It’s already happening. To be more accurate, I should say that the volume is already being turned up to 11. There’s always been a faction of people in this country who suffer from derangement when it comes to the Clintons. People forget what it was like in the 90s because of what we’ve had to endure in regard to the right wing’s treatment of president Obama, but it was bad. I’m not sure that the derangement toward Obama is any worse than it is toward the Clintons. It’s just lazier since he’s black, and blowing a racist dog whistle is easier than concocting a murder conspiracy. They had to get more creative with Bubba. They called him a rapist, drug dealer, murder, and a slew of other things that were too stupid to be stored in my memory banks. The attacks were relentless against both Bill and Hillary.
Yes, they despised Hillary for being married to Bill, but they also despised her for having a brain and using it to help her husband and his presidency. They were enraged when Bill put Hillary in charge of coming up with a health insurance reform plan. Republicans like first ladies to be of the stepford variety. Laura Bush was everything that a first lady should be. Nancy Reagan got a pass because they loved everything that Ronnie was. Randi Rhodes used to refer to Laura Bush as “crazy eyes Lala”. I refer to her as “Pfizer Lala”. She always looks like she’s one Xanax away from an overdose. I digress.
When Hillary referred to the “vast right wing conspiracy” against her husband, the media treated her as if she was paranoid. And then a few years later, David Brock (who went on to found Media Matters) wrote a book about the conspiracy and his part in it.
I’m not going to list the accusations of scandal that have been lobbed at both Bill and Hillary. You can find plenty of right wing whackadoodle sites for that. I will say that precisely none of those accusations have any merit to them. I can’t think of two people who have been investigated by congress more than the Clintons. American taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars investigating the Clintons, to no avail. There’s no corruption. There’s no scandal, and there’s no trace of improper or illegal actions by either Clinton. That’s just a fact.
There are no congressional reports that even suggest that a Clinton acted improperly, other than Ken Starr’s soft core porn report about the Lewinsky situation. That’s all there is. There’s no evidence that Hillary has ever done anything wrong as a senator, Secretary of State, first lady, or private citizen.
And yet, I hear insane accusations against her coming from both liberals and conservatives. The right doesn’t need evidence for anything they believe, so that part isn’t confusing. But the allegations of corruption from Bernie Sanders supporters is thoroughly confusing to me.
I do not support Hillary in the primary. I’ve said this repeatedly on my various social media sites; I’m with Bernie for as long as Bernie is in this race. I do not need to make shit up in order to rationalize my reasons for not supporting Hillary. I don’t need to throw out accusations of corruption in order to support Bernie. She’s never been proven to be corrupt. All that crap about the donors to the Clinton Foundation concluded a quid pro quo, based on the rich and powerful donor list. They found the “quid” and just assumed the “pro quo” even though no one ever found it. Of course the donor list to The Clinton Foundation includes rich and powerful people from all around the world. It’s probably nearly identical to the Gates Foundation donor list. That in itself is not a smoking gun, and anyone who believes it does, needs to go back to high school to take a debate class and learn some critical thinking.
I don’t need to make the comical assertion that she’s not qualified to be president to rationalize why I don’t support her. She’s as qualified to be president as Barack Obama + Thomas Jefferson and then some. She’s the most qualified candidate who has ever sought the presidency. No other candidate has ever held the offices she’s held and already spent eight years in the white house. I’m sorry, but she’s empirically and objectively more than qualified to be president.
She definitely has a deeper understanding of foreign policy nuances than Bernie Sanders could possibly have. That’s also a fact. I happen to align with Bernie’s foreign policy stance more than Hillary’s even though I know that she knows more than he does. She’s too hawkish for me, and I’m aware that a certain shift toward hawkishness is the inevitable result of actually being in the trenches. I just prefer for someone to start off from a position where they’re less prone toward military intervention so that their inevitable pull toward intervention still leaves them less hawkish than someone who starts off more prone to war. That’s a calculation I’ve made without having to underestimate or dismiss her experience in foreign policy.
Let me pause the Hillary talk for a minute to address my fellow Bernie supporters. He’s not perfect, and he’s not going to save the world if we can just get him into the white house. Stop lionizing him. That’s a childish approach to politics, and it needs to end. I don’t like Bernie’s record on guns. I actually despise his record on guns. Cliff Schecter, for whom gun policy is a top priority, lays out in great detail, Bernie’s rhetoric and record on guns here. Let me give you some of what most bothers me.
