KC Shoen
I have a rather long history railing
against elections of all stripes for their corruptible processes, and railing
against the electorate who posture, condemn, cuss, harass, condescend and
justify ad-hominid exchanges against
opposing candidates, parties and their supporters without adherence to
informed, objective overview: i.e. ‘exact nature’ of what these candidates are, and what they have done.
Equally important, which corporate sectors or entities have supported them and
drive their policy-making derivative of such confluence.
And it is that time again: the fundamental American rite
of passage to vote against one’s own interest is upon us. Many of you that have
participated thus far in this 2015/16 primary cycle now believing your
candidate is representing your best interests. As if your personal calculated
bias to the your ‘party’ or candidate will somehow reap a favorable outcome
non-respective of the candidate’s ties to lobbyists that they troll (or that
they are trolled by), or examine the acidic vitriol they weave publicly for
your consumption and support. Logic,
understanding exactly what is the
‘engine’ that drives these side shows, vetting their activity and messaging
with more scrutiny becomes immediate casualty.
For this, I don’t vote. I don’t vote because there are no
‘choices’: period. The mantra of voting of the ‘lesser of two evils’ is not
sacrosanct; it’s closer akin to a complete act of participatory conformity for
the sake of the act itself, whilst the act of voting produces no discernably positive
outcome for change. Write-in votes and voting as rebellion is complete
self-serving pretention with no real palpable impact as well.
But don’t take my word for it: just look at the 40+ years
since Nixon.
Living wages haven’t increased meaningfully since 1970:
Jobs and pay are still at-issue.
The defense budget, which, since 1960, has ballooned to
become 55% of all tax-payer driven federal discretionary spending, despite
recent poll upon poll revealing that the American public wants sharp curtailment
of this expenditure, and wants to be relieved of participating in ‘spreading
democracy’ oversees for the sake of ‘anti-terrorism’ and American
‘exceptionalism’.
Add to this, the 15 years’ worth of US occupation and
combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Iraq’s northern territory still
heavily fortified by ISIL to date. The legacy of that invasion, and subsequent
overthrow of Saddam Hussein which led to the “de-ba’athification”
as proposed by the now-defunct ‘Office of Special Plans’ under the Bush
Administration (you recall the geniuses behind that brilliant strategy: Paul
Wolfowitz and Douglas
Feith), which in turn gave rise and resource to the sectarian resistance
lead by a very sophisticated organization of the Daesh itself..
Nothing has changed.
Years of violating foreign national sovereignty, war,
cultural, racial and religious disbarment and dismemberment, marginalization
and empire-building for the capture and marketing of resource monetization and
western capitalism.
From the Obama’s administration penchant for drone use, re-negging on
whistleblower's protections, being rather cozy and cuddly with one of many institutions
that destroyed our economy in 2007-8, and for
overseeing a country
more divided racially,
culturally,
and economically
then in any other time over the last 45
years.
Tack on Watergate, The Pentagon Papers, Vietnam, the
Stonewall Riots, Nicaragua, the multiple Israeli-Palistinean Conflicts since
1967, the Iran-Contra Scandal, The War On Drugs, the
Energy Crisis. From the 1968 riots at the DNC in Chicago, the Kent State
shootings of 1970, to the S&L
Scandals of the 1980’s, and mix in a total of 7 economic recessions since 1970 in the
middle of all this , you can see..
Nothing. Really. Has. Changed.
The meaningless nomenclatures of ‘Democrat’ and
‘Republican’ haven’t had any true meaning in nearly half a century as well. The
idea of ‘party’ is outmoded, and has nothing to do with the zeitgeist and exact
nature of the dynamics on the ground in modern politics, and are out of the
biased ‘eye’ of corporate media. To use these ‘tags’ doesn’t serve any real
purpose: the only ‘party’ in this election cycle is that of the ‘Corporate
Party’ which have steadily and exponentially acquired ownership of the policy
process since ’70.
The current frontrunners are re-constituted vermin from this
historical and legislative morass. One, notably wears the veneer of
‘progressive’ and really isn’t one. The
other has figured out where to ‘get in to fit in’, and isn’t really a
‘conservative’ either. Neither are what
they purport through their righteous and empty rhetoric, which is also nothing
new. To examine closely their background is to understand why these
two current megalomaniacal egocentrics care little for conducting any meaningful
activity as it relates to forwarding human progression for this nation or the
world, as their own legacies are of higher priority.
