One thought on “More on Trust Busting”

1. Of the endless pieces I have read about the election, these from some guy named Michael Arnovitz have made me think. Long (very!) and incomplete but, IMHO, worthwhile.

   B.P.

   But while conservative propaganda and lies are a constant in “Hillaryland”, if we look at Hillary’s career, and the negative attacks so often aimed at her, it seems clear that more than just political machinations are at play. My current conviction is that the main fuel that powers the anti-Hillary crowd is sexism. And yes I’m serious. So go ahead and roll your eyes. Get it over with. But I think the evidence supports my view, and I’ve seen no other plausible explanation. And just to be clear, I don’t think it’s ONLY sexism. But I do think that this is the primary force that has generated and maintained most of the negative narratives about Hillary.

   Of course accusations of sexism always bump up against several serious impediments:
   1) Almost nobody will admit to it. Conservatives decided long ago that all such accusations (sexism, racism, homophobia, etc) are standard liberal bullshit whose only real intent is to shut down debate, and liberals tend to possess a sense of moral entitlement which leads them to consider themselves automatically exempt from all such accusations. (Side note: if you did roll your eyes above, there’s a good chance I’m describing you here. Sorry.)
   2) Overt sexism is significantly more likely to be tolerated in our society than overt racism. It is a low-risk form of bigotry and discrimination that rarely damages professional or political careers. Because of this, far fewer people worry about crossing that line.
   3) We have formed a sort of collective blindness to sexism that allows us to pretend that we are on top of the issue while simultaneously ignoring the many ways in which it actually permeates our society. (Side note 2: There’s a reason it’s called a “glass” ceiling.)
   4) Unlike men, women who make demands are still often seen as unfeminine and inappropriately aggressive, bordering on deviant. And if the people most aggressively pushing against the glass ceiling are “broken” or “deviant”, it’s easier to justify dismissing both them and their concerns.

   …And again: why is Hillary being held to a standard that never appears to be applied to her male counterparts? Am I not supposed to notice that a media frenzy has been aimed at Hillary Clinton for accepting speaking fees of $225,000 while Donald Trump has been paid $1.5 MILLION on numerous occasions with hardly a word said about it? Am I supposed to not notice that we are now in an election season in which Donald Trump, a proud scam artist whose involvement in “Trump University” alone is being defined by the New York Attorney General as “straight-up fraud”, is regularly calling Hillary Clinton “Crooked Hillary” and getting away with it?

   What the actual fuck is going on here? What’s going on is what we all know, but mostly don’t want to admit: presidential campaigns favor men, and the men who campaign in them are rewarded for those traits perceived as being “manly” — physical size, charisma, forceful personality, assertiveness, boldness and volume. Women who evince those same traits however are usually punished rather than rewarded, and a lot of the negativity aimed at Hillary over the years, especially when she is seeking office, has been due to these underlying biases. There is simply no question that Hillary has for years been on the business end of an unrelenting double standard. And her battle with societal sexism isn’t going to stop because of her success any more than Obama’s battle with racism stopped once he was elected. These are generational issues, and we are who we are.

   *********

   Compare for example the treatment Hillary is getting due to her private email “scandal” to that of General David Petraeus. Hillary has been accused of hosting a personal email server that “might” have made classified documents less secure, even though the documents in question were not classified as secret at the time she received and/or sent them. (Side note: some government documents receive secret classifications “at birth”, while other can be retroactively classified as secret.) In order for Clinton to have committed a criminal act, she would have had to knowingly and willfully mishandle material that was classified at the time she did so. After months of investigation no one has accused her of doing that, and it doesn’t appear as if anyone will.

   General Petraeus on the other hand, while he was Director of the CIA, knowingly gave a writer, who was also his mistress, a series of black books which according to the Justice Department contained, “classified information regarding the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions quotes and deliberative discussions from high level National Security Council meetings and [Petraeus’] discussions with the president of the United States of America.” Petraeus followed that up by lying to numerous government officials, including FBI agents, about what he had done. And let’s not forget that according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, adultery is itself a court-martial offense. And I remind you that none of this is in dispute. Petraeus admitted to all of it.

