The Washington Post asks if there are hidden Hillary Clinton voters as well as hidden Donald Trump voters. The idea is simple and obvious: pollsters may encounter husbands, who will speak for their wives (as men do, 'mansplaining' and what). But if you manage to slip back in and speak to the wife, she will tell you that Trump is unacceptable and that she means to vote for Clinton.
That's a kind of thought that accounts only for one specific kind of polling, which isn't that common now: mostly polls are not conducted by canvassing neighborhoods, but by phone or over the internet. On the other hand, I'm sure pollsters will have missed my mother, who is certainly voting for Clinton on exactly those grounds. It's not that she wants what Clinton represents. It's that Clinton is the devil we know, which is the safer way to vote (as the Gods of the Copybook Headings remind us); and that Trump is unacceptable in his manner towards women.
They won't have missed my mother because my father spoke for her. They'll have missed her because she doesn't answer phone calls from strangers. Still, the sentiment they ascribe to her is exactly correct.
I've been on the road all weekend, and last weekend before. Georgia is supposed to be a swing state this year, according to the polls. You wouldn't know it from the road signs. I haven't seen one Clinton sign anywhere, except for a billboard her campaign must have bought. I've seen Trump signs everywhere. In Athens, which is a university town, some of the Trump signs had been defaced (typically for college kids, they cut out the T and the P, leaving a call for "Rum!"). But there were no Clinton signs at all. If this state is really divided on a razor's edge, you'd think there would be some evidence of it.
The support pollsters are picking up on for her may be illusory, of course. It may be an artifact of their weighting categories, and assumptions about who will show up on election day. We'll know that in due time.
I do believe that there are hidden Trump voters, especially among college educated whites. It is never cool to support the Republican, but it has never been less cool than this year. Still, educated men and women can perhaps best see how disastrous the current course is, if they will see it. But maybe they just refuse: international friends suggest that the image that this is a race between an unjustly demonized woman and a fascist racist man has become the general view. Trump has faced 3 assassination attempts, but he's seen as the candidate of street violence. Clinton had her Filipina maid print out classified emails though non-citizens are not even eligible for a security clearance (and though printers are also supposed to be rated for handling classified information -- off-the-shelf ones keep stored images of what they have recently printed), and engaged in insider trading of classified secrets through her daughter, but she's been "cleared" by the FBI. All those charges were false, you see. Somehow. If you want to believe it enough, it is easy to believe it.
No predictions about the election will you get from me. I have no idea what is going to happen tomorrow.
My Grandfather's Son: Clarence Thomas's Life
I just finished Justice Thomas's autobiography, My Grandfather's Son. It is excellent.
He was raised in Georgia by his grandparents, and as much as anything, the book is a tribute to his grandfather, Myers Anderson. It highlights that possibly the most important thing parents can teach their children is the value of hard work. Despite segregation and other manifestations of racism that limited his opportunities and restricted how he could live his life, Anderson had a deep love of America and a solid faith that hard work could overcome adversity.
In addition to simply telling his life, he discusses race throughout the book. In his early life, Thomas had to balance his grandfather's patriotism, faith in hard work, and faith in God with the anger engendered by racial injustice and the murders of civil rights leaders in the 1960s. Many of the blacks around him tell him that whites will never let him succeed, so he's stupid to work so hard. As he goes through university and then Yale Law School, he is confronted by the hidden racism of the left, a powerful condescension toward blacks. As he grows into an unorthodox thinker and leaves the Democratic Party, many blacks begin to consider him a race traitor. He works for the Reagan administration and there is opposed by many civil rights organizations for the simple reason that he is working for a Republican. He also criticizes the Reagan administration's policies and attitudes toward race, but he defends it against charges of racism. There are a number of good lessons in all of this.
Finally, he relates the harrowing account of Anita Hill's accusations of sexual harassment during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings and how that turned his life upside down. In 2016, it is no longer shocking to see the extent the left will go to, but it is still an object lesson to know the details of how they tried to stop his confirmation.
My only disappointment with the book is that it ends with his being sworn in as an associate justice on the Supreme Court in 1991. That was 25 years ago. It's time for an update.
He was raised in Georgia by his grandparents, and as much as anything, the book is a tribute to his grandfather, Myers Anderson. It highlights that possibly the most important thing parents can teach their children is the value of hard work. Despite segregation and other manifestations of racism that limited his opportunities and restricted how he could live his life, Anderson had a deep love of America and a solid faith that hard work could overcome adversity.
