By Jonah Goldberg
Saturday, July 09, 2016
The news out of Dallas is just awful, but I’m not going
to dwell on it here for numerous reasons (It’s fast-moving and my Internet
connection isn’t, for one thing). But there’s one point I want to make, even
though it’s also one of the reasons I don’t want to talk about the bloodshed. I
hate the race to politicize every horror and tragedy.
Still, some incidents lend themselves to it more than
others. A terror attack on the United States by a foreign entity is by its
nature a political act, and therefore it lends itself to political commentary —
particularly when the people running the government make the clear political
decision to distort, conceal, or distract us from the nature of the event. When
the president says “workplace violence” instead of “Islamic terrorism” to
shield himself from criticism or advance his pet theories about foreign policy,
it is right to call b.s. on the play.
But there is something particularly vile and disgusting
in the way many of the leading masters of sanctimony keep changing their
standards. When a registered Democrat and Muslim murdered people in Orlando in
the name of ISIS, it was outrageous to suggest that maybe we shouldn’t point
fingers at Christian conservatives or the NRA. When Gabby Giffords was shot by
an utterly apolitical schizophrenic, Paul Krugman blamed it on Michele
Bachmann’s “eliminationist rhetoric.” The Democratic party almost en masse blamed it on some crosshairs on
Sarah Palin’s Facebook page. The Orwellians leapt out of their bunkers and
started memory-holing martial metaphors.
But now, I gather, any suggestion that rhetoric from
Black Lives Matter influenced these murderers is beyond the pale.
I keep repeating the old line: Behind every apparent
double standard is an un-confessed single standard. The single standard here is
that only the right people may politicize tragedy. Only the right people get to
determine what sort of speech incites violence. Only the right people know when
it’s a time for prayer and unity and when it’s time to take up action. Only the
right people know when the blame falls solely on the murderers and when the
murderers are simply a symptom of a larger problem. And when anyone disagrees
with the right people, they reveal themselves to be the wrong people. Because
you can only be right if you agree with the right people.
So, as I’ve said before, to Hell with you people.
The Adventures of
Super Hillary
Now onto something a bit more amusing: The Adventures of
Super Hillary.
“There has never been any man or woman more qualified for
this office than Hillary Clinton,” President Obama declared this week. Take
that Jefferson! Sit your mansplaining ass down, Ike ! Hillary’s here.
There’s a reason she wears those smocks that make her
look like the United Federation of Planets’ ambassador to Rigel 7: She’s just
light years ahead of the rest of us.
Read the “112 reasons (and counting!) Hillary Clinton
should be our next president” on her website and you’ll see what I mean (but
don’t blame me if you vomit on the keyboard). Of course, you have to wade
through an enormous amount of pandering. Free tuition for these people, free
health care for those. Look under your seats, everybody! You get a subsidy! And
you get a subsidy! Everybody gets a subsidy!
What was it Mencken said about Truman? “If there had been
any formidable body of cannibals in the country he would have promised to
provide them with free missionaries, fattened at the taxpayers’ expense.”
By the time her list gets to 200, she’ll be raffling off
the chance for some under-privileged LBGT preschoolers to push a Koch brother
into a volcano.
But even the pandering is part of her larger sales pitch.
There’s just nothing she can’t accomplish because she’s “One Tough Mother”
(That’s Reason No. 55). “She knows what’s going on in Laos” (No, really, that’s
No. 69). “She’s a progressive—and she’s a progressive who gets things done”
(That’s Reason 51).
And, here’s the kicker. Madeleine Albright, that’s right
little people, Madeleine effin’ Albright, says, “I’ve never met anyone more
prepared to be president.” That’s Reason number 76. But it might as well be
Reason No. 1, am I right? Because, if Madeleine Albright hasn’t met you, you
might as well be jointed and used for dog food.
