Hillary Clinton, the most earnest and qualified candidate, blocked by history...more obstructionism
“We are in a global struggle between liberal democracy
and a rising tide of illiberalism, authoritarianism and dictatorship.” Those
are the words of Hillary Clinton to a Montreal audience last night, as reported
by the Toronto Star. Urging activists and kneelers and protesters whom she sees
around the world, Clinton posits a victory since, “we are on the right side of
history”.
Promoting her book, “What Happened,” and hobbled by a
broken foot, Hillary soldiers on, as much to vindicate her astounding defeat in
the November 2016 presidential election, as to embolden women activists in
every field of human endeavor. She embodies the archetypal feminist, ambitious,
intellectually brilliant, assiduously prepared and studied, extremely hard
working and disciplined, and the target of every projectile from the
testosterone-infected male political establishment.
Both heroine and tragic victim of a culture which
seems incapable of sorting the wheat from the chaf, if the election of trump is
any indication, Hillary Clinton, the first woman on the ballot as a bonafide
presidential candidate of one of the two established parties, nevertheless,
will pass into the history books as one of the best presidents American never
had.
Caught in and by the vortex of anger, myopia,
narcissistic hubris and a converging tide of lies from both the trump bunker
and the Kremlin, the illiberalism she identifies has some visceral and
deep-seated misogyny that knows no nationalism, no geographic boundaries and no
specific political party. It is an intimate component in the white supremacy
movement, the oligarchic disease of the Kremlin, the racist anti-immigrant
street protests in Europe, and the war-mongering in the middle East and north
Africa. It is fostered, nurtured and illicitly reinforcing the rush to military
arms, gun sales, and the addictive embrace of hard power for its own sake.
The “hard-power” culture is so pervasive that Ms
Clinton herself became known as more “disposed” to the use of force than the
president under whom she served as Secretary of State, Barack Obama, the
reluctant warrior, undoubtedly to demonstrate that, just because she was a
woman did and does not mean that she is weak or “mamby-pamby,” as many
hardliners would like to think in order to dismiss her as a potential world
leader. (Remember Margaret Thatcher!)
When Mika Brezinski disclosed, on CBS’ 60 Minutes this
Sunday that she had learned her male
counterparts on the Morning Joe political talk show on MSNBC were paid fourteen times what she was getting as co-host with
her now life partner, Joe Scarborough, she shone a light into the dark corners
of the deep divide that still haunts the American culture and workplace. That
disparity between men and women at the top of a long-running television talk
show where salaries climb into the six or seven figure stratosphere regularly,
undermines both the legislative protections of women workers and the semblance
of equality that sees women serving in the top positions in the military.
Public fantasies, like the parade to which the world
is being subjected by the current ‘actor’ in the Oval Office, highlight the
truth beneath the surface of the mascara and the lip-stick, given the insulting veneer of “respect” that
fails to give cover to the pretender(s).
Ms Clinton, almost the inverse of her presidential
rival, in her Methodism, her scholarship and her attention to and mastery of the many details of the many
policy fronts to which a chief executive must attend, evoked echoes of her
brilliant and polished immediate predecessor, at a time when intellectual
excellence, including the threats borne out by respected science and the
academic community seem to be too discomfiting for the average voter,
especially those in the middle of the country. Policy, and the policy-wonks who
write it, are both much less than magnetic and charismatic than the glib “entertainers”
and “hucksters” like the current president. To many, they are boring, dull,
uninspiring and easily dismissed. (That was also the fate of former Liberal
leader, Michael Ignatieff, a human rights scholar from Harvard, when he
returned to Canada and ran for the Prime Minister’s office. He was obliterated
in a vote that elected a right-wing conservative aardvark, Stephen Harper.)
To Ms Clinton’s global conflict of illiberalism,
authoritarianism and dictatorship, we must cautiously and respectfully add, a
pervasive conflict between the genders.
Male autocracies can and do exist under many
political, ideological and military banners; in fact, war and tribalism are two
of the primary ingredients in many military and quasi-military conflicts….based
as they are on fear, insecurity, desperation and the need to overcome perceived
injustice. The notion of fairness, satiety, and the pursuit of equality are all
anathema to the warmongers among us and to the macho “tribe” of which trump
seeks to be ‘chief’. And there are so many highly sophisticated instances of
how men are still upbraided if they do not conform to the “macho” creed:
· Sports
network hosts berate the protection of NFL quarterbacks, as if they have become
prima donna’s (under the rule changes)
· In
the bars and pubs men who choose elementary teaching or nursing still have the
“fag” barbs shot their way, although the marksmen are a little less obvious in
their taunts.
