Amusement from rambling thoughts on a Friday ...
I had an interesting email from a reader the other day, in which he described falling short (morally) because of an inability or unwillingness to forgive certain people, and not hate them ("hate" appears to be a topic this week). Naturally I had to compare myself and whether I had fallen as far short of God's desire for me, and I had to concede that as long as there are New York Yankees and George Soros (in no specific order), I would retain the capacity to hate.
But that made me think. Since the people on both my friend's list and mine (and there was massive overlap) were all people I had never met, my wandering mind wandered mindlessly to what it might be like if I were to encounter one of them, and that we would be forced to engage in conversation.
Naturally, the first person who came to mind was Hillary Clinton. Not Bill, mind you; even though he is a corrupt sleazebag and likely was a rapist in his younger days, he was entertaining at times and that counts for something. Besides, I don't really want to have a conversation with him about anything; it's not possible to believe anything he says.
So I thought "OK, what if Hillary's car broke down right in front of the house here, and she had to come in and wait for a tow." OK, that is ludicrous. Hillary Clinton probably has not driven a car herself in 82 years, wouldn't know how to try to get towed, and surely wouldn't talk to me, any more than she would talk to the press during her campaign. But just stipulate that she would, please.
So -- I have chardonnay in the house, and let's say that it loosened her conversation up enough to where she would actually answer questions. What would I want to know?
I found it interesting that, as I pondered the notion, I realized that I would not want to ask her about covering up Bill's bimbo eruptions, or selling a quarter of the USA's uranium to Russians in exchange for a huge speaking fee for him. I didn't feel the need to ask her "What Happened" (I didn't read the book), not about the election or about Benghazi either. I don't need to ask her about her bathroom email server and why she had it -- we know why; she was avoiding the Federal Records Act in advance. Duh. Already wrote about it.
No, and this may surprise you. I would want to ask her about why she is a liberal.
Hillary Clinton is many things, but she is not stupid. She is as aware as you or I that liberalism does not work; that it is dependent on a morality that is fluid, and that it is innately doomed, in that its implementation removes all the incentives for someone to work harder.
She used to be a Republican. She knows that government does almost nothing as well as the private sector does, but once government is allowed to take on a function, it is nearly impossible to wrest it away.
She knows that. Liberalism fails, and fails worse the closer it is allowed to drift toward socialism.
I would want to ask her all that, but I believe I already know the answer (not that I wouldn't go ahead and ask it regardless). I think that she is a liberal because it is easier to get votes by mouthing liberal platitudes than by actually doing a good job leading the nation, or the state. And it is easier, for sure.
I think that Hillary Clinton is simply a political being, nothing more. She was always convinced that she could do a better job as president than her husband, of whom she is distinctly politically jealous -- he won and she couldn't; the only election she ever won was as a carpetbag senator from New York, an absurdly leftist state, with a leftist electorate that would have elected Mortimer Snerd to that Senate seat, if he were running as a Democrat.
As a political being, it's probably not fair to call her a liberal. She is more Democrat than liberal, if you get my drift. Her belief system is flexible; if it will get her elected, she'll declare that she keeps hot sauce in her pocketbook. There are probably liberals who actually believe what they say on the stump; I simply believe she is not one of them.
So I suppose I answered my own question, right? I could ask her all day why she is a liberal and probably never get an actual answer about an actual liberal policy that actually works.
I guess she can just keep driving.
Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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Fascinating note. Not two minutes after I posted this column, I checked to see where the first readers were. One was in, of all places, Venezuela. Now, you have to wonder if that was someone seeking the truth, or someone in their oppressive government seeing what needed to be suppressed. I just hope it's the former, but I suspect I'll never know.
ReplyDeleteHi Roberto,
ReplyDeleteA couple of quick points:
The demagoguery from Mr Shumer and numerous Democratic politicians (accompanied by the occasional video that depicts Chuck, Hillary and others mouthing exact copies of much of Mr. Trumps policies), is just political gamesmanship, although most of the Democrats really believe that raising taxes and regulating heavily will actually grow the economy.
The true believers, like Elizabeth Warren, scare me to death. Not only are they oblivious to the damage their policies will do, but there is no way that they will look at actual data that refutes their ideas with unbiased eyes. Their zeal to 'bring corporate America to heel' would carry damaging legislation to extremes and destroy our ability to grow.
In all cases, willful ignorance of recent (20th/21st century) economic history is the source of the disasters.
Excellent commentary!
DeleteThanks, Robert...I don't think I'm going to be able to quit the day job, though...:)
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