So you get it now? Hillary Clinton can do it all. She can
make twelve-minute brownies in seven minutes. She can eat barbecue ribs with
her hands without getting her white gloves dirty. She brings home the bacon (or
cattle futures) and she fries it up in the pan. If there’s a crisis on her
plane, not only can she take the throttle, she can speak jive to the passengers
in need. She’s more prepared than a Tennessee survivalist and an Eagle Scout
combined, and she’s more qualified than George Washington, the guy the Founders
thought of when they wrote the job description of the president into the
Constitution. She’s a human Swiss Army knife, a Ninja, a, general, a CPA, and a
soccer mom all rolled into one. As Reason 46 says, “Hillary is prepared to
tackle all challenges, including national security — because presidents don’t
get to choose which issues come to their desks.”
But not if the issue arrives via e-mail!
Again, she can do it all . . . except for one thing. She
can’t handle the Internet. It’s her kryptonite. She’s helpless against its
foreign ways.
All you have to do is say “e-mail” and she sheds IQ
points faster than a Mr. Potato Head loses his facial features when thrown into
an industrial blender. Giving her a computer is as pointless as giving an
abacus to a basset hound. When asked if she wiped her server, she responded,
“You mean like with a cloth?” In her initial statement about her server set up,
she reassured the American people that the server was secure because “It was on
property guarded by the Secret Service and there were no security breaches.”
When I first heard this, I figured her understanding of
computers derived from the first Mission
Impossible movie. She was worried that Tom Cruise would descend from the
ceiling and steal her NOC list or, in her case, her e-mails about yoga. After
one particularly sensitive e-mail about how much she struggles with the One
Legged King Pigeon Pose, I liked to think she barked out “Double the guards
around the server!”
But given how she is instantly lobotomized by all things
IT, I now think she’s more on the level of Derek Zoolander and Hansel trying to
get the files out of the computer.
The head of the FBI seems to agree with me. When it comes
to e-mail, particularly classified email, she’s like a 1980s grandma trying to
set the blinking clock on her VCR.
Comey was asked, “A few minutes ago, you also stated that
you now believe that Hillary Clinton is not nearly as sophisticated as people
thought. Is that correct?”
He replied, “Yeah, I think that’s fair — actually, no,
not as people thought, but as people would assume about somebody with that
background. I’m sorry, I should be clear about this, technically sophisticated.
I’m not opining on other kinds of sophistication.”
In other words, if witty badinage about Laotian current
events is on your agenda, she’s still your lady. She can be counted on to
MacGyver 3 Q-tips, some chewing- gum-wrapper tinfoil, and a dead D battery into
a rudimentary nuclear generator. And, obviously, she’s remains a master of the
five-point exploding heart technique. But, despite 30 years of government
experience at the highest levels and a storied legal career, when it comes to
e-mail and intelligence classifications, she might as well be a homeless lady
pushing a cart full of cans while muttering about how the squirrels have no
pants.
The Ruse
Obviously, I’m not buying this. Not entirely at least. I
do believe she’s pretty incompetent about technology. But I also think she’s
pretty incompetent about lots of things.
I no more believe she’s the most prepared or qualified presidential candidate
in history than I believe that bowel-stewing laugh of hers is sincere. But I
think in reality she has less in common with Derek Zoolander than she does with
Vinny “The Chin” Gigante.
The longtime boss of the Genovese crime family, Gigante
pioneered the insanity ruse. He walked around Greenwich Village in a bathrobe
muttering to himself in order to convince prosecutors he wasn’t fit to stand
trial. It seems to me that Hillary “The Ankle” Clinton is playing a bit of the
same game.
But, ultimately the real explanation is that Clinton just
doesn’t care. Like her husband, what suits her needs is always more important
than what the country needs or the party needs. Maybe Bill got on that plane
with Loretta Lynch to lobby her on his wife’s behalf. Maybe not. I think both
are equally possible. What I am sure about is that he didn’t care how it
looked. That’s how he goes through life. And it’s how Hillary does too. It’s
not that Hillary doesn’t care about the sanctity of classified information.
It’s just that she cares more about herself. She’s plenty patriotic, just so
long as doing the right thing for the country doesn’t interfere with doing the
right thing for herself. Her first loyalty remains Her.
No comments:
Post a Comment