In addition to simply telling his life, he discusses race throughout the book. In his early life, Thomas had to balance his grandfather's patriotism, faith in hard work, and faith in God with the anger engendered by racial injustice and the murders of civil rights leaders in the 1960s. Many of the blacks around him tell him that whites will never let him succeed, so he's stupid to work so hard. As he goes through university and then Yale Law School, he is confronted by the hidden racism of the left, a powerful condescension toward blacks. As he grows into an unorthodox thinker and leaves the Democratic Party, many blacks begin to consider him a race traitor. He works for the Reagan administration and there is opposed by many civil rights organizations for the simple reason that he is working for a Republican. He also criticizes the Reagan administration's policies and attitudes toward race, but he defends it against charges of racism. There are a number of good lessons in all of this.
Finally, he relates the harrowing account of Anita Hill's accusations of sexual harassment during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings and how that turned his life upside down. In 2016, it is no longer shocking to see the extent the left will go to, but it is still an object lesson to know the details of how they tried to stop his confirmation.
My only disappointment with the book is that it ends with his being sworn in as an associate justice on the Supreme Court in 1991. That was 25 years ago. It's time for an update.
Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting
Prepare to repel boarders! (NB: Although shots are fired in the next couple of videos, there is no blood or gore.)
Once upon a time ... Personally, I'd have picked a .308 for this, like an M-14, but, OK. I guess if you only get one rifle and you might have to get up close and personal ... (Oh, sure. Go with the .50. See if I care.)
[Update from a more sober TD: I don't usually claim to know more about firearms choices than the professionals who do this for a living, but after three or so drinks I become an expert on many things.]
Duck!
Brothers in Arms
Dire Straits
"... and though they did hurt me so bad, in the fear and alarm, you did not desert me, my brothers in arms ..."
Who Are the Bigots?
Valerie asked a good question in a recent thread-
"Who are the bigots? The ones over at The Donald subreddit, who give a rowdy welcome to the ladies, hispanics, jews, Muslims, and LGBTers, their candidate, who states his goal as making the country great for all of its citizens, or the political party that insists that people must vote their skin color or biological parts, or sex lives?"
I think Ami Horowitz has illustrated the answer to this in a powerful and simple way with this video:
Pretty clear, right?
A Good Argument, in Part
Fellow could use an editor, but he's got something to say if you're willing to dig it out. I'll try to limit the field somewhat.
The real issue is whether in the future we will have open discussion of political issues and free elections. Think about what we have now — a federal bureaucracy that is fiercely partisan. An IRS that tries to regulate speech by denying on a partisan basis tax-exempt status to conservative organizations. A Department of State that hides the fact that its head is not observing the rules to which everyone else is held concerning security of communications and that colludes with a Presidential campaign to prevent the release of embarrassing information. A Department of Justice that ought to be renamed as the Department of Injustice, which does its level best to suppress investigations that might embarrass the likely nominee of the Democratic Party. An assistant attorney general that gives a “heads up” to that lady’s campaign. An Attorney General who meets on the sly with her husband shortly before the decision is made whether she is to be indicted....There has been rampant collusion, over the course of years, to bring us to this passage.
Think about what else we have now — a press corps that colludes with a campaign, allowing figures in the Clinton campaign to edit what they publish. Television reporters who send the questions apt to be asked at the presidential debates to one campaign. A media that is totally in the tank for one party, downplaying or suppressing news that might make trouble for that party....
The Democratic members of the Federal Election Commission have pressed for regulating the internet — for treating blogposts as political contributions and restricting them. Members of the Civil Rights Commission have argued that freedom of speech and religious freedom must give way to social justice. There is an almost universal move on our college campuses to shut down dissent — among students, who must be afforded “safe spaces,” and, of course, in the classroom as well. There, academic freedom is a dead letter.... If you do not think that a discussion of [forbidden] matters is off limits, you are, as the Democratic nominee put it not long ago, “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic.” You are “deplorable and irredeemable.” You are, as she said this week, “negative, dark, and divisive with a dangerous vision.” It is a short distance from demonization to suppression. And, let’s face it, the suppression has begun — in our newspapers, on television, on our campuses, on Facebook, on Reddit, in Google searches.
A Riddle
Wretchard asks:
Let's suppose I had an array of email stores that were going to be the subject of investigation. I know this because someone in the investigative agency tells me so.AVI has some Lord of the Rings thoughts, too.
