Might be time to get off Facebook. Already, otherwise sensible people I know are beginning to talk up ‘Hillary in 2016’. I shouldn’t be surprised; it must take some effort, and some practice, to persuade oneself into a state of enthusiasm for this monster. You’d want to get an early start.
These aspiring auto-hypnotists are, of course, some of the same people who delight in making fun of the poor Teabaggers. Now admittedly, the latter are rather silly. But if — it doesn’t seem likely, but if — somebody like Rand Paul is the Republican nominee in 2016, then although I don’t ordinarily buy the lesser-evil argument, as applied to duopoly electoral politics, I might make an exception in this case. There can surely be no reasonable doubt that Rand Paul would be a much lesser evil than Hillary.
Here’s the New York Times:
Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton?
WASHINGTON — AFTER nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the neoconservative movement is back, using the turmoil in Iraq and Ukraine to claim that it is President Obama, not the movement’s interventionist foreign policy that dominated early George W. Bush-era Washington, that bears responsibility for the current round of global crises.
Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat of American foreign policy.
The idea that neocons have been in the ‘wilderness’ during the Obie years seems rather strange to me, though of course Hillary is and always has been much more deeply committed to the neocon program than the pathetic outgunned nonentity who currently lives in the White House, desperately trying to split all the differences he can find. Even stranger, then, is the idea that an alliance between neocons and Hillary might be something to express in the future tense or subjunctive mood. The Clintons — and Hillary in particular — have always been committed, aggressive interventionists and sedulous water-carriers for Israel. From a neocon point of view, what’s not to like?
The Times item itself implicitly acknowledges the fact — as usual with the Times, you get to the good stuff around paragraph 17 or so:
Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in The New Republic this year that “it is clear that in administration councils [Hillary] was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya.”
… Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.
The Hitler comparison is like a Masonic handshake for the neocon brotherhood. Here he is again, folks! Good old Adolf Hitler! What would we do without him? And of course we all know what ‘promoting democracy’ means in this context; it means aerial bombardment, and often enough it means boots on the ground — though never, alas, Max Boots on the ground.
My friends — the ones who will undoubtedly work themselves up into a lather of hysterical enthusiasm for this Lady Macbeth, by the time 2016 rolls around — will surely point out that Hillary is relatively gay-friendly and favors abortion. Which is undoubtedly true. These are good things, and might arguably tip the scales if she weren’t also an aspiring mass murderer.
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Update — July 9
I spoke too soon, of course. Even a Teabagger can be smart enough to sell out. Here’s young Rand in National Review recently:
How many times must Israel hear this call? Children are murdered — please show restraint. Cafés and buses are bombed — please show restraint. Towns are victimized by hundreds of rockets — please show restraint while you bury your dead once again.
I think it is clear by now: Israel has shown remarkable restraint. It possesses a military with clear superiority over that of its Palestinian neighbors, yet it does not respond to threat after threat, provocation after provocation, with the type of force that would decisively end their conflict.
But sometimes restraint can work against you. Sometimes you just have to say, enough is enough.
So back to Square One. The lesser-evil theory is as dead as it’s always been.
Lovely Zusammenfassung, Herr Vater. And much appreciated (should you find yourself second guessing the worthiness of this sabbatical away from your sabbatical). But, yeah, stay away from Facebook, like, for real.
A couple of write-ups concerning Hills on German teevee, on which the Evangelical Church leader – depending on the headline and how it’s translated – either read her the riot act, dragged her over the coals, told her where to get off, showed her up, or made her look like a fool. I haven’t seen it myself, so have to make due with these and thought you and some of your other German readers might appreciate:
http://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article129862823/Margot-Kaessmann-liest-Hillary-Clinton-die-Leviten.html
http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/medien/-hillary-clinton-bei-jauch-kaessmann-fuehrt-die-clinton-vor,10809188,27733380.html
…of course, that’s the great thing about the news. It’s reliable. It’s an intravenous line of routine bullshit that can always give you something to talk about. As you stand on the corner, screaming mild obscenities about the end times, you become part of it, swept up in a grand narrative that, in its inhumanity, gives you the very thing you’ve wanted all along: reassurance that the beast’s belly will continue to be the same place of incomplete, yet reliable, shelter that it has always been.
“Hillary Clinton has begun distancing herself from President Barack Obama, suggesting that she would do more to woo Republicans and take a more assertive stance toward global crises.” — WSJ, yesterday
Of course, this is all about marketing considerations only. Inside the box, there is zero difference between Killary and Zero.
I don’t see lesser-evilism among Hillary’s supporters. I see people who endorse her neocon foreign policy, her coziness with Wall St, and her unapologetic embrace of AIPAC. There are no mysteries with Hillary — it’s all known and out in the open. And thus we know exactly what her supporters believe in and the type of government and policies they want.
Never met such a Gorgon . . . I don’t really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Hilary Clinton is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair.
A Gorgon is a demon’s spawn, meaning Chelsea, so it’s no surprise that there’s a striking resemblance.
I want to know what the fuck they’re looking at through those binoculars! And if she’s out looking for Nessie (my guess), who’s cooking Bill dinner? Women nowadays!
Welcome back MJS! And I actually like High Arka’s sentiment. Shoveling shit only means it’s moved around a little, and you’re probably still standing in it. What am I saying? I don’t know, I’m stoned.
What they’re looking at is North Korea. True fact.
