In just a few paragraphs I’m going to destroy this elitist, corporate-concocted, conniving political construction who bears the torch of Henry Kissinger, military globalism, ‘At-least-I’m-not-a-Republican’ domestic policy and the continuation of everything that is morally abject about Barack Obama’s presidency. Of course, I’m talking about Hillary Clinton.
I write this in advance of all the people who will be trying to convince me (stupidly, might I add) that the corporate-state complex is a side-issue, and not actually the death-knell of democracy. Obviously, for anyone paying attention to politics beyond the headlines of Politico, America has been an oligarchy for decades, and only the doublethink of a Clinton supporter can somehow squeeze that out of the equation.
Look, Bernie Sanders built his campaign from small donations. He disavowed Kissinger and the Iraq War. He made moral arguments, not purely strategic ones. He represented a true shift from the globalist, technocratic, elitist values that every politician is expected to embody. He offered a different type of politician, a New Deal Democrat with a record to back his once-mainstream ideas. And like all good things, he was forsaken for the pant-suit and the orange finger.
So here come some paragraphs, about why Hillary Clinton is a fool and if you are a left-leaning person who is with her, you are also a fool:
She Stands With Us / Fighting For Us / AdAge Slogan 2016
So Hillary Clinton is a populist, eh? This puts one in the position of having to make an incoherent argument, an argument too naive for anyone to make in good faith: that Hillary Clinton, after riding the wave of cash from Wall Street, corporations, hedgefunds and billionaires to party victory, will follow her conscience and progressive values instead of the interests of the powerful people who she has known for 30 years and who funded her family to where she is today.
If you seek to make this argument, you have a problem. Would you ever make an argument like this for Jeb Bush, who received over $400,000 from Goldman Sachs? Of course not, because he’s a Republican. Have Democrats transcended big money politics? Will Hillary Clinton be the first politician in history to bite the hand of the special interests that fed her? Sure, keep telling the ‘Bernie Bros’ that they’re the naive and idealistic ones…
What’s Truly Important is Continuing the Policies of Barack Obama
Of course! The tenets of the mainstream Democratic Party are all we need to keep America prosperous. If you believe this, I won’t take the pains to explain that Western civilization is almost literally scorching and sinking beneath the sea, or that Barack Obama beat Apple in 2008 as AdAge’s Marketer of the Year for a good reason: moral policy doesn’t sell.
But here’s just a brief list of the Bush Administration extremisms that have been normalized by President Obama, and will probably be heightened by hawk-in-chief Hillary Clinton:
Indefinite detention, the NDAA, extreme hostility to whistleblowers, continued foreign interventions, drone program to kill 85 unidentified targets out of every 100, vow to keep war with Iran on the table, vow to support Israeli militancy to any end, mass surveillance, mass deportations, mass non-violent arrests, the erosion of the 4th Amendment to ‘keep us safe’, almost cut Social Security, health care program written by the insurance companies, TPP, (Yeah, Bill said he wouldn’t sign NAFTA in the 90s. He did.) violation of Magna Carta to kill anyone in the world at will without trial, increased militancy of police, extremely meager anti-climate change provisions, intense co-operation between Google and the White House, corporate-state incest, general oligarchy and militant globalism AKA imperialism
But, as every mediocre mind has argued since the beginning of time, “Thank God for Hillary/Obama, or we would have McCain/Romney/Trump!” “Thank God for Bill Clinton, or we would have Bob Dole.” “Thank God for Stalin, or Hitler would have won WWII.” This garbage ape mindset is crafted out of fear and self-hatred. It is electoral slavery and a materialist trap.
The truth is that the Democratic Party has no reason to exist other than “We’re murdering, lying, cheating Republicans from 30 years ago, yes, but at least we won’t cut social programs, so vote for us or roll the dice”
These worthless parties must dissolve sooner rather than later. The political revolution should have happened on the left AND the right. The right got its Trump, and the left chose Clinton? For shame. For utter shame, that we picked Jeb Bush (D) to lead. Disgusting.
