He’s a liar and cheat, anyway. Hiding campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs, shaming citizens who didn’t vote in the last caucus. “A Face in the Crowd” is what I consider an important part of voter education.
Rubio might be honest but he’s wrong. We’ve gone down the road of more war, less taxes almost to the dead end.
Barbara Tuchman wrote that the presidency is too complicated for any one person. The duties broken up into 4,5,or6 (I forgot the number) elected council members. Theat way, you vote for a person based on their expertise in foreign policy, domestic, economic and Hillary could be Queen. She would be good at it because, as Nietzsche observed, the people of a Republic elect the gregarious, and Hillary is an exceptionally social animal.
it’s denial.
The problem is that she seems inauthentic.
It comes from sharing the stage with Bill Clinton, who could make Pope Frank look like look like the Andy Kaufman character Tony Clifton.
Next to him, everyone looks inauthentic.
IMO the coin flips demonstrate NO significance to DEMS EFFORTS IN IOWA!
The Mormons are closet socialists-perhaps Jon Huntsman!
what then? what then? what then? induces a bad case of the stares.
By way of how big a deal it is: to the ignorant onlooker it seems that HRC violated the same principle (though probably different statutes) as Wen Ho Lee.
That is extremely well said.
Richard
Thank you very much. I’ll look up the link.
Richard
Thank you. I think you are right.
Richard
Actually yes, I am often in need of an editor. Regards.