The past few weeks I've been sitting
here at my computer watching many of my closest friends wrestling
with their own convictions. I know these friends well, so I know what
their real convictions are, and I share them. They are progressives,
old progressives, veterans from half a century of the most important
social struggles of the age; Vietnam, civil rights, voting rights,
women's liberation, the environment. They are among the best amongst
us.
Yet they seem to have found themselves stuck with a Hobson’s Choice, and it’s caused them to kind of
lose their progressive GPS signal a bit.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not
condemning them, just observing. I do understand the conundrum that's
causing the static. They have a terribly flawed candidate for
President, Hillary Clinton, currently in the lead for her party’s
nomination -- if only because no other party big shot has challenged
her. Against her is arrayed a small herd of Republican candidates
that no satirist (or doomsayers) could have dredged from the darkest
corners of their fevered minds.
These good friends, rightfully, fear
that if their lead candidate does not prevail, all manner of awful
things will descend upon us; Supreme Court, environmental disasters,
a gutting of our national regulatory apparatus, rollbacks in civil
rights and voting rights, restrictions on women's health choices,
war, etc.
And yes, a GOP victory in 2016 would,
to one extent or another, likely result in much, if not all, the
above.
So I understand, and do not condemn my
old progressive buddies for their steadfast support of Hillary
Clinton. They're scared. And, with 2016, probably the most unsettled
and dangerous election I can remember since the Nixon days, I'm
scared too. And, if you're not, you're not paying enough attention.
Still I have to say that, acting on
fear has been something I've tried to avoid my entire life. Fear is
the parking brake of life. You either release it, or you're not going
anywhere. And I'd like them to release it now. Because, while they
feel that supporting Hillary is the best way to insure that none of
the GOP wing-nuts never get within spitting distance of the Oval
Office they, in the process, are jettisoning their most core values
and beliefs. And doing so erodes the power of those values at a time we need the pursued even more vigorously.
So I ask them, and you, just do this for a moment: change shoes. Make Hillary the leading GOP candidate (not too much of stretch.) Now go
through what we've learned about her and her values and her governing
principles. Remember the “scandals,” real or contrived. Remember how her husband governed.
First, we know she, like her husband, believes rules that prevent her from getting what she wants, are for not rules, but obstacles to over come. So she walks the razors’ edge of right and wrong.
And, as always happens to those who think they are above it all, she often
slips off that edge ending up on the wrong side.
Emails? Yeah, that's the most recent
example, but there are plenty of others, large and small, that go all
the way back to her disastrous and hubris-driven belief that she and
she alone could repair America's broken healthcare system, in secret,
behind closed doors, with the help and financial support of many of
the same big medical and pharma players who caused, and profited
from, the mess to begin with. That failure set healthcare reform back
by two decades.
To see Hillary as a progressive is also
a stretch. Her best friends (and contributors) a from the far-upper
crust of America's financial world like Goldman Sachs. Her husband
signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which contributed to the massive
financial collapse in 2008. And just last week Hillary, when asked
about that, supported that repeal, claiming it had nothing to do with
the troubles that followed.
She supported, and continues to support, NAFTA, which was no favor to working Americans, to put it mildly. Now she supports the pending TransPacific Partnership trade deal as well. Some protector of the working class. And the Tar Sands pipeline from Canada? She won’t say, but we know, don’t we.
Once “dead broke,” she is now
richer than Imelda Marcos was when she was in the clover... the
similarity between the two also nags at me, though everyone tells me
I'm crazy. Maybe.
Don't worry, I'm not going to drag you
through the Clinton Chronicles of Horribles and Incidentals, from
Whitewater forward. You remember, I'm sure. When I think of the
Clinton's the image that always flashes in my head is of Pigpen, the
Shultz charger who, in every frame in the cartoon, trails a cloud of dust and dirt along with him. That's Hillary.
Then she never takes personal
responsibility for any of it. It’s aways one kind of "conspiracy" against her or another. There is something in that too that unsettles
me about her. I once knew a woman who later proved to be a borderline
psychopath. (Oh boy, now I've done it – crossed the line into truly
nutty territory, right?) Well, I'm not saying Hillary is a
psychopath. All I am saying is that one of the key traits this other
woman displayed was that nothing that went wrong in her life was ever her
fault. She always had a excuse, and explanation, no matter how much
it strained credulity, she never took personal responsibility. (She
eventually was sent to prison for embezzlement.)
So, there you are. My friends want me
to stop harping on Hillary’s glaring progressive shortcomings. They say that I, and
others like me, are “undermining” her. (Though her own behaviors seem to be doing that without much help from us.) But that if I and progressives like me don’t knock it off we are going to end up putting another Republican
in the White House.
But I too am faced
with a conundrum. To support Hillary Clinton I would have to jettison
the very core values that formed and continue to form my life and
politics:
- I abhor a liar.
- I don’t like people who cheat.
- I hate
people who talk one way, and live another.
- I do not trust
“triangulating” opportunists.
- I am dislike and distrust those who
insult my intelligence by feeding me a line of self-serving bull
instead of the truth.
- I am not buying the claim that a candidate
worth millions of dollars and who runs with Wall Street’s top dogs,
knows or cares a damn thing about ordinary, working Americans.
And I am not going to let fear change
any of that. Which means I can't, and won't, vote for Hillary Clinton
if she ends up the nominee. I will just skip that box on the ballot.
There are some things that are simply more important than a single election.
Because, if it's the current corrupt
system you want to change, you don’t get there by voting for it.