   Petraeus’ violations were significantly more egregious than anything Clinton is even remotely accused of. And yet Republicans and other Hillary foes are howling about her issue, wearing “Hillary for Prison 2016” t-shirts while insisting that this disqualifies her from public office. Meanwhile even after pleading guilty to his crimes Petraeus continued to be the recipient of fawning sentiments from conservatives. Senator John McCain stated that, “All of us in life make mistakes and the situation now, I hope, can be put behind him…” Politico quoted a former military officer who worked with Petraeus as calling the entire situation “silly”. Prominent Republicans have already made it clear that they would call him back to work in the highest levels of government if they win the Presidency. And some are still attempting to convince him to seek the Presidency himself.

   Why is Hillary Clinton being held to such an obviously different standard than Petraeus? Is it really only politics?

   ********

   Hillary is nobody’s idea of perfect. Fine. But in my view if a man with her qualifications were running in the Democratic primary, Bernie would have been done before he even started. And if a man with her qualifications had been running for the Republicans, they’d be anointing him the next Reagan while trying to sneak his face onto Mount Rushmore.

   Most of the people who hate Hillary when she’s running for office end up liking her just fine once she’s won. And I have every confidence that history will repeat itself again this November. As for myself, I have been watching Presidential elections since Nixon. And never in my life has there been an easier or more obvious choice than now. Trump is not merely a bad choice, he is (as many leading Republicans have already admitted) a catastrophic choice, unfit in every possible way for the office of the Presidency.

   As such, I happily voted for Hillary in my primary. And I will proudly vote for her in November. Yes she will disappoint us all on occasion. Who doesn’t? But I think she’s also going to surprise a lot of people. She will fear neither consensus when possible nor ass-kicking when necessary. She will safeguard us from the damage a right-wing Supreme Court would inflict on the nation. She will stand for the rights of women, LGBT Americans, and minorities. She will maintain critical global relationships, and she will react to dangerous situations with the temperament of a seasoned and experienced professional. And in a nation that didn’t even allow women to vote until 1920, she will make history by shattering the very highest glass ceiling, and in doing so forever change the way a generation of young women view their place in our Republic.

   She’s going to be a fine President.

   I’m with her.

   ********

   If you want to take a different position than I did I think you should do that. But simply stating that you are against Hillary because she’s a ”pathological liar” or “war criminal” is not an argument, and it’s not a position. It’s just an insult pretending to be discourse. And while you are entitled to your opinions, you are not entitled to respect for those opinions. There seems to be some confusion on that point, and there really shouldn’t be. Also, while I have a natural curiosity toward other people’s views, if your main communication tactic is calling people names while hammering the “caps lock” key like you’re playing a game of whac-a-mole, you can probably count me out.

   I’m interested in people who take a position and then communicate it with logic and reason. In other words, people who actually try. And I’m particularly interested in those people open to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there are things they think they know that they don’t. Because quite frankly, it seems clear to me that the Internet is full of people who know all kinds of things about Hillary Clinton that they don’t actually know.

   … I am sure that last statement about policy sent a bunch of people lunging for their keyboards in order to explain to me that Hillary Clinton’s policies are exactly what they DON’T like about her. But it is very clear to me that this is not the case. The vast majority of messages and comments about HRC that I see consist almost solely of either personal attacks, false claims, childish conspiracy theories, assumptions of guilt by association or complaints about legislation passed by her husband decades ago. Almost none of the comments I see (or have received) even bother to address her current policy positions, and most of the small few that do either willfully misrepresent them, assume as a given that they are terrible or dismiss them altogether as mere political expediency. (Side note: I want to acknowledge that I have also received a number of reasonable and cogent comments. And I did very much appreciate those.)

   Of course it goes without saying that in the world of social media, almost nobody bothers to back up such claims with even the most rudimentary facts or analysis. It’s as if a meeting was held somewhere in which most of the country decided that when it comes to Hillary Clinton you don’t have to do that. But I wasn’t at that meeting, so if you’ll forgive me I still kind of want people to show me how they know the things that they insist they know.

   ********

   Speaking of not voting, I feel like I should address a few paragraphs to the 30 and under crowd, especially those that are Sanders supporters. So for all you young people, this section is for you. I’ve got some more graph candy above. Take a look, because there’s going to be a short quiz. On the left you’ll see a graph put together by the United States Elections Project, which breaks down voting by age over the last 30 years. Notice who’s on the top and who’s on the bottom? Notice how far to the bottom the bottom is? In the last 30 years of voting, the best your age group has ever done was in 2008, and you still didn’t even break 50%. In mid-term elections you consistently hover at or below 20%, and in the 2014 mid-term election that put so many Republicans in office nearly 85% of you failed to vote.

