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Trigger-happy: Hillary Clinton vs. the World

Published by marco on

In An Ocean of Misdirection, Vote Hillary or we’re all gonna die! and The left’s answer: blame everything on the Russians, I tried to organize my thoughts about the upcoming election, with dubious success. I discussed the intense propaganda effort behind demonizing everything that is not Hillary. In this article, I try to build a more solid case against that tremendous push.

Female Dissent

Taking on Clinton these days is not so easy, especially for those on the left. In the US of A, if you’re left of center politically, then you’re a Democrat and they hate you if you’re not on board with Hillary.

The article The Hillary Push: Manipulation You Can Believe In by Carol Dansereau (CounterPunch) writes:

“The One Percent interests that long for Hillary to be President are doubtlessly thrilled with how things are going. It’s not just that vital issues are being ignored. It’s also that the screws are being tightened on anyone who would consider not voting for Hillary. The wealthy beneficiaries of business-as-usual must be enjoying the spectacle of “progressives” attacking anyone straying from the One Percent script. A friend of mine was called “idiotic” the other day when she mentioned possibly voting for a third party candidate, for example. I personally was labeled “puerile” for pointing out that submission to the manipulation that surrounds us only makes things worse.”

My sentiments are pretty much in line with the desperate cry of anger and anguish expressed in the article Long Drive Home by Kim Nicolini (CounterPunch) (emphasis added).

“I am an ant crawling up the street in my car, and all around me, I feel the complete disregard of human lives across the globe. I feel those hideous looming heads that have dominated international media (the blustering red faced pig and the stone faced blonde smirker), and I feel their torrents of shit spilling over the mountains like an apocalyptic flood. I feel sick and invisible.”
“I don’t want a part of any of it. Hear me now. I am not for any of this, and none of this is for me. I am stranded on the island of lost souls who are the salt and breath of this earth and who are being stomped to the ground one political move at a time, regardless of parties. Parties are just marketing strategies, and I’m not buying any of it.
I look at Hillary Clinton’s smug face, and I think, “What the fuck do you know about anything you privileged cunt?” Excuse my French. Do you have any idea what it means to be a working full time mom who does all her own housework and laundry and fixes the broken sink and builds the school projects in the garage? Do you know what it’s like to be a woman whose only option in the world for survival is the sale of her own body? When was the last time you were at a Coin Star cashing in change and being charged 8 cents on the dollar to buy something for your kid? I was there two weeks ago. Hillary Clinton you are no icon for women.”

“Fuck you Hillary Clinton. Fuck you Feminists who think she is some kind of revolutionary answer to the glass ceiling. I know what the glass ceiling feels like. Hillary has never been part of that world. Smug. Privileged. Clueless. And full of power and money. Shut the fuck up.

“Girlfriends of the world, I got news for you. Feminists themselves are for the most part elitist leftists who think they are populists. They have not been down in the trenches.”

That bitch doesn’t care about me or you. She cares about herself. She has primed herself to win this election, and she will because she has the cultural and economic capital to do it. And she is mobilizing her power to run the final stretch as I type these words. And she has left me feeling betrayed and invisible. Fuck you twice Hillary.

Angry but honest. And more than a bit on target.

Nicolini fervently describes a candidate who doesn’t care at all about the things that her campaign says she cares about. Hillary’s expressed platform is belied by her actual experience. Democrats wants us to vote for her to get all of the wonderful things that they list in her platform. Her past effect on most of those very same issues has been negative.

It is not believable to me that she will clean up Wall Street, that she will empty our prisons, that she will get us single-payer health care. Even if she were to make a half-hearted attempt in those directions, I would expect her to give up more quickly than even Barack Obama did. Her whole platform is—even as described by Reich and Michelle Obama (if you actually read what they write; see Vote Hillary or we’re all gonna die!)—Clinton is not as terrible as Trump, who is a child-raping Nazi.

Who won the 1%?