In order to protect the organization(s) I first back up the array of email databases and put them on removable media. I can then screen the original databases for inappropriate entries and delete them as private secure in the knowledge that all past deals and correspondence can be referenced by very careful and surreptitious restores from the hidden archive.
I will have lost no data, just put them where it cannot be found. This archive, to have any relevance, must be close at hand and airgapped from the other computers. Could work right?
But suppose the person consulting the archive is observed by a third party, whose is ignorant of the arrangement and is probably ignorant period. Neverthless his sly nature leads him to suspect that data on the removable media is important owing to the secrecy with which it is consulted.
So he watches silently with his curiosity piqued.
At a moment of opportunity said ignorant person copies the contents of the removable media, still oblivious to its important. There it lies, unremarked, until one day it is discovered by a serious of fortuitous events by someone investigating an unrelated matter.
He has the Ring of Power in his possession but to him it is just a bauble.
What has roots as nobody sees,
Is taller than trees Up, up, up it goes,
And yet never grows?
What Bilbo? What?
Australia: God's Own Horror Show
Pretty much everything in Australia will kill you. Except the huntsman spider. But recently a woman photographed a huge one that looks like it might.
I wouldn't have posted on it, except for this bit:
It probably says nothing good about my character that I can't stop laughing at this.The bite of a huntsman isn't dangerous to humans – it’s their fearsome appearance that’s the real concern.The spiders are notorious for popping out of car dashboards at unexpected times, with disastrous consequences.On Tuesday a man crashed his car into Lake Cathie in NSW after a huntsman fell on his lap, causing him to accidentally slam his foot on the accelerator.
Do You Hear Yourselves?
Nick Palmisciano: "Lena Dunham Says Extinction of White Men Will Lead to Better Men."
Extinction, is it? Up until now I thought the plan was just to invite so many other kinds into America that "white men" would be a comfortably contained minority.
We can be sophisticated about this, and suggest that it's not the actual men but the concept of "white" men that she (and her father) are arguing ought to be extinguished. I might even have some sympathy on the point, if it were to be conducted as an intellectual exercise in re-examining concepts. I'm not sure that "white" has done us much good, although it was useful as a way of resolving the last American crisis brought on by mass immigration (from Germany, from Ireland, from Italy, and so forth). It was a stopgap solution, but its usefulness may have expired.
That, though, requires us to have a conversation about what we ought to be instead. What's the new ideal to which we would, as a culture, ask immigrants to assimilate? It doesn't have to be "white," but we do have to have some standard or we will cease to be a culture at all.
I like this one:
That seems sufficiently inclusive.
Extinction, is it? Up until now I thought the plan was just to invite so many other kinds into America that "white men" would be a comfortably contained minority.
We can be sophisticated about this, and suggest that it's not the actual men but the concept of "white" men that she (and her father) are arguing ought to be extinguished. I might even have some sympathy on the point, if it were to be conducted as an intellectual exercise in re-examining concepts. I'm not sure that "white" has done us much good, although it was useful as a way of resolving the last American crisis brought on by mass immigration (from Germany, from Ireland, from Italy, and so forth). It was a stopgap solution, but its usefulness may have expired.
That, though, requires us to have a conversation about what we ought to be instead. What's the new ideal to which we would, as a culture, ask immigrants to assimilate? It doesn't have to be "white," but we do have to have some standard or we will cease to be a culture at all.
I like this one:
That seems sufficiently inclusive.
They Are Apparently Serious About This
Headline: "The Parents Of This Dead Robber Are Really Mad His Victim Had A Gun."
Well, you know, I'm not that sorry for your loss. But the worst argument is this one:
The idea that the government should stand over us in this way, like the riflemen over Harambe, is disgusting. If we have a problem, we'll sort it out like free men.
Well, you know, I'm not that sorry for your loss. But the worst argument is this one:
“If there was to be a death, it was not the place of the employee at Pizza Hut. That is the place of law enforcement,” said Hairston.No, it is not the place of law enforcement to serve as the dedicated killers of American citizens. We all have a duty to uphold the common peace and lawful order. If your son violated it to the degree that it placed others in immediate danger of death or grievous bodily harm, then any of us has a right to stop him by any means necessary.
The idea that the government should stand over us in this way, like the riflemen over Harambe, is disgusting. If we have a problem, we'll sort it out like free men.
You Don't Say
Headline: "Massachusetts law firm donated $1.6M to Democrats including Hillary Clinton and received bonuses that precisely matched their political donations in massive 'straw-donor scheme.'"
There's just no end to the corruption around her.