   So here’s our quiz:

   1) Do you think there is a single politician in the country who doesn’t have a copy of this graph, or one like it?
   2) When said politicians are deciding whose concerns to care about, do you think their eyes wander over this graph?
   3) If senior citizens are on one side of an issue, and young people like you are on the other, who do you think gets their vote?
   4) What percentage of Republican politicians use this graph as their screensaver?
   5) When the GOP, especially at the state level, want to put up legislation that they know liberals (and especially young liberals) won’t like, do you think that maybe they schedule it for mid-term elections?
   6) When Hillary Clinton found out how much of Bernie Sanders’ support was coming from young people, how many vodka martinis did she have to celebrate?

   You know those old people you like to make fun of? The conservative, tea-party seniors who watch Fox News 24 hours a day and say crazy, racist shit at Thanksgiving dinner? Quick note on them: they vote. They always vote. They vote like it’s a goddamn religion. Meanwhile, the vast majority of people in your age group couldn’t find a voting booth with a state-of-the-art GPS stuffed up their ass. Take a look at the graph above again. See the information on the right? It was put together in 2014 by the Pew Research Center. At the bottom of all of those bars you’ll see a segment called “Bystanders.” This refers to people “On the sidelines of the political process who are not registered to vote and pay very little attention to politics.” With seniors that segment is at only 3%. In your age group that same segment skyrockets to nearly 20%. Do you see a pattern developing here?

   I realize that it’s difficult to appreciate the value of historical perspective when you’re too young to actually have any. But you know who does have a little historical perspective? Seniors. And maybe that’s one of the reasons they are so serious about voting. Because unlike you, they’ve been around long enough to know that voting booths are the place where shiny new political movements go to die. And maybe they also know that rallies with twenty or thirty thousand people may seem amazing and powerful while you are at them, but voting is the real difference between a large political movement and a large political circle-jerk.

   And in regard to so much of the attitude I’m seeing — No matter how much we plead for you to get involved and no matter how fiercely you are courted by politicians, the majority of you steadfastly refuse to express any interest in voting. And yet somehow there is no end to your bitter and entitled disappointment with the American electoral system. Really, it’s like watching a bunch of vegans bitch about how pork doesn’t taste as good as it used to. And quite frankly, it takes a particularly special pair of stones to vote this badly and then have the fucking gall to claim that your vote was suppressed. So here’s your free wake-up call from Uncle Mike: nobody needs to go to the bother of suppressing your vote. You’re doing that just fine on your own. Quite frankly, all anyone who’s worried about the “youth vote” needs to do is let you be you.

   History, as the saying goes, is made by those who show up.
   You don’t.

   **********

   Factions with strict ideological agendas love to pretend as if all policy issues, problems and solutions are simple and self-evident. But this is absurd. In truth, our world is now connected by an incredibly complex web of political, legal and economic relationships; a Gordian knot of competing agendas that can quickly take “simple” solutions to very unhappy places. Responsible politicians know this, and the law of unintended consequences patiently waits for those foolish enough to think otherwise. Which is why seasoned leaders like Hillary Clinton often favor nuanced and incrementalist approaches. These approaches are not particularly inspiring, to be sure. They also leave politicians like Clinton open to charges of avoiding necessary change or maintaining “failed” systems. But on the plus side they don’t set the world on fire. And unlike the people screaming at you on the Internet, this is something that government leaders actually have to think about. Because at the level of leadership and decision-making we’re talking about, even well planned and seemingly isolated decisions can sometimes turn pear-shaped in a very big way. Or did you not get the memo from Gavrilo Princip? [The Bosnian Serb who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, sparking WW I]

   Ideological purity may make you feel pretty good about yourself, but the people we place in positions of power don’t have the luxury of living in that type of self-righteous ivory tower. They have to make decisions. They have to form policy. They have to make very tough choices, and they bear the burden of responsibilities that impact hundreds of millions of lives. The president is required, nearly every day, to make decisions on a scale that would leave most of us hiding under our bed, clutching a bottle of Klonopin. Even the most experienced holders of the office pay a price, and very few presidents come out the way they went in.