Vote for Her or You Get Trump!
Oh, I already sort of answered this, but this is a game that progressives will never win. You will NEVER win. Vote for her, so that she can…what? Remain exactly the snake she is, knowing that she’ll get every vote she needs just because the other guy is worse? No. That’s not a functioning democracy. If America was as exceptional as it pretends to be, that’d be the model of second-rate democracy we all laugh at. Or are we too exceptional for principles themselves, content with what the brokers hand down to us? The Republicans woke up and refused Bush, Rubio, and Cruz. And yet, the ‘left’ adopted a Clinton, a Republican hiding under the skinned wool of Bernie Sanders’ latest Tweets, as its own. How pathetic are the Democrats?
Experience matters most. I voted for experience, and leadership.
Note: Leadership camp is Young Sociopaths Training camp.
Now, this ‘experience’ argument is the most pathetic of them all. Truly sad, because ordinary people have bought into the technocracy, the ‘rational’ but completely irrational method of funneling back into the system exactly the same garbage it has always produced. We give 30 year careers and then reward them with job upgrades, because obviously, they know the ropes of broken ideologies more than anyone else, a heart of ash adept at running bureaucracy granted more opportunities to get the trains running on time. “I’m a progressive who gets things done”, she says, as she knows she speaks to children.
Tell me, who do ‘things get done’ for? Who do the police serve? Who does mass surveillance serve? The people, or the state?
If you answered: “The people”, you are too pure and too naive for this planet.
The technocracy, the bureaucracy, the corporate state, serves only itself. If you don’t believe this, you need to rewrite the last 50 years of American history, because Bernie is right and this nation has been bought and sold to the highest bidder. Want proof? Who keeps getting richer? And who keeps getting poorer? And what Democrats have behaved almost exactly as Republicans? Clintons! Clintons, Clintons, cruise missiles in Sudan and Iraq and Lybia and Yemen and drones and happy progressiveness as far as the eye can see.
But of course, the modern liberal says: “Drones keep us safe. The NSA keeps us safe.” No comment. Who is “us” anyway? The owners don’t even know who you are. You could die tomorrow and the silicon smile remains frozen upon the valley of stolen pensions and foreclosed homes. Stop being a slave and stop buying into ‘experience’ as a meaningful quality when electing a career politician to be a career politician. Garbage in, garbage out.
She is a woman! This is a victory for women everywhere!
If anyone can actually provide an argument for this position that isn’t airy-fairy collectivist bullshit, I’d love to hear it. As far as I can tell, the existence of a rich and powerful woman only benefits one rich and powerful woman. You’re as dumb as a straight white man voting for Trump expecting a European beauty queen and a jumbo jet.
You’re a fucking idiot, this article sucks. A strong foreign policy is needed to keep Americans safe, Bernie’s ideas are all way too big and go way too far, we live in realpolitik, suck it up and vote to keep Dems in the White House. You know as well as I do how bad conservatives are, so just embrace reality.
Well, at least now we’re being honest. There are no principles here, only the same center-right cliches that have dominated American politics since Nixon.
I, for one, refuse these games. I will not allow an imperialist plutocrat to wave Donald Trump before my face in order to get me to act out of fear.
As the son of an immigrant mother, I frankly am unconcerned about 4 years of Trump bringing a sledgehammer to American politics and creating a backlash so massive that his stupid wall will get dismantled by the next Dem in office. Anyone who has watched Code Geass understands that a fractured world can be united by a great villain in power. A villain who, like Clinton, may wield NATO against Russia and tip-toe along the lines of World War III. For God’s sake, that psycho Clinton is more of a Zionist than Trump, and will gladly bomb Iran on Netanyahu’s behalf.
The poorest people in America don’t vote. They’ve mostly given up on electoral politics. It is not a privilege whatsoever to shirk my civic duty and vote for a candidate who will never win, like Jill Stein. It is, actually, a far greater privilege to think that swallowing slow poison is preferable to tanking a broadsword to the chin.
One single blow can be managed more than a long death spiral into the mundane.