Hillary Not as Guilty as People Who Have Spent Thirty Years Hating Hillary for Cash and Prizes Would Have You Believe
In the least surprising development in politics since Bush the younger proved to be as incompetent a president as he proved to be at everything else, Hillary Clinton was not indicted. Which doesn’t mean she is innocent, or as pure as the driven snow. As some ardent Hillary haters never tire of mentioning, she is corrupt. But what she isn’t is uniquely corrupt. She is as corrupt as she has to be to gain power. She isn’t wrong that in order to effect change or to prevent unwanted change, one first needs the power to choose. To gain that power in the US today, it is required to spend billions of dollars running for the office of president. The people who give those billions want something in return for their investment. So Hillary, just like every other successful politician in the US today, must solicit money from the people who own it, who have gotten rich on exploiting the laws, and economy as it exists right now, and who may be unconvinced by the necessity and or desirability of change. So, there are strings attached to the money she needs. There are donors to placate, in order to keep the money stream coming.
This isn’t a pragmatic defense of Hillary, it’s more an indictment of our current electoral system. So what do we do about an electoral system that is actively hostile to progressive change? Two answers that I have heard frustrated people put forth are a new constitutional convention, or revolution. I don’t like either of those options. A new constitutional convention would be a product of the same political process that so warps our current system into alignment with the interests of Wall Street, and a revolution has the obvious drawbacks of being murderous, impractical, and unlikely to provide change in the right direction. I’m not saying anti Hillary people are wrong to try and oppose Hillary, but to oppose Hillary without trying to change the system that produces politicians like her is pointless, since any other politician will be nearly as compromised. Just look at Bernie’s weak ass position on gun control, he refuses to take a strong stand in favor of new regulations or better enforcement because so many of his donors are against that. All of our candidates are going to have their faults, their blind spots, their flaws. Any candidate the Democrats nominate will be investigated for malfeasance by a partisan witch hunt. Any Democrat nominated will have nationally syndicated pundits calling for their investigation, indictment and prosecution. This is why I don’t take the accusations of her enemies seriously. They’d be doing the same thing to the second coming of Jesus when he asked them how much they’ve done for the poor lately. So, to reiterate, Hillary Clinton is a compromised politician who owes favors to interests hostile to the progressive agenda. And Donald fucking Trump is a short fingered vulgarian who actively courts racist votes and whose entire strategy, when it isn’t stream of consciousness shit-flinging seems to come from “Fascism for the Lazy faux-billionaire”.
So, I’m going to vote for Hillary and then I’m going to try and make sure she doesn’t please her more regressive donors any more than she has to drink heavily and hope she doesn’t recklessly bomb foreign people all the goddamn time. And if Trump wins I’ll be drinking heavily too. And I’m getting a divorce, so really whatever happens in politics, I will be drinking heavily.
Hillary stole the Democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders by repeatedly lying about her emails and her unsecure server in order to win that nomination. That’s unforgivable.
She’s both corrupt and a congenital liar.
Frank good to hear your opinion. I’d posit that the Donald is Con-Genital in general, but the rug on top of his head, or is that a marmot, makes some interesting points.
Thanks Provider. Hope you are doing better.
Testing…nice to see you frank
Agreed that on this issue, Hillary was not a criminal. She didn’t want her emails to fall into the hands of the press through FOIA requests. It was not her idea to set up a private server. It was some IT guy from the Clinton Foundation, I believe. Having said that, it needs to be acknowledged that Chelsea Manning, Stephen Kim and others have served or are serving hard time for similar or lesser offenses. We are not looking for Clinton to be charged (after all, multiple State Department employees were equally careless). We are looking for Chelsea manning and others to be freed.
Who is ‘we’? Bernie fans? Members of Anonymous? Likely Democratic voters? EFF members? Don’t get me wrong, Chelsea Manning did this country a service by releasing those cables, and has been punished far out of proportion for the severity of those crimes. It is a peculiar and dangerously flexible code of justice that explicitly tells soldiers to refuse unlawful orders and report unethical activity and then punishes them for doing so.
And if Trump wins I’ll be drinking heavily too.
As will I. Hemlock, on the rocks.
I recommend all the time drinking heavily all the time. It’s the only I’ve made though the last four or so decades.
former President Ronald Reagan was hired as a motivational speaker for Nu Skin, the “multi-level marketing” company (think Amway) which employed Chaffetz for a decade before he entered politics.
Too bad about the divorce. About the e-mails, it’s not like Clinton was the first government official to use private e-mail to render the workings of government opaque.
Of course, this is a million times worse than what Bush and Cheney did because of the Clenis. Seriously, it’ll be another round of Clinton Derangement Syndrome as the GOPers try to rake Comey over the coals.
Alcohol is fattening, weed is not.
Just sayin’…
This is about as weak an endorsement of HRC as is possible, and surprising coming out of one of the very best analytic blogs in the ‘sphere. I too will vote for HRC because to vote Trump is far worse, and I will vote because of the principle that not voting is a vote for the wrong person (call it the Nader Principle if you like). But the email thing is important because what HRC did was to mix state department business with all her other business, and by keeping all the communications out of the hands of oversight we’ll never know quite how the deals were made, and how she profited. The personal servers were a strategy of obfuscation, and they worked! The depressing conclusion you draw, that “it’s all crooked because that’s politics,” may well be true. If so it’s an indictment, a terrible failure of the whole system of representative democracy that we’ve tried to live under, and an argument for not wasting you time participating at all. The deals that were made in advance of this election cycle by the Obama Administration and the Clinton “machine” are fundamentally undemocratic. I would even wonder if the Clintons encouraged Trump’s campaign as a poke in the eye to the whole GOP (which of course they certainly deserve). But this makes us all players in a kabuki, like it or not. Bring on the rigged touch screen voting machines and the hanging chads.
It is a weak endorsement, and I’m disappointed that I can’t be more positive. She has some good things to say about abortion, and about education funding. And she is definitely isn’t Trump and she is committed to preserving the successes of the Obama administration. And that’s enough to get my vote.
But what I was hoping for would be a stronger commitment to renewable energy, a plan to deal with rising sea levels, stronger protection for the environment and a commitment to restraint of military spending and the use of military force abroad.
Clinton is pro-natual gas and pro war. She’s much more hawkish than Obama, and he has bombed at least 6 nations in an arguably illegal drone war. There’s a point where a Liberal can’t endorse that. At least I can’t. And I gave up on Obama in 2011. I gave him 2 years. Change comes from the bottom, not the top.
It’s good to have contingency plans like drinking heavily. One item I’d like to highlight is that Hillary Clinton has never sat in the big chair. She’s been in politics all her adult life, but she has been there as a party supporter, first lady of a state and the country, a lawyer, a senator, and cabinet member.
While there is a certain level of agency in each of those positions, none of them are the chief executive position like the presidency is. As such, Clinton hasn’t been in a position to call the shots, set the policies and agendas, and run the show like she will be when she becomes president. I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, and based on many things she has elected to do during her political career, I’m optimistic.