In the case of Hillary Diane Rodham, the correct analysis
with regard to her formative upbringing is more working class, less elitist
American ‘monarchy’ of the Capitalist Realm in its erstwhile roots than Donald
John Trump. Her father ran a successful textile business, her mother a home
maker. Both were politically active, and the household leaned conservative,
with mom being particularly concerned of social injustice. Both parents did not
wish for their daughter to be bound by her gender, and to be allowed to seek
career over ‘traditional’ roles that being of a housewife and mother. Ms.
Rodham came of age in the ‘60s and, living in Chicago, was present in the most
conflagrate epicenters of the counter-culture/civil rights movement.
At the tender age
of 13, while canvassing Chicago’s south side in support of Richard Nixon she
inadvertently uncovered voter fraud being committed against him in 1960. She
famously became a ‘Goldwater Girl’ in the 1964 election cycle. At 17 she was
entranced by the Arizona Senator’s unyielding views with regards to the
utilization of the Nuclear option against Vietnam and the Soviet Union to
combat the communist scourge, his contentiousness against social welfare and
the continuing legacy of Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ which he deemed as hand-outs to
those in poverty unwilling to pull their own weight, and his racist anti-civil
rights stance. Goldwater’s landslide loss to Lyndon B. Johnson that year,
although devastating, gave rise to the Conservative movement, and gave both
political birth to Ronald Reagan as its helmsman in latter years, and
legitimacy as a political force of the modern era. It would also prove most
impacting upon Hillary the Younger as Goldwater’s extreme staunchness and
political piety she would absorb into her persona when she achieved office.
Ms. Rodham’s time at Wellesley was not ‘dead-time’ as
obligatory scholastic placation. As in
high school, she would prove to be an academic of the rarest breed from the day
she entered the campus. Academics often pride themselves in their ability to
recount regurgitated information as if it is prescient of ‘knowledge’ they
harbor originally as their ‘own’, but an intelligent
mind receives information, digests it and learns to approach with nuance of the
thing as to truly understand it.
Hillary was there to learn, not just awaiting accolades
validating time and tenure. So defined
was this intelligence, she chose the radicalistic community organizer Saul
Alinsky as the topic of her senior
thesis. When she had completed it in
1969 she received a well-deserved A grade on her 92-page final paper. She abandoned
the ‘Republican Party’ and had realized that she herself was "a mind
conservative and a heart liberal". This she had come to terms with, after
her attendance of the Republican convention in ’68 where she witnessed the vile
racism Nixon was imparting in his messaging against his opponents. Ms. Rodham
understood she was of nuance in her politicos, extending this further when she
conducted post-graduate studies at Yale, earning her J.D. (Juris Doctorate) in 1973.
Ms. Rodham had some substantial firsts in her young life: the first student
ever to render a commencement speech upon graduating from Wellesley, to
becoming the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation nearly a
decade later.
She earned all of it, and of her own volition, work and
efforts. In ’75 she would marry William Jefferson Clinton, putting her own path
at sacrifice to combine her political ambitions with that of his, and had done
so reluctantly, as establishing her separate path, her own political legacy, was paramount. It was a
brilliant arrangement however; one that would take them both from the Arkansas
Capital Building to the White House to begin engraving that legacy into the stratosphere,
with she as First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Certainly, as
well, her views on race relations, in regards to crime and wages would take a
decidedly more ‘privileged’ and conservative tract. The now-infamous ‘bring
them to heel” comment from her egregious and pompous January 1996 speech atKeene State University is demonstrative that Clinton, not only herself
entitled, believed as well that harsher rhetoric and approach was needed to
extol the privileged. Below are excerpts taken from that speech that makes this
argument more palpable, broken up into three sub-sections
Opening
“..The first
challenge to cherish our children and strengthen the American Family. I know
that most of us understand now there is nothing more important than what we
give to our children, how we spend our time with them, how we invest our
energy, how we love them and discipline them. And each of us has a
responsibility to care for children whether or not we are parents. And those of
us who are parents have special obligation to do all we can so that every American child grows up with two
parents in a stable dependable home….
