Ash writes: "She spoke first and she spoke last, she occupied center-stage throughout the entire ABC Debate Production Show. She was scripted as the star of the show by its producers. She also showed a breathtaking lack of understanding on all key issues."
Sanders and Clinton square-off in New Hampshire. (image: ABC)
Eight More Years of Plutocracy
20 December 15
he spoke first and she spoke last, she occupied center-stage throughout the entire ABC Debate Production Show. She was scripted as the star of the show by its producers. She also showed a breathtaking lack of understanding on all key issues.
Hillary Clinton spoke often and forcefully on the subject of ISIS and the Iraqi-Syrian Frontier region. She was as misinformed as she was determined to misinform the public.
Apparently she is talking about, among other things, arming opposition groups in the region and effecting regime change in Syria. Both of those ideas are exceptionally bad, and Sanders and O’Malley correctly saw the folly in both concepts and expressly rejected them.
Arming anyone in the region has been proven to do nothing more than further arm ISIS, because that’s where the arms end up. ISIS fighters either kill whoever we give the arms to and take them or buy them with illicit cash from the sale of pirated oil to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad or to “U.S. Ally” Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In either case, arming anyone in the region is the same as arming ISIS directly.
Clinton likewise thought overthrowing Bashar al-Assad would be a smart idea. Regime change is how we got here. Iraq was stable; overthrowing Saddam Hussein destabilized it and the entire region around it. ISIS is expanding into Syria because the Syrian government has been weakened by U.S., EU, and Israeli intervention. Assad’s forces are degraded and ISIS is capitalizing.
On health care, Clinton seemed to cheerfully accept Obamacare as the right architecture for the future and bluntly reject a viable single-payer, public option. The crowd cheered. So did the the Fortune 500 health care industry.
The problem is that Obamacare does nothing to rein in massive corruption in the health care industry and in the nation’s capitol that facilitates it. Until you address the corruption you live with its consequences. The public has every right to a viable option of its own. Viva Sanders on that.
Hillary shows all the classic characteristics of a plutocratic enabler. She’s a dedicated corporatist and a devout global imperialist. She really believes that we can lead the world by achieving military victory in the Iraqi-Syrian Frontier despite all evidence to the contrary. She really believes that with proper guidance the utterly ruthless American health care industry can be made kinder and gentler.
For the record, neither Sanders or O’Malley bought into any of this nonsense.
The Wizard of Oz was on TNT at the same time as the ABC debate. It was by comparison “reality TV.”
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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