If We Can’t Have Sanders, You’ll Get Trump
And the Crimes of Hillary Clinton
I wrote the following early in 2016, predicting Trump’s victory when Sanders still had a look in. As we know the Democratic Party centrists got their way: Clinton was put up, and so Agent Orange got the White House. The message of this piece is still relevant because, as ever is so often the case, liberals haven’t been able to face our political reality.
The Democratic Establishment has chosen suicide over evolution. In their absurd bid to get the She-Clinton elected at any cost they’ve denied their base its wish, and their party a future. In throwing forth the most Establishment candidate in this, a time of unusually high anti-establishment feeling, they have given Trump the White House. Yea, the Overton window is spinning all the way to the Right, and the shards are about to pepper our faces.
But why? In the same way Nixon was desperate to prevent good governance abroad (Chile to Cambodia), the DNC did their darnest to disallow a progressive president at home. Bernie Sanders was undermined in a way reminiscent of Henry A. Wallace’s mistreatment in 1944. This was done even though it was the Old Man – and only him – who possessed a clear lead over Trump (recent polls have put the latter and Hillary at almost equal footing).
What the Democratic elite and their sympathisers are willfully blind to is this: the current system – labelled “oligarchical” by Princeton political scientists – can not be saved. No amount of polish or steady steerage. Not even by, good grief, Clixon and the return of Kissinger. To borrow from the banner: capitalism is no in crisis, it is crisis.
(After-all, as Alexander Cockburn wrote, in ’08 it was the mega-rich who were reaching for Das Kapital as the left flailed. Those in the know know its over, as they move onto the marrow.)
And if the Left aren’t the ones to oversee the transition from late capitalism to goodness-knows-what, the Right will be. Just as Stewart Hall and Ralph Miliband once warned old Labour, if leftists are not willing to become radical when History demands it, their enemies will inevitably set the next consensus. Britain got Thatcher.
The only thing we appear to learn from history is that no one learns anything from history. American liberals, with their characteristic revulsion toward imagination, have made exactly the same mistake, this time with Clinton II. Believing that open corruption (in the form of cash-for-favours with Earth’s dodgiest dictators), obvious opportunism (marriage is exclusively between and a man and a woman until it isn’t) and outright lying (about her “life-threatening” entry into Bosnia) are all fine, worth fighting for even. That’s just what we deserve.
Hillary is no longer subject to a FBI investigation, but there are – if the US has any conception of justice left – some areas that could still open her up to legalistic challenges.
And, of course, there’s always the court of public opinion should the traditional channels fail. With every drip from the email leak, we are finding more depths to which she will sink. How fitting would it be for the name that made itself privatizing Arkansas state would meet its downfall as a result of making the public private during its time as Secretary of State.
1. Her shady dealings with aforementioned international crooks, brutes and murderers – Mark Rich to Nazarbayev to Mubarak – in a process subverting extremely lax caps on campaign contributions. In other words, she is using a “charitable organisation” as a front while blood money is funneled to her vanity project.
Please take a look at Todd S. Purdum’s excellent investigation into the Clinton Corp. corruption here.
2. Using her position in the State Department to remind all of Central and South America just who is boss. Not since Reagan have we seen the USA so committed to de-weeding its self-declared backyard: Hillary helped undermine the democratic government of Honduras and add legitimacy to the military thugs who stole power through a phony election. She pressured reluctant neighbouring states to toe this line and join in the “normalization of relations” process. In plainer language: accepting that might equals right. (I imagine dear Eric Blair would spew he could.)
3. Her money laundering in channeling DNC funds (money for the party and not an individual) toward her campaign. Note: this is also anti-democratic, seeing as it’s left Bernie Sanders at a serious disadvantage… should anyone care about that sort of thing anymore.
4. Her on-going and strident support for a Saudi elite which, from what little we can discern, played a pivotal role in 9/11. Turns out the aiding state actor wasn’t Iraq after-all! Congress, in acknowledgement of this, have recently approved a bill that will allow its victims to sue the Gulf monarchy.
4. is potentially most destructive for Clinton Corp. Not even the centrists could allow themselves to stand for that. Promising mass-surveillance and promoting mass-murderers may be A-ok, but surely not that.
When Trump’s militia are patrolling the streets and the opportunity for progressive politics has been lost to another generation, maybe then the Democrats will finally realise that a pathological pursuit of compromise just ain’t good enough. For all the good it’ll do.
Image by Isaac Cruikshank.