Wages
“Most people
working at minimum wage are not students, are not temporary workers. They are
working people supporting themselves and children. Very often they are single parents; they work in our restaurants..gas
stations..at all the jobs that keep things going .. that may not be very
visible but are essential to our economic well-being..and take care of us.”
Crime Bill
“We.. have to have
an organized effort against gangs, just as in the previous generation we had an
organized effort against the mob. We need to take these people on, they are often connected to big drug cartels, they
are not just gangs of kids anymore…they are often the kinds of kids called ‘super predators’: no conscience, no empathy. We can talk about
why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel..”
As George Carlin
once said, it is the language that you use that gives it away, referring
directly to the euphemistic and coded language often spun by professional politicians
and corporate enterprises alike. It is the language used to hide true meaning
and intent, and used to trivialize, or soften a complex or difficult subject.
It is also use to manipulate and evade for the sake of its own preservation and
expansion of power.
The ‘language’
captured here represents the pathos of white, upper-class entitlement. The words either underlined or emboldened for
emphasis indicates where the context and pattern of this pathos makes itself
clear. She speaks of children in the opening portion of her speech as if nearly
a Rockwell painting of pure Americana.
White, privileged
Americana.
In the second,
she interlopes pronouns of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in explanation of minimum wage
increase for the working poor. Even in ’96, the predominate faces one would see
at a gas station or restaurant was usually non-white, particularly in
almost every large liberal American city. The last line in that paragraph
really shines the light on the assumption of social piety, structure and
stature with regards to the working class, stating of these workers who” ..may not be very visible but are
essential to our economic well-being..and
take care of us.”
This summation of entitlement and exceptionalism is
affirmed when Clinton speaks of these illusory, non-existent (and ethnic)
‘super predators’. The term ‘children’ with which the delicate adjective being
reserved only for the deserving; the ‘innocent’, is replaced with the blunted
adjective of ‘kids’ as a demeaning pejorative when referencing gangs and the
crime bill. Instead of “..there is nothing more important than what we
give to our children”, the tone changes to “ the kinds of kids called
‘super predators’: no conscience, no
empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to
bring them to heel..” there’s
was no further exploration of a “dependable home” for “them..kids”. Just that
they need to be “brought to heel”, like some rabid pit bulls devoid of being
deserving of such compassion.
Hillary began her separation from her own working class
beginnings with these phrases, taking a cue from the staunchness of Barry
Goldwater himself. Language gives you away, indeed
Certainly there would be other questions of integrity, ethics, and
legalities with regards to her business dealings around that timeframe: the Whitewater
controversy, Travelgate, Filegate, and the cattle futures controversy, just to name a few. But all had turned up nothing, and the Clinton’s
collective empire building continued through the late 90’s through Bill
Clinton’s second term.
There was a
nagging situation, however, from some second-rate actress, and penthouse centerfold who had
tried to make some noise in ’92 about an alleged affair she had with Bill
Clinton, but even that did did not impact the power couple’s rising stock and
power..
Then August 17,
1998 happened.
This was the
very moment of the ‘grand tilt’: The Lewinsky affair. It turned Hillary from a
less-than-perfect potential human force of change for the common good into a
completely monstrous cataclysmal human archipelago of megalomaniacal sociopathy;
morphing into a combustible animal of entitlement with a hunger for vindication
and validation. This assertion is not naïve: she exhibited tell-tale shades of highly
questionable ethics as mentioned above, co-sponsoring and supporting the odious
and racially oppressive 1994 crime bill her husband put together which
decimated impoverished African-American communities through increased
incarceration and prison construction, both as extension of their political capital,
and conforming to the blithely draconian war on drugs.
But what should
have been a private, domestic matter between husband and wife turned into a
rollicking big-top event for all the public to participate in. An issue that
not only destroyed the image of the Clinton brand politically, but produced a
smeared and septic perception of their marital union being that of convenience,
a business arrangement purely for that of political clout and personal
expansion of wealth; not built on mutualistic trust, love, empathy and human
companionship. Adding infidelity into an
already-questionable mix of seemingly dubious activities and ethics, it morphed
into the projectile nearly sinking their ship.
