The Clinton calculus - News With Views

Hillary Clinton and her surrogates depend on public ignorance and misperception to win the election. A substantial amount of evidence spanning her entire public career from 1975 until the present reveal repeated instances of abuse of power, unlawful conduct, and false statements that she and her surrogates variously deny or contend are of no consequence. The divide between the Clinton depiction of the facts and reality is wide and stark.

The evidence reveals that Hillary Clinton channeled all of her emails illegally through private servers, putting classified information and human intelligence at risk in violation of the Espionage Act and State Department regulations and violating the Freedom of Information Act requirements concerning public access to unclassified communication.

The evidence reveals that Hillary Clinton and her top aides worked in tandem to provide access to the Secretary of State and assistance to individuals who, and entities that, made financial contributions to the Clinton Foundation.

The evidence reveals that Hillary Clinton was grossly negligent when she failed to act in response to pleas from Ambassador Christopher Stevens and others to the State Department, resulting in the deaths of the Ambassador; U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith; and CIA contractors Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty, as well as the injury of 12 others. The evidence further reveals that Hillary Clinton lied to the families of the fallen when she told them at the very time that they received the bodies that the lives were lost due to a spontaneous uprising in response to an anti-Islamic video when in fact she knew the losses to be due to an act of terrorism. Through surrogates and in direct statements she perpetuated that lie to the American people.

The evidence reveals that Hillary Clinton propounded false accusations against long time White House Travel Office employees, including then travel office Director Billy Dale, alleging that they had embezzled funds from the travel office. As more information came to light, it became apparent that Hollywood Producer and Inauguration Chair Harry Thomason and his business partner Damell Martin wanted their travel business, TMR, to do all of the bookings and related work that had been done by the travel office. Eventually certain of the travel office employees, including Director Billy Dale, were charged with crimes only to be completely exonerated due to a lack of evidence. Their reputations tarnished and their personal resources depleted, those innocent individuals became victims of Hillary Clinton’s false statements, which coincided with the Clintons’ effort to give the White House travel business to friends Thomason and Martin.

The evidence reveals that far from advancing a feminist cause where it mattered most, in instances where she was directly privy to proof of abuse of women by men, Hillary Clinton instead advanced the causes of the abusive men. In the first instance, as the Director of the University of Arkansas Legal Aide Clinic, Hillary Clinton defended a 41 year old rapist of a 12 year old girl. She not only undertook the defense of a brutal rapist who left the child sterile but she gratuitously endeavored to destroy the little girl’s reputation by suggesting that she fantasized about having sexual relations with an older man. In the second instance, from the time he served as Attorney General of Arkansas through his service as President of the United States, Hillary Clinton not only defended her husband against charges of sexual misconduct with other women but went further to besmirch the reputations of those who brought the charges. Her actions have helped enable Bill Clinton’s philandering, including his illicit relations with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.

These are but a few of the many actions taken by Hillary Clinton over the course of her public career that reveal a lack of integrity, overt lies to the American people, and deliberate efforts to engage in misrepresentation and lack of candor. Indeed, Bill and Hillary Clinton have become so versed in character assassination as a means to diminish the standing and apparent credibility of their critics that they inculcate that approach into their public campaigns. Whenever accusations come to light that call into question their personal ethics or their adherence to the law, they respond with an unequivocal denial (e.g., “I did not have sexual relations with that woman . . .”). They then follow it by having surrogates attack the character of those bringing the charges, and they then come up with a “narrative” that explains what happened in ways that indicate innocence, lack of knowledge, or fault lying in someone else.

All of these calculated political ploys aim either to persuade the public that the Clintons are not culpable for their own wrongdoing or to befuddle the public, at a minimum, leaving people at a loss as to what the real story actually is. Through denial and obfuscation, the Clintons escape responsibility again and again. In other words, they depend on public ignorance and misperception to get their way, and to win elections.

Hillary Clinton is counting on this approach to carry her to the White House. The traditional part of her Democratic campaign depends on promising specific voting constituencies political favors that tempt them to vote for her (e.g., state paid education for college age kids; government paid health coverage for the elderly; taxing the rich and redistributing the revenues raised to finance a slew of new government programs to placate Sanders’ supporters, environmentalists, and certain segments of the Middle Class and the poor).

The nontraditional part of her campaign depends on redundant pronouncement of falsehoods in a planned, well-orchestrated effort by the candidate and her surrogates to flood sympathetic media with denials of wrong-doing and the false narratives to deflect attention away from the damaging truths that impugn her character, reveal her involvement in unethical or illegal activities, and invite further federal investigation.

All the while, those who bring evidence of the charges are themselves made the true victims. They are castigated and publicly condemned by her surrogates who fan sympathetic social media to maintain a constant flow of disparagement and character assassination.

Her overall approach is highly cynical. It condescendingly assumes the electorate to be comprised of people who can be bought with promises that are almost never fulfilled and who are either too ignorant or too fickle to discern evidence of wrong doing. If Americans elect Hillary Clinton president it will send Hillary and her surrogates a resounding message of confirmation, that the politics of dishonesty and character assassination is the winning way. It will also give her assurance that her long history of abuse of power and misrepresentation to the public can continue unabated throughout the term of her presidency.