Here’s Marcus Aurelius, writing about the Clintons:
“To my mentor Fronto I owe the realization that malice, craftiness, and duplicity are the concomitants of absolute power; and that our patrician families tend for the most part to be lacking in the feelings of ordinary humanity.”
– Meditations, Book 1
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As bad as Obama has been, he performed one valuable service: beating Hillary for the ’08 nomination.
Hillary’s campaign reminds me of Bob Dole’s in ’96. Pro forma, entitled, next in line, old, and tired.
Except that Bob Dole had at least, at some point in his life, performed a valuable service for his country.
I can’t imagine Bob Dole selling out his country like Obama has.
From Rome to the Rights of Englishmen to the French Revolution to today, when it comes to human nature and power…nothing ever changes. The truths are universal. Hillary is just next.
Cheer up, conservatives!
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-10-26/the-most-likely-next-president-is-hillary-clinton
Could something derail this juggernaut? Maybe! But I wouldn’t count on it.
Wow. Your link illustrates the problem better than anything I could say: we really do live in different universes.
Can you really not see this woman for what she is, even after all these years? That you and so many others like you can be so spellbound — it just gives me the willies.
Sounds like Marcus Aurelius was describing rich corrupt ruling elite psychopaths.
“Cheer up, conservatives!”
I notice One-Eyed the very first sentence of your linked article states, scientists and Republicans.
And the author is one Mark Halperin.
http://www.mrc.org/articles/medias-top-10-most-embarrassing-predictions-2013
(And remember what “they said” concerning Scotland etc.)
I know your question is rhetorical, Malcolm; you’ve known him a long time. I also understand that long-term established friendship is hard to reassess.
It should be clear by now, however, that his purported lack of depth perception is just a ploy to mask what truly motivates him — dishonesty. He simply gets off taunting intelligent people with disingenuous contrariness [ibid].
No, it’s not like that, Henry. I don’t doubt his sincerity — which is what makes the whole thing so creepy to me.
I just cannot understand how anyone can look at Hillary Clinton — who has been in the public eye for decades, and who is obviously (and even uncontroversially!) a venal, unprincipled, haughty, ruthless, opportunistic, avaricious, narcissistic, selfish, arrogant, vindictive, amoral, and administratively incompetent serial liar — and want to promote her to this once-great nation’s highest office.
How then do you square your beliefs that he is sincere AND intelligent in the light of such obvious contradiction?
The only resolution of that contradiction, which comes to my mind, is that he is malevolent. Do you not sense his gleefulness in pushing your buttons?
Your sense of creepiness is telling — my own sense is that the OEM is a creep.
No, he isn’t. I think he sincerely believes the things he believes, somehow.
A great deal of the conservative/liberal divide has to do with axioms and personal disposition, as well as acculturation. For a lot of people who were lucky enough to grow up, as both Peter and I did, in the longest and safest stretch of human history, in the safest and most prosperous nation that ever existed, it is almost inconceivable that the government could ever be anything but benevolent, that resources are not limitless, and that there could be any insurmountable impediments to the creation of a Utopia here on Earth. Add to that a blithe scientism based on radical doubt, and an unconscious adherence to a secular religion that repurposes the soteriological instinct toward new Heavens of nature-worship and “social justice”, and you have our Peter, and people like him.
It’s also the result of life in a happy, affluent bubble: a belief that, since one does not personally feel any governmental infringements of liberty in one’s own life, that concern for liberty in the face of an ever-expanding and centralizing Federal behemoth is just paranoia. For most people, they don’t know what they’ve got till it’s gone.
This is precisely what Tocqueville predicted in Democracy in America: that the United States would be susceptible to the formation of a new kind of tyranny, a “mild” and psuedo-paternal one:
Could anyone offer a better description of the nation we now inhabit? All of this has now come to pass, made possible because of people like Peter, who, seduced by a childlike willingness to outsource their comfort and security, gladly allowed the sovereign to assume this terrifying role.