Well... possibly, there's an end in sight.
There's just no end to the corruption around her.
Well... possibly, there's an end in sight.
A Call for Unity
It is addressed to Republicans, but I see a lot to like in it anyway. It's the kind of argument that, were the candidate himself able to make it, would be compelling. Perhaps even convincing, if I were sure that he was a man who truly understood the agenda they assert for him and truly believed in it. It would help if he could manage to treat people decently.
I am still divided. I have to vote before Election Day, because I have to travel that day, but I have not yet done so. I will thus have to do it tomorrow or the next day. I am certain that I cannot vote for Hillary Clinton, for the very valid reasons lain out so well in that argument. I am not convinced that Donald Trump is fit for the office, or that he will make a good President, or even a decent one. I do not like the idea of giving my assent to his ascension to an overly-powerful office ripe for abuse by a man of appetites, pride, and disdain, and he has shown himself to have all of those qualities.
But so has his opponent, in spades. Even her virtues become vices, for her habits of careful study and hard work are turned toward corruption and self-enrichment, toward maintaining a dense nest of lies, and toward the single-minded grasping for power, for control. Under no circumstances would I like to live under her authority. I have the very real sense that she considers herself the enemy of me and mine, and of everything I hold dear about the Republic and its Constitution.
I could simply write in the candidate of my choice, which was always Jim Webb. (Remember Jim Webb? Imagine if we could substitute one of these two with him, and perhaps my faith in him will become clearer.) I'm told they don't even count the write-in votes, but I wasn't expecting my vote to count anyway. Georgia is said to be close this year, but AVI fields a strong argument that, in fact, neither my vote nor any of yours actually count. They matter, he says, but they won't count for anything in terms of the outcome of the election.
So I am thinking about what matters. In the end, a protest vote in the manner of a write-in would only leave me with the illusion of clean hands. On the other hand, voting for Trump -- should he win -- would leave me with an illusion of dirty ones: after all, he wouldn't have won based on my vote, so I would be no more guilty of his victory than of his defeat.
Why worry over illusions? Because they matter, as AVI says.
I am still divided. I have to vote before Election Day, because I have to travel that day, but I have not yet done so. I will thus have to do it tomorrow or the next day. I am certain that I cannot vote for Hillary Clinton, for the very valid reasons lain out so well in that argument. I am not convinced that Donald Trump is fit for the office, or that he will make a good President, or even a decent one. I do not like the idea of giving my assent to his ascension to an overly-powerful office ripe for abuse by a man of appetites, pride, and disdain, and he has shown himself to have all of those qualities.
But so has his opponent, in spades. Even her virtues become vices, for her habits of careful study and hard work are turned toward corruption and self-enrichment, toward maintaining a dense nest of lies, and toward the single-minded grasping for power, for control. Under no circumstances would I like to live under her authority. I have the very real sense that she considers herself the enemy of me and mine, and of everything I hold dear about the Republic and its Constitution.
I could simply write in the candidate of my choice, which was always Jim Webb. (Remember Jim Webb? Imagine if we could substitute one of these two with him, and perhaps my faith in him will become clearer.) I'm told they don't even count the write-in votes, but I wasn't expecting my vote to count anyway. Georgia is said to be close this year, but AVI fields a strong argument that, in fact, neither my vote nor any of yours actually count. They matter, he says, but they won't count for anything in terms of the outcome of the election.
So I am thinking about what matters. In the end, a protest vote in the manner of a write-in would only leave me with the illusion of clean hands. On the other hand, voting for Trump -- should he win -- would leave me with an illusion of dirty ones: after all, he wouldn't have won based on my vote, so I would be no more guilty of his victory than of his defeat.
Why worry over illusions? Because they matter, as AVI says.
We should be grateful for exactly these sorts of decisions that God sends to us. The November election is a practice version of a decision that has real consequences. Jesus is letting us have a sandbox to play in every election, where we can try out the various lessons and build our little castles for practice. Because your answer is going to have no effect on anything. This is a test. Rejoice! Most lessons in the Christian faith are expensive, considered worth it only in retrospect. This one is cheap. Use this opportunity with joy.Alas, I am not yet wise enough to be joyful. But I suppose I know what I have to do.
"Racially Conscious" Without Being "Racist"?
I'm not convinced that the concept of "race" refers to anything real. Indeed, I am convinced it is a concept that was created to justify the re-introduction of slavery to Europe following its elimination by Christianity, once Portugal developed new trade routes to a West Africa that was hungry for trade but that had nothing much of value to offer but other human beings.