Isn’t Kim Il-Sung always looking through binoculars at shit? Maybe their trying to close the binocular gap.
noc-noc…
I hope they tested those binoculars out before handing them to Madame Secretary because there used to be a pair bouncing around West Pac that focussed to reveal Anne-Margaret performing at a Bob Hope show sans culottes, or mebbe ’twas Joey what’s-her-name. This was before the troops became born again.
I see chomskyzinn’s observation falling into the marketing that Michael Dawson identifies – in that sometimes the branding is an accurate depiction of the brand. In this case, however, I cannot help but see that it leaves the field open to alternate considerations, such as the senator who shares the name of a Court and Commission, who is rarely mentioned amongst liberals regarding her indistinguishable stance on foreign policy, but blusters-a-plenty about reining in Big Bad Wall Street, although we all know she would do no such thing.
The saddest thing about that scenario is that I’d almost relish her ascendancy just to witness Hillls’ meltdown, the proportions of which would be singular on the political stage. Then I am reminded it’s a stage.
Bingo! Especially regarding Elizabeth Warren.
Warren is at least as fake as Zero was circa 2007. And she would never, ever be able to score the cash she’d need to outdo Killary, who is all but neurected* already.
*”I need to get my dad a neurection.”
As long as we insist on retaining the two-party system we will always have to choose the (perceived) lesser of two evils. The simple score voting method completely solves this problem, and this has been understood since the French Revolution. To quote my own website about this:
“The only thing that will ever work is the simplest form of score voting. It is so simple. Give no votes at all, or one to ten votes (a “score”) to any number of candidates you wish (within some reasonable number, say, 20). Simply add the votes up. SIMPLE! If you give someone eight votes rather than ten, you will have only sacrificed 20% of your vote, of course. Vote artfully, NOT artlessly! (Do not deny yourself the power of strategy.) (If a voter accidentally gives a candidate two scores, count the lower one.) This fraudulent “democracy” could have been repaired in this simple way centuries ago.”
The “IRV movement” was a total fraud supported by super-rich NGOs. It lacked many crucial things like:
• maximal freedom from the sacrifice of votes due to the spoiler effect
• unequivocal absence of complications
• enablement of vote counting by simple addition at voting stations
So why not get out and demand simple score voting? No one comments on the websites I started that explain this, and it’s very depressing. On election days when fools are standing around holding up signs to support their favorite lesser evils, I hold up signs that say:
“VOTING FOR CANDIDATES IS A WASTE OF GAS. YOU ARE SUPPORTING YOUR OWN PARASITES. GET SIMPLE SCORE VOTING.”
Our single-selection voting system is the greatest conspiracy of all time; our false democracy is a stupendous, pervasive, yet ultra-subtle intergenerational conspiracy. 9/11 is utterly trivial in comparison. I’ll add this to my newest website when I get over being depressed and furious:
http://globalmutiny.wordpress.com/
And what the hell more do we need to know about Hillary the Scumbag than this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd1ghag5Y
Welcome back Comrade Smith! I was actually so sure that you had something to say about that awful Hillary weeks ago that when I saw no activity on your blog, I thought that you might have lost your passionate hatred. I’m glad that such is not the case as you and I do share the same passionate hatred of her. Enough cannot be said about how awful she is and in her case, I definitely subscribe to the notion of voting for the lesser evil. Hell, even in Obie’s case, I advocated for voting for the lesser evil as there’s no way a Republican in the White House would have had as much latitude in evil doing than our current Emperor. But of course the comrades rejected that based on principle.
As for “score voting” as suggested by blues, well, they have that system in Australia (so I hear) and they still elect assholes.
Incidentally, I support Comrade Arka’s suggestion of writing about things other than the “news” if you ever get writer’s block. Why not draw from your readers’ experiences in far flung locations such as yours truly! On the anniversary of the worst accident in my life (that didn’t involve any cars), I can give you a full reportage on the Canadian health care system. The comrades in Germany or England can contribute with their topic du jour. This is of course just a suggestion and truth be told, I prefer your sarcasm to anything I would ever write!
Thanks for the kind words. I’d love to have a report on the Canadian health-care system!
Merkin, you sell yourself short, your comments are wonderful. And I love your idea of electing the Republican as the lesser evil, your thought on latitude is the exact one I had prior to the election. And boy has it borne out!
NO! They absolutely do not have anything like score voting in Australia.
What they have is a +House of Representatives+ that is elected via a form of (the abominable) IRV (instant runoff voting) (which they choose to call +preferential voting+), which I condemned in the above comment. And they also have a +Senate+ that is elected via something (also abominable) called +single transferable vote+ (or +STV+), which is like IRV but allows for something called +proportional representation+ (which is just as bad if not used in conjunction with score voting).
The IRV movement is very well funded, and many of its advocates tend to promote it by constantly using outright deception (And they strangely claim to long for eventual +proportional representation+) .
No wonder the Aussies have lousy government. Simple score is what they need.
IRV leads to extreme complexities (even though its advocates always deny this). One aspect of it is that voters must +rank+ candidates sequentially “in order of preference” (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…). With score voting, the voters give a +grade+ (that is, a score) indicating simple degree of preference (and the counting method is much different). It’s a different way of thinking. And with score, the votes are simply added up.
(I always try to provide a bit of useful information, not just buzzwords.)
Comrade Smith, I’m on it! I’ll send you my personal experience with the Canadian health care system in the next few days. You will have to edit it of course because I’m sure my long and personal tale may need to be truncated to pertinent points.
Paul, thanks for the kind remarks. I’ll try to live up to your expectations when I file my reportage with Comrade Smith.
And blues, excuse my ignorance but I did think that IRV as they have it in Australia is the same as the score voting.