I have also made such an observation, albeit from the opposite perspective. My own life began in the harshest of circumstances. In compensation, however, I always appreciated what I accomplished and what I was granted in my life because I had already experienced life without those things — most especially American citizenship, which I dare say most Americans take for granted.
Having said that, I am still not convinced that an intelligent and well-educated person can be so oblivious to the evils around us. The ubiquitous graphic depictions of those evils are so palpable. I guess I belong in Missouri (the “Show Me” state). I just don’t get it.
Allow me to clear up your confusion.
To those in the closed loop of the right wing bubble, it is an a priori fact that Hillary Clinton is “a venal, unprincipled, haughty, ruthless, opportunistic, avaricious, narcissistic, selfish, arrogant, vindictive, amoral, and administratively incompetent serial liar.” That’s what they read and hear in right wing media, that’s what they all tell each other, and like Pauline Kael, are shocked that anyone else could possibly think any differently, because everyone they know personally feels that way.
(I’m always amused at those who accuse Obama and Hillary of narcissism, and then support Donald Trump, who talks incessantly about how wonderful he is, and whose hobby is putting his name on very tall buildings.)
To many of those in the reality-based community, she is a dedicated, hard working, disciplined, wonkish, and accomplished public servant who is eminently qualified to be President.
The right wing case against Hillary Clinton is never made on her experience — which dwarfs any of her potential rivals — and rarely on policy, but nearly always on character assassination based on purported scandals. If you accept the findings of seven bipartisan Congressional investigations that there was no cover-up regarding Benghazi, then you move on; if your preference for epistemic closure requires you to fabricate a cover-up, that’s your business. We keep hearing about alleged malfeasance regarding her making a lot of money with commodity futures, or losing a lot of money with Whitewater, but nobody can tell you exactly what she did that was illegal or immoral. Somehow she was involved in Vince Foster’s suicide, but we’re not sure how. Etc., etc. Let’s just say that “scandals” which one side finds to be dispositive are thought by the other side to be overblown, manufactured, and entirely unpersuasive.
To those who like Hillary Clinton, she has a nice laugh. To those who despise her, she cackles. You can’t bridge that divide. Unfortunately for the dark side, she is liked or admired by more people than those who detest her.
* * * *
The more salient distinction is this: Hillary Clinton performed well on the debate stage, and exchanged views with the other candidates without attacking them or the media. She was grilled by hostile Congressmen for nine hours as they tried to get a gotcha moment they could use in the B-roll for their campaign ads, and she stared them down admirably.
On Wednesday, the Republican debate showed candidates who made numerous statements which were obviously and demonstrably false. Trump claimed he never made a statement about Rubio, which was on his website; Rubio made claims about his tax plan which were flat-out wrong; the loopy Ben Carson denied that he shilled for a fraudulent “health” company (let’s go to the videotape!) and insisted that you can give out huge tax breaks and balance the budget. After years of wailing about budget deficits, all of them proposed puppies-and-rainbows tax plans which would add trillions to the national debt. When challenged on these howlers, they refused to answer the questions, and instead diverted attention by attacking the questioners. When in doubt, blame the media! Any journalist with the effrontery to intrude upon right wing fantasies with actual facts is characterized as hostile and biased. The RNC announced yesterday that it is cancelling the next debate under NBC, and instead will rely on one sponsored by the sympathetic editors at National Review. Waaah! Our candidates got asked tough questions. We’re taking our ball and going home.
What a bunch of pussies.
America looks at Hillary Clinton alone, under the bright lights, facing down hostile questions for nine hours with patient, factual, and civil responses. They then look at Republican candidates too terrified to face the 5’1” Becky Quick, and wonder how they could possibly face Putin. Who would you pick?
Q.E.D.
I could respond, point by point, to this farrago of delusions and outright falsehoods, but why? (Commenters are, of course, invited to do so, if they like.)