Still, the New Republic is pretty invested in the idea that race is real at least for some people, and that a connection to others of one's race -- performed at the ballot box -- yields something like social justice. So it's interesting to see them talking this way.
Still, the New Republic is pretty invested in the idea that race is real at least for some people, and that a connection to others of one's race -- performed at the ballot box -- yields something like social justice. So it's interesting to see them talking this way.
In a study of white Americans’ attitudes and candidate preferences, we found that Trump’s success reflects the rise of “white identity politics”—an attempt to protect the collective interests of white voters via the ballot box. Whereas racial prejudice refers to animosity toward other racial groups, white identity reflects a sense of connection to fellow white Americans.Fair enough, I guess, but what are those interests? A defense of mores, of home, of culture? Aren't we usually told that having that interest is per se racist, as it suggests that one prefers (or worse, thinks superior) one's own versus another's culture or mores?
Green Party Endorses Trump Over Clinton
It's from Daily Kos, but it does sound like they're right on the facts.
And it really is the protest vote, this year. There is no one more establishment than the Clintons at this point. The whole establishment has bowed down to them, and rendered them all possible service.
The Green Party’s presidential candidate, Jill Stein, posted today on Facebook a link to an “Open Letter from the Social Media Director of the Stein/Baraka Campaign,” by someone whose name was given only as “Jillian.” The message reads:The Greens are pretty radical -- I spent a lot of time with them up in Philadelphia during the DNC. Fun folks, to be sure. A lot of them were willing to come on board the Democrats for Bernie, but have the (quite accurate) sense that the DNC was rigging its process to make sure he never had a chance. A Trump protest vote would be natural for them, in a way.
…A Clinton presidency is D A N G E R O U S … If a Trump presidency would mean that we have to fight ignorants in the streets—I’m ready for that. “
Stein commented “I couldn’t have said it better.”
Not even the “we have to fight ignorants in the street” part, Jill? Is that a call to a gang fight or a misspelling?
Literary criticism aside, I consider this sufficiently official. Journalists have been pushing Stein to answer this question throughout the campaign; it has now been answered.
Stein has been increasingly preparing her followers and the public for this idea over the last few weeks. She tweeted on Oct. 14:
Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy is much scarier than Donald Trump’s, who does not want to go to war with Russia. #PeaceOffensive
She retweeted an article by her running mate Ajamu Baraka on Oct 15 titled “Why Hillary Clinton Is More Dangerous Than Donald Trump,” which states:
The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton.
and on Oct. 16 retweeted Baraka’s tweet:
Expecting people of color to fear Donald Trump after all we’ve been through the last 200 years, is absurd.
On Oct. 21 she posted on Facebook an article titled:
What’s scarier than Donald Trump? Hillary Clinton’s plans to gut Social Security
Greens have been spreading this message heavily on social media and in articles like this that state “Donald Trump as president will do ‘less damage‘.”
And it really is the protest vote, this year. There is no one more establishment than the Clintons at this point. The whole establishment has bowed down to them, and rendered them all possible service.
Lin Carter on Conan the Barbarian
Lin Carter was most famously a writer of science fiction and sword & sorcery, but he was also a US Army infantry veteran of the Korean war. I happened across an introduction he wrote for a book building out the Conan mythology with L. Sprague de Camp. The introduction was authored in 1971, long enough ago that the book could be dedicated to "the greatest living creator of swordsplay-and-sorcery, J. R. R. Tolkien."
Even then, it seems, Carter felt it was necessary to justify the project. The justification sounds shockingly familiar.
Still, I transmit his words because they go to show just how long this conversation has lasted. It's not at all new: 1971 is now 45 years ago, and the fight over making sure that all the heroes are this-or-that minority resisting this-or-that oppression is still going strong.
In any case, it perhaps explains some of the attraction of barbarism. 45 years is a long time to be lectured -- longer, indeed, than most of the American population has been alive.
Even then, it seems, Carter felt it was necessary to justify the project. The justification sounds shockingly familiar.
These days, many people, including (alas!) many of my fellow science-fiction writers, seem to feel it is somehow vaguely immoral to read purely for pleasure. A story, say these wise men, should really come to grips with something critical and important, like the oil slick on Laguna Beach, or the vanishing Yellowcrested Sandpiper. At very least, such persons advise, the hero should be a Negro striving to free his people, a homosexual gaily battling for social recognition, a concerned college youth protesting the iniquities of the Pentagon by blowing up his English Lit class, or an Amerindian getting back at the paleskins by seizing control of Alcatraz.He goes on to say that he doesn't think this is necessary, and that in any case he doubts that his generation or the next one will solve any of the social problems afflicting society. I suspect his contemporaries, looking back on recent history, would say that they are justified by the subsequent progress on social recognition for gays at least; perhaps in other ways.