· Young
boys are still being “coached” with the parental aphorism, ‘real boys don’t
cry” if they suffer an accidental injury.
· Don
Cherry continues to champion the hockey player who takes a shot to the head,
and gets back up to block another, before heading to the dressing room…”that’s
my kind of player!”
· Professional
athletes who have suffered a head “blow” and are required to submit to a
“concussion protocol” are still prone to minimize their symptoms, in spite of
the serious danger to their lives from traumatic brain injury
· Police
forces have been militarized to the tune of some $5.1 billion in the U.S. since
1997….police in the U.S. have fatally shot 782 people this year (according to
the Washington Post, as quoted by Chris Hedges in his truthdig.com column, Our
Ever-Deadlier Police State, October 22, 2017)
· LGBT
persons continue to suffer human rights violations, including employment
restrictions, and in many countries, imprisonment…just another example of the
“right” masking its inherent sexism and racism.
Some observers (including Malcolm Gladwell) have
argued convincingly that the Obama elections in which many white voters cast
votes for their first black president, ironically and paradoxically were then
‘freed’ from the stigma of being a racist (simply be casting that single vote)
both socially and in their own minds. And that tokenism may also have
contributed to the election of trump, given the illusion of an ethical and
moral escape route for some voters.
trump’s braggadocio about his blatant disrespect for
women was horrific and was also magnified by the Clinton campaign, with a blow-back from those who persist in seeing
liberals as effetes, snobs, self-righteous and to clever by half. It is an
obvious show of inverted snobbery when the voters without college degrees find
a candidate who panders to their kind of snobbery, bigotry, sexism and racism
as if he were one of them. The irony is that he is even less ‘one of them’ than
Ms Clinton who comes from a lower middle class family, and with excellent
grades, hard work and the discipline to graduate from Yale Law, along with her
husband has left a significant mark in United States history as a public
servant.
Ms Clinton prefers not to focus on
the global evidence of misogyny.,…preferring a more personal accounting by
pointing fingers at Comey and Putin among others. Comey’s letter late in the campaign
announcing his re-opening of the email investigation, and Putin’s alleged
interference in the social media campaign, while significant, do not take into
account of some macro factors such as:
· “Clinton-fatigue”
that hung like a low-lying fog over the political landscape,
· the
significant gap in “personal connection” that voters had with Obama as compared
with the more reserved and more ‘court-room’ stiff stump persona of Ms. Clinton
· the
failure of the Clinton campaign to take seriously the hollowing out of the
manufacturing sector and the job losses from outsourcing in states like
Michigan, Wisconsin an Ohio
· the
millions from private donors to the ‘right’ ‘small government’ attitude,
following presidential executive orders from Obama in a time of obstruction by
Republicans on every idea that came from the White House
The notion that one heard often throughout the
campaign was that although trump was ‘bad’ Ms Clinton was ‘worse’ demonstrates
just how distorted was, is and continues to be the prevailing myth’s power over
an electorate whose “drain the swamp” attitude (ironically it was Republicans
who held power in both houses of Congress for most of Obama’s term in office)
has effectively ham-strung all attempts at governance.
Now that we see both Bannon and trump committed to
overturning the Republican establishment and paradoxically and likely
intentionally chortling privately that ‘nothing is being done’ there is every
reason to believe that had Ms Clinton become president, the world would be
breathing more easily, the government would be making serious attempts to move
to “normal order” (as John McCain so fervently urges) and respect for public
institutions (in addition to the military) would be starting to return to
something measureable on public opinion polls.
Of course, that kind of speculation is of no comfort
to Ms Clinton or her supporters. It does, however, illustrate the distance off
course the United States has fallen, and without compass, or normal navigating
instruments, and a pilot untrained in instrument flying at night, the U.S. “airforce
One” as metaphor for the state, is merely a flying stage show seeking circus
crowds in campaign rallies as its substitute for authentic and reconciling leadership.
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