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writing for godot

The Revulsion Toward Hillary Clinton

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Written by Ralph West   
Monday, 07 March 2016 05:12
The Revulsion Toward Hillary Clinton (written a couple of weeks ago but still relevant)

Why is it that so many people, myself included, feel a revulsion toward Hillary Clinton? I regularly receive her databased emails asking me to “chip in” $1 as a way to show that she has my back. (I regularly respond that I will contribute when she furnishes clear evidence that she has returned all her bribe money to Goldman Sachs and the like. Needless to say, I receive no response and she receives nothing from me.) And, further, why do I feel a deep skepticism about Bill Clinton, the “Big Dawg? Ever since Watergate, I have been a dependable “liberal” voter. The Nixon corruption and disgrace turned me pretty well off the Republican party, which, as a whole, I have come to see as standing for greed, imbecilic imperialism, mediocrity, and – yes! – corruption.

Mind you, I have no illusions about the Democratic party. I see plenty of greed and corruption there as well. But here is where the Clinton revulsion comes in. I see great social skills in Bill. I will be the first to admit that he totally eclipses me (and most people) when it comes to charm and charisma. He reminds me, in the political realm, of Lennie Bernstein, who, in his heyday, combined great talent with unbounded charisma and gave rise to the term “radical-chic.” Lenny’s was truly an awesome musical talent, and he could be depended on to immerse himself very totally in whatever music he was interpreting as a conductor. For quite a while, his Mahler was viewed as the ultimate, and I must say he blew me away with his interpretations of Gustav’s works. In particular, I, with some of my fellow English graduate students, would saturate ourselves in his New York Philharmonic rendition of Mahler’s Second Symphony and all its kaleidosopically shifting moods, terrors, exaltations, bumptious nostalgia. However, as the years have gone by, I have grown tired of Lenny’s overstatements; we now prefer a version by the less-well-known Rudolf Barshai and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie -- version which gains sharpness and power from the styptic pencil Mr. Barshai applies to the work. Like Bill Clinton, Lenny had a larger-than-life personality, which quite overwhelmed many of those with whom he came in contact. Like Mr. Clinton, he had very high testosterone levels to go with that personality.

But as in the Bernstein case, I have grown tired of the Clintons. More significantly, I have grown tired of the deep corruption they carry with them. Not so long ago, Mrs. Clinton released a letter in which various supposed experts criticized Mr. Sanders’ approach to Iran and said he had “not thought through these national security issues that can have profound consequences for our security.” The press neglected to mention that half of these signatories, Clinton backers all, are involved in the military contracting establishment, which has benefited greatly from stirring up violence in the world, especially in the Middle East. I hope Mr. Sanders will re-visit his gallant determination not to talk about Hillary’s e-mails; it now appears that twenty of them are classified as top secret and that her leaving them on her server was a case of negligence, pure and simple. Does anyone believe the insights she offers in her speeches to Goldman Sachs and the like are worth $200,000? This appears to be bribery, pure and simple. As a matter of fact, if you don’t believe this is major bribery, I have some real estate in New Jersey I’d like to sell you1

As they say, pictures are worth a thousand words. The 12/29/2015 issue of the Times contains telling photograph of the Big Dawg beaming with great satisfaction to be in the company of Michael Bloomberg and Donald Trump on the links of Mr. Trump’s National Golf Club in Briarcliff Manor. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that the Clintons are social climbers to a fare-thee-well, aspiring to have the coziest possible relationships with members of our country’s top 1%. They, along with the publishers of The New York Times, are what Cornel West calls “neoliberals.” Crimes against and neglect of the lower 99% are to be swept under the rug, as Elizabeth Warren pointed out in her op-ed article yesterday. Ironically enough, Fox News, an outlet of which I am not usually very fond, produced two of the very best questioners during the recent GOP debates. The questions were so good because they forced the responders to reveal the character assassination, obfuscation, and utter obtuseness characterizing the respondents. Megyn Kelly’s question to Trump, devastating in and of itself, drew a revealing response. The question? “You once told a contestant on “Celebrity Apprentice” it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound like the temperament of a man we should elect as president, and how will you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton that you are part of the war on women?” Mr. Trump’s response was to make ad hominem slurs against Ms. Kelly and, as we now know, to avoid the last debate in which Ms. Kelly was a moderator. More to the point of this article, however, was Chris Wallace’s question to Jeb Bush, because of the obtuseness it revealed in our ruling political class’s attitude toward our war machine: “Given the fact that your brother got us into two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have still not ended, what have your learned from his mistakes, sir?” Bush’s response was Orwellian in its vague obtuseness; he never faced the question directly, saying his foreign policy is driven by the “lessons of history.” Mrs. Clinton blows off the Iraq invasion just as blithely as Mr. Bush; she describes it as “a mistake.” (As disturbing as anything else was the audience’s booing Mr. Wallace for bringing up the inconvenient matter of Iraq. All these candidates, apparently, expect short memories and indifference on the part of the electorate, and at least some of the electorate does not disappoint them!)

Joseph Conrad’s great novella Heart of Darkness centers on the descent into depravity by Kurtz, a European colonialist who invades a third-world country with the illusion that he will uplift it to the august levels of Western civilization. On his deathbed toward the end of the story (as recalled by the narrator Marlow), he looks back on his invasion, and all its attendant brutality, and says simply, “The horror! the horror!” He presumably recalls the killings and cannibalism he had perpetrated – the cannibalism being a metaphor for his rapacity and destruction of third-world peoples. His words reveal at least a hint of remorse. However, he appears in a work of art, and it is the privilege of art to exaggerate. In the real world, such practitioners (actually, war criminals) do not express or reveal remorse. Thus, we have Dick Cheney saying he would do it (engineer an Iraq invasion) all over again. We have George W. Bush, who, when asked what he saw as the major
flaw in his administration, said it was his failure to privatize Social Security. And we have Hillary, crisply dismissing the invasion as “a mistake.”

There is only one major candidate of either party who steers clear of the indifference and major corruption we see in so much politics. His name is Bernie Sanders.







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