   …Which is also why people in a position to know, those political “elites” everyone loves to hate these days, talk so much about “temperament” during election season. They know that while votes are what get you into the office, the necessary temperament is what enables you to actually function and get something done once you’re there. And preferably without having a nervous breakdown. Which is relatively important, because as most experienced political operatives will tell you, having your president turn into Jack D. Ripper halfway through their first term is less than ideal.

   ********

   Which brings us to Donald Trump, a man so temperamentally unsuited to the office of the presidency that he makes Rick Perry look like Winston Churchill. Ignore for a second the unrelenting and unapologetic racism and misogyny. Turn a blind eye for a moment to the vacuous responses to policy questions, the ludicrous position statements and the clear sense that he lacks the slightest understanding of statecraft. Look past the fact that weeks before he even officially becomes the GOP nominee, he has already insulted and infuriated some of our most important trading partners and allies. And, if possible, set aside for just a moment the fact that he is so pathologically narcissistic that his first response to the worst mass shooting in our nation’s history was to pat himself on the back, and his response to the historic Brexit vote was to point out that the British pound’s worst collapse in decades was going to make him a lot of money.

   Consider instead a temperament that falls so short of the mark that he can’t even get a large segment of his own party’s leadership to stop insinuating that he is mental. Ponder for a moment the reality that this buffoon who would be king is so intolerable that he is actually driving numerous prominent Republican leaders to join a “NeverTrump” movement that rejects their own party’s nominee! Think about the fact that the same man who has spent months insisting that he can go to Washington and bend Republicans and Democrats to his will, can hardly even find a fellow Republican willing to speak at the convention in which he will be nominated. Witness for a moment the unbelievable fact that a large number of prominent Republicans have stated that they’re simply skipping the convention altogether. Skipping their own convention! It’s astonishing, and unprecedented, and for anyone paying attention, indicative of what we could expect from a Trump presidency. (Spoiler Alert: clusterfuck)

   *******

   And yet even when presented with a candidate this horrible, and a campaign this far off the rails, there are a surprising number of progressives who insist that there is no real difference between Republicans and Democrats. Personally, it amazes me that anyone who has not been in a medically induced coma for the last sixteen years could think this. But it does happen. So if you are one of the few who are having a hard time seeing the difference, let me help you out.

   The average Trump gathering looks like a Klan rally with less linen. The average Republican gathering looks like a NASCAR festival that got crashed by members of the country club you and I aren’t allowed to join. Bernie’s gatherings look like a cross between a suburban PTA meeting, a Burning Man planning committee and the checkout line at Whole Foods. A large Democratic gathering? That looks like America.

   …And finally, for those progressives who insist that there is no difference between Hillary Clinton and Republicans. You know who does see a difference? Republicans. And in fact they seem to think there’s a pretty big fucking difference. Which may have something to do with why they have spent tens of millions of dollars and unknown thousands of man-hours over a multi-decade period on a single unrelenting enterprise: convincing anyone who would listen that one of the most qualified public servants in America is actually a lying, corrupt she-devil. And clearly, for at least for some of us, it was money well spent. But can we maybe ask ourselves one, simple question? If Hillary Clinton and her policies are truly no different than the average Republican politician, why have Republicans spent nearly 25 years doing everything in their power to destroy her?

   Perhaps, using the locution of conspiracy theorists everywhere, it’s one of the biggest “false-flag” operations in American history. You fools!Perhaps it was never really part of the GOP strategy at all, but just something that the bankers and 1% created to make it look like the GOP was destroying her. You fools! And now because we think the GOP hates her we will elect her president and she will insure that the bankers and 1% take over the world. You fools!

   Or maybe we’re not insane, and this is obviously ludicrous. Maybe Hillary Clinton is nothing more than what she appears to be, a pragmatic Democrat doing the best she can to effect incremental and responsible change within the constraints of the real world. Maybe the fact that she and Bernie Sanders voted the same 93% of the time means something. And maybe that, along with her real record, means we don’t have to continue rewarding decades of GOP propaganda by acting as if any of it is genuinely true.

   Maybe, finally, we can wake from this ridiculous dragon-lady fever dream and realize that, like the atoms of my freshman chemistry course, she was never really anything like that at all. It’s just that for a powerful group of people with a very specific agenda, this version of Hillary was simpler to understand, and made their job easier.

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