In 2005, he voted to indemnify gun manufacturers and dealers from being sued by people who were killed by their product. In 2009, he voted to allow Amtrak passengers to have firearms in their checked bags. That just makes it easier for people from Philadelphia to bring guns into NYC, where we have stricter laws. I love it when the ammosexuals bring up Chicago as an example of how gun laws don’t work. Chicago is literally just a few miles away from Indiana, or as I like to refer to it; ammosexualpalooza. Last time I checked, I’ve never shown ID or been searched when crossing state lines. If you want to have an intellectually honest discussion about the efficacy of strict gun laws, you need to talk about Hawaii, where your binkie would need to go through a metal detector to get into the state. At any rate, Bernie thinks it’s swell to help guns travel from state to state.
But as Cliff points out in his piece, Bernie’s rhetoric is worse than his voting record. I’m not going to excerpt it because it’s a great piece and you should take a minute (it’s short) to read it. My point is that Bernie’s record on guns does not make me happy. Cliff got pummeled by Bernie supporters over that piece. Those people would be idiots. You should not need to create a perfect candidate for yourself, in order to feel good about your choice.
Let me add something for the Hillary supporters. Her strategy of not taking questions from journalists, or from average citizens should have you seriously concerned, given her performance in 2007. If her strategists have decided that not talking is the way to go, you need to be very concerned about her past implosion on the campaign trail. You should want to see proof that she’s upped her game before the general election. Remaining silent and only doing negotiated interviews should not give you confidence in her campaign. Think. Bernie is taking questions from any random journalist or citizens who ask them. You should need for Hillary to do the same. Reverse Hillary derangement syndrome isn’t a good thing either.
Think. Make informed decisions. Don’t be children. Critical thinking is the most valuable skill you can teach yourselves. I support Bernie knowing that I vehemently disagree with him on guns, and knowing that Hillary is infinitely more versed on foreign policy than Bernie is. These are calculations I’ve made like a grown up.
Back to Hillary, and why I don’t support her despite all of the strengths I’ve listed here. I don’t like where her campaign funds are coming from. I just don’t. I’m not a child. I know that you need at least one planet-and-people-raping industry to win the presidency in the US. I now that. I know that the next president of the United States will likely have received at least 50% of their funding from Wall Street, big pharma, or the energy industry. I’m aware of this. But that doesn’t mean that I have to like it, and it doesn’t mean that I have to passively accept it. You can’t acknowledge how corrosive Citizen’s United was for out system and be totally comfortable with Hillary’s funding sources. These two things are diametrically opposed to each other, and it’s not possible to be intellectually honest while holding both thoughts in your head
Regular readers of this blog know that I believe that we need to change our campaign funding system before we can hope to get anything resembling good and effective government. You also know that I believe there’s only one way to do this; by amending the constitution to get corporate money (and personhood) out of the system. I don’t trust congress to get it done, so I’ve been working with Wolf PAC on an Article V amendment. I lay out my case here.
I believe that supporting Bernie in the primaries helps to send the message that we don’t like corporate money buying out our politicians, but not if we suffer from Hillary derangement syndrome. The single biggest reason why I don’t support Hillary is to reinforce my disdain for Citizen’s United and any candidate who’s good at negotiating a Citizen’s United political climate. But that message doesn’t work if everyone else who doesn’t support her is focused in on fabricating bullshit for why she’s awful and Bernie’s awesome. Neither of these things are true, and they’re both diluting our ability to send a real message here.
Approaching politics like a simpleton is destructive in ways that you can’t even imagine (probably cause people who do it, haven’t learned to think critically). The Hillary derangement syndrome that is taking hold in this election is destructive, and it squanders an opportunity to send a message about a real issue that really effects you. These lionizers and demonizers are cutting off their noses to spite their faces. These efforts to make decisions simple in the short term, are making everything worse in the long term.
We all need to start weighing information again. In politics, there’s always something to weigh. People who support Bernie and are for stricter gun control need to stop abdicating their duty to weigh issues because nuance is just too hard. If thinking about the politician you’ve chosen to vote for doesn’t hurt your brain a little, you’re doing it wrong.
I know why I’ve made my choice. I wish I could say that about the electorate at large.