The spell, as you all can see, is unbreakable.
And there it is.
What a bunch of tired horseshit. You’d think the Leftist rant machine might have hired a grammarian to edit their shit-storm: “Who would you pick?” takes the objective case “Whom”. But who really gives a shit? Shit is shit [regardless of what the meaning of “is” is].
If only it was briefer [comparative form of brief].
I will say these few things:
– The idea that we have the opinion we do of HRC because that’s what we hear from the right-wing media is ridiculous. We’ve had decades to watch this woman in action.
– Nobody thinks Donald Trump isn’t a narcissist. He’s popular despite that, and for obvious reasons.
– The idea that there was “no cover-up” regarding Benghazi is utterly false, as the latest hearing proved beyond any reasonable doubt. Ms. Clinton knew within hours that the attack was not due to a protest or a video, and her communications prove this. Yet she lied through her teeth to the American people, and to the families of the people who died as a result of her negligence, and sent her stooges out to do the same.
But as Peter said: there’s no bridging this divide. I doubt even a Federal indictment for mishandling classified information — which, in her breathtaking arrogance she clearly has done, and which is a crime for which others have gone to jail — would break the spell this virago has over her thralls. If there’s any justice left in this nation, though, we may still get a chance to find out.
The notion that Hillary Clinton deceived the nation about Benghazi, and her testimony confirms this, is rubbish. Media Matters does a pretty good job of refuting this damnable lie:
http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/10/25/media-dismantle-rep-jim-jordans-smoking-gun-evi/206414
We know from eyewitness testimony that some of those who were at the compound were there to protest the video, while others were there to act opportunistically. One of the most baffling things about the right wing obsession is that — outside of the right wing bubble — nobody cares whether the riot was caused more by video protestors or by terrorist groups. There were thirteen embassy/consulate attacks during the Bush years, with far more deaths than the single consulate attack during the Obama administration, yet the proximate causes of the earlier attacks were ignored or forgotten. The entire right wing attack — that the Obama administration distorted the initial (unclear, contradictory, tentative) intelligence for partisan gain during an election — is sheer lunacy. Nobody votes for President based on whether a consulate attack was perpetrated by people angry at a video or by those affiliated with terrorist groups. It is a footnote in a national tragedy, and the majority of Americans have the good sense to know that attacks against Americans are inevitable in war zones, and the salient fact is that the attackers were angry Muslims, not what their specific grievance or affiliation might be.
However, we’ve gotten used to this.
When terrorists struck on 9/11/01, Americans of all ideologies rallied around the President. When terrorists struck on 9/11/12, the Republican Presidential candidate turned it into an attack line before the bodies were cold.
When 241 Marines died in Lebanon after Reagan ignored his generals’ advice to remove the troops from a delta, where they were sitting ducks — a dereliction of duty if ever there was one — Tip O’Neill sternly instructed his caucus not to turn a national tragedy into a political football. They didn’t. Regarding the far lesser tragedy in Benghazi: it has been used as fodder for partisan gain ever since.
When tragedy strikes, Democrats want to fight the enemy, and Republicans want to fight the Democrats.
The suggestion that Hillary mishandled classified information, or committed a criminal offense, is equally nonsensical. As best we know, she was sent a handful of emails which was subsequently classified as confidential, but were neither confidential nor marked as such when she received them. Nor is having classified documents by itself an indictable offense: malicious intent is a necessary requirement for criminality. Her use of email was sloppy and ill-advised, but no different than Colin Powell using an AOL address (before deleting 100% of his emails) or Condi Rice and Madeleine Albright using private email. Nor is having classified information on a home computer the shocker that conservatives pretend it is, as it is commonly done by intelligence, the military, and other government workers.
Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice (whose public statements were full of caveats: this is preliminary information, subject to change, but it is our best guess right now) acted responsibly in the fog of war. That is why, outside the right wing bubble, Benghazi has never gotten any traction, and it’s why Reagan was re-elected in a landslide after sixty times as many Americans died in Lebanon. Fair-minded Americans know that bad things happen in dangerous parts of the world, and they can’t all be prevented. Hence their anger is directed at those who attacked, not those who are in office when attacks occur. Even George Bush was given a free pass after ignoring explicit warnings about 9/11 — leading one to wonder about the cognitive dissonance of conservatives who think Hillary is responsible because she was in office when Benghazi occurred, while Bush bears no responsibility for 9/11, despite the fact that not only was he in office, but the attack came after months of intelligence predicting such an attack.
But hey: look at the bright side! You have eight long years ahead to demonize Hillary, while you can recall the halcyon days of demonizing Obama.
God, I hate these pointless arguments.
The Media Matters story “debunks” nothing. There was no “riot”. There was a coordinated attack with automatic weapons and artillery. HRC knew this, as was revealed by her message to the Egyptian PM that the attack had nothing to do with the video. (This new and damning fact, revealed for the first time at the latest hearing, was conveniently not mentioned by MM.) But with an election coming up, she and her shills went out and lied and lied and lied — even to the parents of those who died, to whom she said “we’re going to have the filmmaker arrested who was responsible for the death of your son”. She did this, obviously, to deflect public opinion from the total failure of the administration’s foolish adventure in Libya. It’s understandable — she’s a Clinton, after all, and they do whatever it takes — but utterly reprehensible.
Yes, bad things do happen — although this could and should have been anticipated and prevented, given that there was ample warning of danger, and that there were approximately 600 requests from State Department personnel in Libya for more security for Benghazi, all of which Ms. Clinton was apparently unaware of. What is really intolerable and unforgivable is the lying.
But hey, that’s what the Clintons do. Their motto:
“Tell us what you know, and we’ll tell you what we did.”
A Hillary Clinton presidency? Nixon in a pantsuit, without the competence.
Obama, HRC, Pelosi, et al. do not require demonization. Their state is congenital.
Moreover, their lying is pathological. Furthermore, their sense of decency, honor, and dedication to the well-being of their country is scatological. Other than that, they are your typical Leftist trash.
But hey, if that’s what the stupid electorate wants, let them wallow in the muck for another eight years. I’ll be playing bridge online while listening to Big Ludwig.
It seems to me after all this time that Hillary is more avatar than human. She and those like her represent desperate excuses to continue to do and say wrong and even bad things, no matter the consequences and facts to the contrary. A never ending teen age rebellion against adult authority and responsibility, even into adult dotage. No amount of failure will deter her or her kind, no amount of social carnage can phase them, just please please let people like her run everyone’s life-with more and more of our money of course. This need seems insatiable.
What Peter misses here is that this is not about the relationship of Republicans and Democrats during the Reagan administration. It is not about the mellow, unstintingly bipartisan warmth of all Democrats throughout all of United States history, in sharp contradistinction to the narrow, divisive bitterness that uniquely characterizes all conservatives and all Republicans.
It is about the character of Hillary Clinton.
Perhaps the most chilling evidence in recent months that there are no depths of falsity this woman will not plumb in her hunger for power was her declaration, some weeks ago, that women who claim to have been sexually abused by men “have the right to be heard, and the right to be believed”.
Yes, you read that right: “believed.” I can’t recall if Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick, or Monica Lewinsky offered any comment.
Americans have the right of opportunity. But opportunity itself is not a right, as Leftists are wont to declare. You can quote me.
And then there is this:
San Francisco neighbor says don’t call thieves ‘criminals’
DEBATE CALLED ‘EXTREME POLITICAL CORRECTNESS’
Henry, that was an eye opening link. Those people don’t understand that the number one cause of crime is bad people.
These people don’t understand many things, including the definition of the word “criminal” — i.e., somebody who has committed a crime.
WTF is going on here? And whyTF is it going on here?