That’s all that really matters, isn’t it? In a live-blog of one of the debates, Idiot Winds at Hofstra: Notes on the Not-So-Great Debate by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch), points out that

“Campaign contributions from white billionaires have favored Hillary by a 20-to-1 margin over Trump.”

That’s odd, isn’t it? Are you comfortable that the 1% just as heartily approves of Hillary as you do? The article Trump Unchained by Mike Whitney (CounterPunch) builds on this point.

“When you turn on Washington Week (Gwen Ifil) on public TV and see an assembled panel of six pundits–three conservatives and three liberals–and all six turn out to love Hillary and hate Trump; you can be reasonably certain that the election is rigged, because that’s what rigging is. Rather than providing background information about the candidate’s position on the issues so voters can make an informed decision, the media uses opinionmakers to heap praise on one candidate while savagely denigrating the other. The obvious goal is to shape public opinion in the way that best suits the interests of the people who own the media and who belong to the establishment of rich and powerful elites who run the country, the 1 percent. In this case, the ruling class unanimously backs Hillary Clinton, that much is obvious. (Emphasis added.)”

War, War and More War

 Ted Rall: September 9th, 2016In this next section, I’ve included citations from other writers, all discussing the various transgressions in Hillary’s past as Senator and Secretary of State

Idiot Winds at Hofstra: Notes on the Not-So-Great Debate by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch) goes on to discuss her military bona fides. Here Hillary and the Donald are equally gung-ho.

“A new report on the insanely expensive F-35 fighter jet shows that the plane barely flies in cloudy weather. Both candidates support building a fleet of these Cold War relics, as does Bernie Sanders, who wants them based at the airport in Burlington.”

But we really need to cut entitlements to cut down the debt, right Hillary and Donald? Et tu, Bernie?

Let’s move on to the climate, the problem that Trump doesn’t admit exists—and Hillary ignores. So, for that matter, does the Obama administration. Sure, he throws a few shekels to alternate energy, but it’s a drop in the ocean—into which he’s allowed more drilling platforms for sweet, sweet petroleum.

“Since the moment Bernie Sanders endorsed Clinton, the Queen of Chaos has scrubbed any mention of the perils of climate change from her prepared speeches. Perhaps Lester Holt will venture to ask a question about this vexing subject tonight. He could start with a story from today’s news: “Under Obama US will fail to meet emission targets.””

Since Hillary, the Obamas and the Democratic Party all agree that Hillary will be a continuation of the progressive glory that has been Obama’s reign, let’s see what he’s up to.

“In related news, the Obama administration quietly announced today drastic rule changes that will substantially weaken the Endangered Species Act by placing complicated and intractable burdens on environmental groups working to protect rare species. The rule changes are deemed a huge gift to the timber, mining and oil cartels. (Emphasis added.)”

Hooray! Anything for energy independence, right? Go Team Obama!

The article Billions Down the Afghan Drain by Brian Cloughley (CounterPunch) rightly asks if anyone running for president even wants to admit that we’re still at war in Afghanistan.

“Certainly there should be a plan to get Afghanistan out of its quagmire, but the NYT does not point out that American taxpayers were duped into supporting the fatuous US-NATO war by rabid propaganda, led by such as the NYT, which, we should remember, was an enthusiastic supporter of the war on Iraq.”

You know who else was an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq war? Hillary. And then there’s Obama’s support for Saudi Arabia, which Hillary and Trump will both happily continue. Saudi Arabia is killing Yemenis as fast as it can, with U.S. support and U.S. weapons. A lot of them.

The article Increasing Support for the War on Yemen Is Obviously Insane by Daniel Larison (American Conservative) explains:

“Even by the WSJ‘s standards, this is an insane position to take. The funeral massacre last week was obviously not carried out by “mistake.” The coalition repeatedly hit the same target to maximize casualties, and it chose the target because many high-ranking political and military figures were in attendance. The coalition wanted to hit the target, and it did so several times in a row. They weren’t concerned about the hundreds of civilians killed and injured in the process, and it is absurd to claim that they were. When presented with an obvious atrocity committed by a U.S. client, the WSJ predictably ignores the evidence and insists on even more aggressive support for the offending government.”

