IN THE AGE OF ALL THINGS HILLARY

“You gotta do what you gotta do.”

                 Bill Clinton to Bob Dole, circa 1996

“Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion.”

                 Hillary Clinton, April, 2015

Question: what grown up person would attempt to entice potential followers with such transparently phony goo? Answer: someone who will say or do anything to get what she wants.

We are now in the age of “All things Hillary” and its major pastime – Hillary speculation – what will be her latest “brand”, who will her Republican opponent be, what about the deleted emails, can she keep Bill in tow, will she win?  The speculation pushes down, down to the depths of dark suspicion when one contemplates “the details” of what is known about what Hillary actually does – the lies (“the convenience of one [email] device,” “We were under fire in Bosnia”), the opportunism (support for gay marriage in 2013), and hypocrisy (women’s equality and Saudi money for the Clinton Foundation), the incompetence (healthcare reform, early 1990s, Russia, Benghazi),  – and, when one begins to wonder just how many unknown crooked deals, suborned henchmen, and destroyed lives have followed in her wake. Like Husband Bill, she does what she thinks she’s gotta do.   

Consider the breath-taking arrogance of this motif combined with a Jonathan Gruber-like contempt for the “average American” voter in the crosshairs of Ms. Clinton’s cynical campaign positioning.  Gruber and the former First Lady possess some of the same hefty integrity deficits – the conviction that their vastly superior intelligence substitutes perfectly for honesty and transparency, and an irresistible impulse of venality -- favors and influence in exchange for cash. Gruber lined his pockets as a highly paid consultant, aka, front man, for the Democrats early in Obama’s first term as they crafted the Obama Care deception, now immortalized by the President’s infamous imprimatur of dishonesty, “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor.” Gruber was later captured on a You Tube video bragging about his duplicity and sneering at the rubes he thought he so easily snookered.  Hillary and her spouse have raked in millions of dollars with their Clinton Foundation by fronting for causes whose beneficiaries could only be deeply embarrassed by how the Clinton’s many gross and hypocritical personal and professional dealings openly clash with their façade of philanthropy and mock the humanitarian ideals they pretend to care about. The sometimes comical but troubling conjunction of Hillary’s lofty passion for women’s rights and well-being and Bill’s “un-lofty” passion for women would make for a fascinating study in social pathology – who enables whom?   

No high powered, code-breaking apparatus need be employed to decipher what Hillary has in mind as a “champion for the little guy,” check, I mean “little gal.”  Like her former Boss in the White House she operates with a remarkably unselfconscious, delusional air of superiority and condescension, unable to comprehend how ludicrous the notion is that everyday Americans need or want her or anyone remotely like her in any serious capacity. The ego-charged condescension perfected by President Obama, perhaps is best captured by his humble confession to House Democrats back in 2008: “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.”   

For both Obama and Hillary America is in a terrible slump out of which only they can lift us. How did their egos become so bloated and how did they achieve such a thorough inoculation from reality? Surrounding themselves by sycophants and power gruppies no doubt richly contributed to the massive ego warping. Also, the years of marinating in the juices of a leftist ideology turns politics into a search for the oppressed and the invention of victim classes – manipulated, helpless, blameless – victims who do not fully grasp the reality of their exploitation, and most importantly, need champions, as Hillary puts it, to affirm their status as victims, stir their righteous resentment and focus it on the oppressors. Resentment mixed with self-righteousness produces the potent cocktail served by the left.  Subtract the resentment, envy, and demonization of the opposition that fuels the post-1970s leftist politics, all that remains is corruption and cynicism. “Everyday Americans need a champion” is Hillary at the apex of her mountainous cynicism.  And the vapid, silly script indicates how stupid she believes the voters must be.   

Perhaps the theme song of the Hillary Clinton campaign should be a 70s tune lifted from the repertoire of one of Bill Clinton’s many “friends”, Barbra Streisand, “People Who Need People” suitably arranged to express the unique Clintonesque sense of noblesse oblige: “We the helpless, average people desperately need Hillary and her special anointed people to be our champions.”  Hillary “in charge” at the helm of the Ship of State means that we will all be “the luckiest people in the world” – lucky, maybe, just like Libyan Ambassador, Chris Stevens and the other three Americans who died in Benghazi – eulogized by Hillary’s “What difference does it make”? or the legion of Clinton associates over the years from Little Rock to Washington DC who ended up dead or in prison – James McDougal, convicted White Water partner, Vince Foster, Hillary Law Partner, Ed Willey – Clinton fund raiser, and Dan Lassater, Clinton supporter and fund-raiser to name a few. 

Hillary as President will be in charge in an East German, Erich Honecker sort of way which in the crudest terms means: “we, the ruling class know what is best for you and you will do what we tell you to do.”  The East German way of equality and plenty for all for Honecker and his CP henchmen also meant for them the enjoyment of an enviable standard of living compared with the “average” East German – better schools for their children, better health care, a different (more flexible) set of rules to maneuver around – sound vaguely familiar? Smarter and highly virtuous, they were entitled to their lofty and comfortable perches and a requirement for telling the truth and following the rules that was just for them … optional. “Entitlement” is also a word often associated with Hillary. 

What might we expect from Hillary Clinton as a champion?  Again, her former Boss provides a preview best captured in his 2010 Univision broadcast to his followers:  “We're gonna punish our enemies, and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.” No better concise description could be found for the modus operandi of the Clintons and their brass knuckle political style that seems to resemble a mix of the late Peróns, Juan and Eva, and that wonderful duo of graft and greed, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos.

Volumes can and have been written about what happens to people who get in Hillary’s way and the occasional woman who deigns to object to Bill’s unwanted attention. Travelgate, for those who may have forgotten, maybe, is Hillary at her best as a champion for the little person. When taking over the White House in 1993 she ordered the firing of travel office director Billy Dale and other long time staffers with the trumped up accusation of “sloppy accounting.” Dale and his staffers were in Hillary’s way since she wanted to give the jobs to her “friends” from Arkansas. To the victors go the spoils, as it were. The staffers were innocent of any wrong doing, but lost their jobs and had their careers ruined. This is old history, but history with the Clintons, their history, does seem to repeat itself in a sleazy, predictable pattern. They do this sort of thing and always get away with it. Why would they change?  Grifting, trimming, lying are written into their political DNA.  It has worked well for them.  

Denied the triumphant return to the White House for the second time, by Trump's “deplorables” and “irredeemables” there is reason to hope that the Age of All Things Hillary is past.  Still, there is Jason in Halloween.   “She's back!” Oh my God!