Hillary would
never again allow further damaging of the very thing she had strived for
initially since her academic youth: legacy. Political legacy. The
Combustible Animal that is now Hillary Rodham Clinton, was borne from this
embarrassment, pain and insult. Greedy, hawkish, manipulative, corrupted and
without discernable human compassing that resembles anything sentient. Deposited deep into the catacombs of self-consuming
wealth and prestige, so destructively protective of she and her husband that
any individual inside their 'circle' who would have temerity enough to question their integrity, or
was not loyal, could be met with career destruction, incarceration, or possibly meet a ‘curious’ death during such imprisonment.
The intelligent
nuance she had grasped and utilized to great affect in her younger years now
evaporated. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s anamorphia deducted her ‘liberal
heart’. Though her persona never truly was imbuing of complete organic
authenticity by no stretch, (as no career attorney nor politician truly is
capable of that level of humanistic piety), whatever redeeming
conscientiousness she did have left in reserve died on that August day.
This Combustible
Animal now has the teeth, will and means to participate in the monetary
misogyny that is politics, and has done so unrepentant and unapologetic through
the years since. Pugilistic through polite pontification, euphemistic jargon
and gerrymandering: Hillary Clinton now is an Orwellian
feat accomplished.
Even as this is written, the ‘feat’ in 2016 has seen
Hillary’s derisive disdain against dissenters, or those who dare question her
activity, ethics or integrity are on full display: be it in her presence, in
debates with youth voters using passive aggressive dismissal when addressed directly about the impact of over-incarceration, to
near-pejorative, condescending brinkmanship to cut off the conversation entirely.
Secretary Clinton’s 24 year-plus history
with accepting speaking fees and campaign
bankrolling from the financial sector is also not up for debate ,
contract review nor substantial moral inventory, not even as a passing, topical conversation during a campaign stop in
an attempted non-substantive interview. And when she isn’t committing full-on
misdirection when asked about the subject of her speeches to Goldman Sachs, (or
‘laughing it off’), she is outwardly vitriolic when
faced with a reasonable and factual question from a constituent in regards to
the energy lobby’s financial contributions to her candidacy.
She has been righteously disingenuous with regards to the
e-mail server fiasco while Secretary of State, which metastasized from a
less-than-stellar political witch-hunt against her behalf to a potential criminal investigation by the FBI,
whom have already secured testimonial
immunity for one of her former staffers who helped set up her
personal server. The investigation has been a year-long odyssey (at the time of
this post), which could see Secretary Clinton being brought in for interview by the Department of Justice and might possibly see an indictment being
levied against her for gross negligence.
To this date, Secretary Clinton has been (as always)
dismissive of the possibility. Why shouldn’t she be? Even if this last
insurrection of complete malfeasance actually finds her doing prison time, why
should she be concerned at current? After all, the Combustible Animal has been
able to weather such accusation and controversy and has been Teflon, where no
conviction or punitive damage has ever laid a hand or a handcuff well enough to stick.
Hillary in a half-life, only promulgating sanctimonious
rhetoric to suit her ends, even using gender to engender bias that allows only her
advancement. She can espouse a rousing
‘deal me in’ in response to Donald Trump’s ‘woman card’ reference, but rest
assured, the only women’s rights she interested in breaking that glass ceiling
with is her own, and no one else.
All this is a
full-on, unabridged ‘fuck you’ to true progressives, to women who are not
her, African-Americans and the working class. And a special ‘go fuck yourself’
to her own roots. Hillary the FireDog who once did concern herself of how
governance and law can change a system from the inside out, is now a complicit
Animal in the systemic fuselage of lobbyist malfeasance and policy
manipulation, a happy recipient of the privilege to ‘play’, and render
smokescreens when any credible question of ethics are directed at her.
The Ghost of
Saul Alinksy now properly silenced in her past, the Lewinsky affair placed
squarely in forgettable history, as well as possible criminal activity of years
past literally and metaphorically buried, she can get on with the task more
important than ceasing all combat operations worldwide, ensuring equity within
our economic structure, convicting those who have harmed, and continue to harm
that structure, seeking fairer trade deals that consider workers’ rights,
divorcing herself from corporate PHaRMa , ConAgra, the Financial and Energy sector leviathans that are
destroying our planet., etc…
The Combustible
Animal has but a more important goal in mind, and above all else…
Legacy.