It’s not just the WSJ that ignores it. The Obama administration is really only pretending to reconsider its support of Saudi Arabia. If Saudis having carried out 9–11 wasn’t enough to shake U.S. support, then I can’t think of anything that would. Obama isn’t going to do anything of the sort in the last weeks of his administration. Hillary wouldn’t let him, and he wouldn’t dream of dictating which massacres she should support and/or encourage during her upcoming reign.

Moving on, the article Indictment: US Guilty of War Crimes by Norman Pollack (CounterPunch) discusses a NYT article about the lives of people tortured by the CIA, with emphasis on those from Guantánamo.

“The US plays hard ball. There appears to be no resting, either political party, the public at large, and when not directly implicated America has cultivated proxies worldwide to do its mission.”

Are we really going to claim that a Hillary presidency will be easier on political prisoners than a Trump presidency would? You can’t possibly believe that.

Hillary Clinton’s Axis of Evil by Pepe Escobar (CounterPunch)

“Anticipating an outcome of the US presidential election as a remix of the 1972 Nixon landslide, Hillary has also coined, George “Dubya” Bush-style, a remixed axis of evil: Russia, Iran and “the Assad regime”.

“That’s not even counting China, which, via “aggression” in the South China Sea, will also feature as a certified foe for the Founding Mother of the pivot to Asia.”

Hooray. Looks like any Americans interested in peace can go piss up a rope for the next 4—if not 8—years. And here again we are forced to turn to Trump as the voice of reason, defying not just the Democratic War Party, but also the Republican one:

“Donald Trump once again made a rational point – expressing his wish for a normalized working relationship with Russia. […] Here’s what Trump said; “I don’t like Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS. Russia is killing ISIS and Iran is killing ISIS.””
“In parallel, the deafening talk about Washington now advancing a Plan C in Syria is nonsense. There has never been a Plan C; only Plan A, which was to draw Russia into another Afghanistan. It did not work with the controlled demolition of Ukraine. And it will not work in Syria […]”

In the video Redacted Tonight #119 by Lee Camp (YouTube), he says

“We are children. Look, kids get into schoolyard fights for basically two reasons: to defend their perceived honor or to steal their lunch money. They never do it to bring democracy to the other kids.

Remember when Hillary was Senator and Secretary of State? And tried to stop all of these wars? Neither do I.

She and her merry crew are quite on board with all of this violence—all in the name of humanitarianism, all perpetrated in America’s name.

Getting Away with Murder (as it were)

If Hillary’s done such bad stuff, why is she still at large? The article To Win The Presidency, Sacrifice Law by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice) (a lawyer) discusses Trump’s accusation that Hillary should be in jail. The privileged have always gotten away with a lot of things for which the lower classes would be jailed.

“There’s damn good reason to believe that had Clinton been anyone else, she would have been prosecuted and, if convicted, sentenced to prison. Lesser government employees have enjoyed a vacation at Club Fed for lesser recklessness. And had there been an independent prosecutor, that might well have been the outcome.

“Trump wasn’t being a dictator, claiming the authority to jail his political opponent. […] Try deleting stuff from your computer while under congressional subpoena and see how it works out for you. […] unless you’re of the view that important government officials aren’t held to the same law as the rest of us, efforts to contort Trump’s point into some Machiavellian ploy are ridiculous.

“[…]

“Watching Rachel Maddow last night, dripping with smug self-righteousness […] it occurred to me that everyone has abandoned serious and mature thought in favor of throwing whatever feces is available. […] So be it. We get the government we deserve.

Indeed we do.

See Syria: Hillary’s lever to topple Russia for a discussion of the main flashpoint.