WHY HILLARY IS THE PERFECT PERSON TO SECURE OBAMA’S LEGACY
John Chuckman
I read a piece that said Hillary, with her speech about
racism and extremists taking over the Republican Party, was making a play for a
one-party state. That seems rather an exaggeration, but it does contain an
important bit of truth. I do indeed believe Hillary thinks along the lines of a
one-party state as suggested, but without ever saying so directly, and she is
not focused on the particular political party with which she is now associated.
Hillary stands for the establishment, and her views appear
to include the idea that anyone without attachment to that establishment is to
be designated as a kind of "plebe," as in 1984, or even
"untouchable," as in the old Indian caste system. That’s the approach
that she took in her “racism” speech. It is, if you will, very much a one-party
approach to politics as well as an implicitly anti-democratic one.
And, of course, it represents a truly super-arrogant attitude.
But isn't that the natural inclination of all tyrant
temperaments? And there is every indication in Hillary’s past acts and words of
a tyrant’s temperament.
Her views on the military and on a long history of events
from the FBI Waco massacre (she advocated for aggressive FBI action to get the
event out of the headlines) and the bombing of Belgrade (which she advocated
privately to her husband) to the invasion of Iraq (which she supported as a
Senator) and the death of Libya’s Gadhafi (there’s her infamous, “We came, we
saw, he died. Ha, ha, ha,” quote as Secretary of State) to the employment of
paid terrorists and poison gas in Syria (an operation she oversaw as Secretary
of State), could provide a good working definition of a tyrant’s temperament.
And just look at her close friends and associates in, or
formerly in, government, people like Victoria Nuland or Madeleine Albright,
extreme Neocon advocates for violence and America’s right to dictate how others
should live. Madelaine Albright is best remembered for answering a journalist
in an interview, when questioned about tens of thousands of Iraqi children
dying in America’s embargo, “We think it’s worth it.” She is also remembered
for her dirty, behind-the-scenes work in dumping as Secretary General of the UN,
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a highly intelligent, fair-minded, and decent man who
just happened to disagree with the United States once too often. Victoria
Nuland’s claims to fame include being recorded talking about America’s spending
$5 billion to create the coup in Ukraine. There is also her wonderfully
diplomatic quote, “Fuck Europe,” and a seemingly endless stream of photos of
her scowling into cameras.
And the same temperament is revealed in her record of “I
know better than the expert`” when it comes to matters such as a Secretary of
State’s protocols around computer security. Again, her record as First Lady
with the Secret Service agents assigned to her protection was so unpleasantly
arrogant that there is a residual of ill will still towards her in the Secret
Service, enough to cause a number of past agents to tell tales out of school to
journalists and in books.
Hillary likes to use language in public speeches which puts
her "on the side of the angels" where various social issues are
concerned, but it is entirely an advertising campaign of no substance, much
resembling the big, clown-like or grimacing smiles she puts on at public events.
Many mistakenly associate her with the historic traditions of the liberal left
in the older Democratic Party, the kind of traditions Bernie Sanders brought
momentarily flickering back to life, although they are in reality now virtually
dead in the Democratic Party. Her actual record of behavior, as opposed to her
“sound bites” and slogans, just cannot support that view of her as a liberal or
progressive light.
Just to start, Hillary conducted the most corrupt campaign
against Bernie Sanders I can recall in my adult lifetime. It included an
inappropriate insider relationship with the Chairman of the Party, Debbie
Wasserman Schultz, who used every opportunity with the press and other means to
disadvantage Bernie Sanders. It included voter suppression in a number of
states as well as outright vote fraud in a number of others. Academic
statistical analysis of the primaries’ data suggests that Bernie Sanders in
fact won the nomination.
Search as you might, you will not find a history of Hillary
actually being involved, beyond uttering slogans every so often, with social
issues. She has no record at all. But her history does very much include such
acts as being fired from her early job as a Watergate Committee lawyer for
unethical behavior (the man who fired the young lawyer still has his
contemporary notes of the event) and, in an early volunteer case, grinding down
a 12-year old rape victim about fanaticizing over older men and getting her
brutal 42-year old attacker freed, smiling in an interview later that she in
fact knew he was guilty.
There is literally a line of women who were her predator
husband’s lovers at one time or another who say that Hillary afterwards approached
them with threats about keeping their mouths shut. And, perhaps her single
clearest achievement on social issues, is her record of enabling her husband to
carry on with a convicted pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, who lives on a private
island and keeps a stable of underage girls for the use of visitors. He is a
very wealthy man with wealthy friends and arranges large political
contributions, so he receives visitors such as Bill. Epstein actually once
claimed he co-founded the Clinton Foundation, and he and associates have made
large donations, tens of millions. We have a documented record of 28 trips to
the island by Bill, and there is no way on earth Hillary wouldn’t know about
them. Just as there is no way she could not know about important developments
with the Clinton Foundation. She implicitly approved of the relationship with
her often seen money-before-morals attitude.
Her husband’s office-leaving pardon of Marc Rich is often
regarded as corrupt and having been paid for by Mr. Rich’s family and friends who
donated large and continuing sums over time. Mr. Rich had been indicted in New
York for tax evasion and fraud, but perhaps the outstanding aspect of his
career, as it relates to Hillary and her slogans about social issues, is the
way he made a considerable part of his fortune. He smuggled oil to the
apartheid government of South Africa over time against international sanctions,
and he is said to have made $2 billion doing so. Well, it does seem more than a
little hypocritical to have supported a pardon for this man and then today to
be giving speeches on someone else’s purported racism, and even to have been
photographed, with toe-scrunching smarminess, eating fried chicken with a group
of black voters.
We also have the fact of her talking, quite fiercely and
recorded on video, about black “super-predators” when she was First Lady. Her
husband signed legislation which likely put more young black males in prison
than any other piece of legislation. Bill also bragged, as he signed another
bill, of ending “welfare as we know it,” again legislation which hit poor black
people hard. And, in all these acts, we know he had Hillary’s support. By a
great many reports, Bill Clinton never dared do anything major of which his
wife disapproved. With his years of flagrant sexual adventures and his need, on
more than one political occasion, for her public lies of support when he was caught
out, she had a virtual hammer over his head. Besides, Hillary has always
regarded herself as having considerable acumen in such policy matters, and hers
is a personality type you do not comfortably ignore.
In terms of pure competence, despite her assuming a public
air of swaggering competence, her record is simply meagre to poor. We can
return to that early instance, her dismissal from the Watergate Investigation
for what her boss called unethical conduct and lying. Later, as First Lady, she
took over the healthcare portfolio from her husband, the President, with
unprecedented arrogance for an unelected person and one holding no formal
appointment to office, and she failed badly in the complicated task.
As a Senator from New York, her eight-year record is
remarkably undistinguished. Only three bills she sponsored became law, a bill
to rename a highway, a bill to re-name a post office building, and a bill to
designate a house as a national historic site. As Secretary of State, she of course
ran the Benghazi operation which saw an American Ambassador and others killed,
and her handling of the families of the dead afterwards, as the bodies were
returned, echoes to this day with insensitivity and even brutality. She is
deeply resented by family members and accused of lying.
I do believe it would be a difficult task to come up with a
more fitting candidate than Hillary Clinton for carrying on the Obama legacy, a
legacy of killing in a half dozen lands on behalf of America’s establishment,
lying daily, and leaving your own people, the people who elected you with great
hopes more than seven years ago, with nothing.