Still, I transmit his words because they go to show just how long this conversation has lasted. It's not at all new: 1971 is now 45 years ago, and the fight over making sure that all the heroes are this-or-that minority resisting this-or-that oppression is still going strong.
In any case, it perhaps explains some of the attraction of barbarism. 45 years is a long time to be lectured -- longer, indeed, than most of the American population has been alive.
The Feast of All Saints
On this day, how appropriate that we can read about a very recent excavation of Jesus' tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I was there in 2014, and it is quite a site. As with the archaeologists who followed up on the legends of Troy, or the similar ones who were amazed to discover how precisely the Beowulf preserved descriptions of war-gear that would have been ancient when the poem was written, scientists who followed up were surprised by the accuracy of the tradition:
Researchers have continued their investigation into the site where the body of Jesus Christ is traditionally believed to have been buried, and their preliminary findings appear to confirm that portions of the tomb are still present today, having survived centuries of damage, destruction, and reconstruction of the surrounding Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City....
When the marble cladding was first removed on the night of October 26, an initial inspection by the conservation team from the National Technical University of Athens showed only a layer of fill material underneath. However, as researchers continued their nonstop work over the course of 60 hours, another marble slab with a cross carved into its surface was exposed. By the night of October 28, just hours before the tomb was to be resealed, the original limestone burial bed was revealed intact.
"I'm absolutely amazed. My knees are shaking a little bit because I wasn't expecting this,” said Fredrik Hiebert, National Geographic's archaeologist-in-residence. "We can't say 100 percent, but it appears to be visible proof that the location of the tomb has not shifted through time, something that scientists and historians have wondered for decades."
Fixing the Culture
The author of Hillbilly Elegy offers his thoughts at the end of a longer interview.
This is a problem that government can help with, but it can’t be the only solution to a number of these issues. So where I would like to think it leaves us is that each individual actor in a community is going to have a different view on how to address some of these problems.There's also a diagnosis of what he thinks the left, and the right, get wrong about culture.
An individual parent should pick up the book and think maybe the way I’m interacting with my kid is causing a lot of problems down the road and maybe I should try to do it a little bit better. Maybe a social worker picks up the book and says, this is the reality of how these folks are living, maybe this changes how I approach my work. Maybe a church pastor picks up the book and says look, it’s really problematic that there are so few poor kids in our churches, but there are a ton of upper- and middle-income kids in our churches — maybe I need to go out and minister to the least of these as Christ said.
"Clinton Voters are Naive"
So says Molly Ball, who nevertheless seems sympathetic in a way. Not blindly so, however.
This goes on for quite a while. There's a very long list of ways in which her critics have been proven right about everything.
Still, she says: "The people who believe in Clinton are naive enough to think she might actually make things better."
But why would she use her power against these things, when these things are the very source of her power?
Everything that came out seemed to confirm the worst suspicions.
Her paranoid opponents said she was a part of the elite globalist cabal secretly plotting to impose one-world government by surrendering national sovereignty. And there she was, according to emails between her advisers hacked and released by Wikileaks, telling a Brazilian bank in 2013, “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.” She was paid $225,000 for the speech. (The campaign has not confirmed that the emails from the account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta are authentic, but many of them have been corroborated by third parties.)
Her critics had long charged that she said whatever people wanted to hear, and there she was saying behind closed doors that when it comes to policymaking, “You need both a public and a private position.” They said she was a member of the out-of-touch elite, and there she was saying she was “kind of far removed” from regular people’s struggles. They said she was too cozy with wealthy donors, and there she was telling the CEO of Goldman Sachs that she feels sorry for rich people, because “there is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives.”
In a Democratic debate in April, Bernie Sanders charged that while he was introducing legislation to break up the banks that caused the financial crisis, “Secretary Clinton was busy giving speeches to Goldman Sachs for $225,000 a speech.” And sure enough, the hacked emails showed...
This goes on for quite a while. There's a very long list of ways in which her critics have been proven right about everything.
Still, she says: "The people who believe in Clinton are naive enough to think she might actually make things better."
But why would she use her power against these things, when these things are the very source of her power?
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