For many voters who oppose Hillary Clinton for President, her vote in favor of invading Iraq despite the utter lack of justification is a dealbreaker. For those who support her, they simply don’t care. How to bridge such a massive gap in world views?
Besides the Mass Murder
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Dear Hillary supporter:
Barring a very unexpected event, in a few months, we’ll have one of two results: President Hillary Clinton or President Donald Trump. And I want to get this out of the way right now.
No set of circumstances exists in which HRC can do anything useful with the presidency. That has been openly discussed for months. No evidence exists to allow anyone to rationally conclude that HRC will be able to accomplish anything of any significance. Pick a problem: climate change, the disappearing middle class, the rising cost of college, whatever, and it’s the same thing each time: the problem, whatever it is, isn’t going to respond to the voodoo incrementalism HRC has been shilling these 30-odd years. HRC’s business- and status quo-friendly compromises won’t fix the problems the country and the world face.
HRC can lose to Donald Trump or she can win the election and face a Republican Party that rabidly despises her, a party that will block every single thing she does.
All of you who were so confident that HRC was the right candidate because she’s a woman and she’s got so much experience (like when she voted for the Iraq War) and she’s a woman, you’ve done so much damage. You were wrong all the way, and it was obvious you were wrong months and months before the primaries. And you were so goddamned proud of yourselves. And you would not be told anything. Any criticism was dismissed/attacked as sexism. Everything Bernie Sanders suggested that wasn’t co-opted by HRC was dismissed as crazy pie-in-the-sky. “Yeah, we all want universal single-payer health care, but that can’t happen. Only Obamacare, which the Republicans will destroy the second they’re back in power, can provide people with health care. It’s not like universal health care exists in Canada or France or Germany or the Netherlands … Clearly, you hate Hillary because she’s a woman.”
In the years to come, when the histories are written. Whenever you want to talk about what you think about a political issue, you Hillary boosters, I want you to stop and think about how idiotically and tragically wrong you were about Hillary Rodham Clinton, and how the error was staring you right in the face the whole time and how you simply could not/would not/did not have the capacity to listen to the other side and actually think.
And then, with those thoughts in mind, I want you to shut your mouths and not say anything about anything political. Ever again. Not online. Not to your friends. Nowhere. I want you to stop registering to vote because, frankly, a vote in your hands is even more dangerous than a gun in the hands of a six-year-old. I want you to withdraw from the entire political process because you are too stupid and too dangerous to be trusted with the power of the ballot.
And if HRC’s presidency is a soaring, staggering success, I will do the same.
Amen
Amen again.
You say HRC will do “nothing of significance.”
“Significance” comes in two forms: positive (+) and negative (-).
We CAN be sure that whatever (microscopic) increments of +significance HRC may grudgingly bestow they will be countered by ≥100 massive, quantum leaps of -significance.
Victoria Nuland for special secretary for the promulgation of WWIII !!!
Secretary (soon to be president barring some very remote catastrophe) was and is a Goldwater Republican. Congress might block her domestic proposals, but she will soon be Commander in Chief.
The major columnists (even rabid Republican ones) say ‘Vote for Clinton, Trump with the nuclear codes would be the end of the world.’
As Commander in Chief, President Clinton will immediately bring to Syria the exact same peace, prosperity, and democracy she is proud of helping to bring to Iraq and Syria. Read Friedman: while Iraq and Libya still have some problems (all their own fault) everyone there says they are much better off, and all Iraqis Friedman talked to said they are eternally grateful to Bush, jr for saving them (Friedman only talked to Iraqis in the Green Zone when it was protected by the US military, and I’m sure all of those Iraqis supported the US liberation, in fact, many of them didn’t go to Iraq until AFTER the liberation).
Read the London Economist, which is hoping she’ll remove the evil Syrian dictator, who has murdered 300,000 innocent, peaceful protestors.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21698652-europe-and-america-made-mistakes-misery-arab-world-caused-mainly-its-own?frsc=dg%7Cc
Reading the top columnists, we know the evil Syrian dictator created the Daesh to justify his murders of those peaceful protestors by releasing them from Syrian prisons. And we know this is true, since it is VERY well documented that the Daesh initially consisted of 10,000 prisoners released from Camp Bucca in ’08 and ’09. I don’t know much geography, but obviously our top foreign correspondents do, so Camp Bucca must be the Syrian prison from which the evil Syrian dictator released jihadists and gave them money and weapons. And Camp Bucca is near Basrah, so I’m sure Basrah must be a Syrian city located in the extreme Southeast of Syria. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/camp-bucca-the-us-prison-that-became-the-birthplace-of-isis-9838905.html
Putin has said he’ll defend the legitimate government of Syria, so Putin had better meekly back down, since President Clinton, unlike Obama, won’t put up with any of his nonsense. And she’ll also make him give back the Crimea and the eastern Ukraine. And she’ll boot China out of the West Philippine Sea.
But at least when she’s elected, Trump won’t get those nuclear launch codes.
Exceptionalism means “OUR genocide don’t stink.”
This is a 100% valid argument for the primary, but, after the primary let’s say Clinton wins, and she’s facing Trump (That guy Ted Rall wrote a book about?) where do we go from there? Is there no difference between Trump and Clinton? Does not voting, or writing in someone else to score a moral point mean you did the right thing?
I’m not interested in answering for anyone else, but as someone who supports Sanders, if he loses, I won’t stay home. I’ll hold my nose and elect the lesser of two evils because it’s not a game. Most of us white liberal heterosexual middle class dudes won’t suffer much under Trump (unless he starts WWIII, which he might) .
I hope Sanders wins. I really do. But if he does not, and stopping Trump isn’t a priority, we get what we deserve. Trump would make the current middle east policy look like it was crafted by Quakers. We know this because he’s literally bragged about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIEwKyxr2bU
Henri
Speaking of Ms Clinton, Andrew O’Hehir’s analysis on Salon is one of the best analyses of wellsprings of her policies that I’ve yet seen….
Henri