Hillary, I Feel Your Pain

Poor Hillary.

Never has a former First Lady or Secretary of State or candidate for the US Presidency who actually won the popular vote! been so vilified with such unmitigated disrespect.

If she gets any more GOP shade she’s going to turn into a bona fide mushroom.

So why does the media at large, along with the court of public opinion, keep disregarding this continuous smear campaign against her?

Why is it acceptable to slander ’n slam ’n smear a dedicated public servant like her while a sociopathic-fascist-iconoclast like Donald Trump gets respect — no, veneration — from the majority of Republican officials and voters?

Well, I hate to keep grabbing that familiar chestnut out of the fire for my op eds, but here we go again. The answer to those questions is quite simple: Trump is a Republican, Hillary is not. That means she is an evil, un-American loser, while he is not. It’s that obvious, even though it doesn’t make a lot of sense…unless, of course, you’re a Republican.

Once again, the GOP machine is engaging in their curious illogical combo of Double Standard/Cognitive Dissonance. That means whatever a Democrat does is really bad, while whatever a Republican does is really good — even when other Republicans know that said activity in question is unmistakably unethical and/or illegal. And if this thing done by a Republican does seem really, really bad, it’s completely ignored and forgotten…as if it never even happened at all.

Sound a little too ridiculous, a little too biased? Welcome to the ever-growing GOP Playbook of “ We’re always right, they’re always wrong — especially if they’re Democrats.”

A perfect example of the DS/CD modus operandi came this past spring during Chris Christie’s town hall(when he was campaigning for the Presidency in New Hampshire). There, on the campus of New England College, a 15-year-old teen respectfully asked him this question:
“I heard you say that one of the reasons you endorsed Trump is that you really did not want Clinton to be President in 2016. And now, based on recent knowledge that Trump was arrested — Trump was prosecuted on criminal charges — do you think that Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton would have been the better bet for democracy in 2016?”
Talk about a no-brainer! All Christie had to say was “I wouldn’t have voted for Trump.” Or something like, “Anyone who wasn’t engaging in criminal activity would have been a better bet than Trump for democracy in 2016.” That’s all he needed to say, but he couldn’t.
Remember, this guy who used to be the governor of New Jersey still had to stick to the GOP script. He still had to be a “good Republican.” So he gave this answer:
“Hillary Clinton, in many, many ways, was a huge detriment to our democracy too. The American people had in 2016 the biggest hold-your-nose-and-vote choice they ever had. And so, look, philosophically, some of the stuff that Trump did accomplish is more in line with what I believe than what Hillary would have tried to accomplish. So I still would’ve picked Trump.”

Hold-your-nose-and-vote choice? In GOPLAND, it’s not enough to publicly admit you STILL would have voted for a crooked fellow Republican. Christie had to deride Hillary, too, because she was the Democratic opponent in 2016. This misplaced loyalty isn’t just blatant stupidity. It’s an important part of the Republican Playbook: Never criticize another Republican. But if you must do so, make sure you also slam a Democrat. It’s one of their bylaws; it’s an essential part of their script.

And yet, this practice of deftly manipulating facts usually gets shrugged off by the media, especially by talking heads on TV segments. Christie’s lone defense of Trump was covered by Trip Gabriel in “The New York Times” on April 22, 2023, as a feature in the “IN THE MOMENT” column. The headline said it all: “At Town Hall, A Teenager Puts Christie Into a Corner.” But this revealing story got buried on page A13 of the newspaper’s Saturday Edition.

Have journalists covering the political scene gotten so used to scurrilous Republican discourse that they cannot perceive how damaging such rhetoric is? Maybe.“The New York Times” did feature a report about Hillary’s e-mail on June 13, 2023. Unfortunately, information essential to our understanding was omitted from “After Indictment, Republicans Leap to Revive the Clinton Email Controversy.”

Conspicuously missing from this coverage was the fact that this controversy erupted AFTER Hillary was no longer serving as Secretary of State. That is, the law that she allegedly violated was literally not in existence when she was Madam Secretary. Only after Republicans worried that she might run for the Presidency did they pass laws, in addition to legislation about government documents already on the books, that would make her alleged misconduct illegal. So they made these additional laws RETROACTIVE. That meant that even if legislation had not been in existence when she was Secretary of State, The GOP Tribunals could still go after her. And what was this big e-mail brouhaha really about?

Since Hillary’s communication in question dealt with classified information, the public will never know exactly what kind of server or info retention systems were involved. In fact, any explanation in self-defense that she could offer publicly might compromise classified info even more than just her use of her “private e-mail server.”

What’s especially ironic here is that she only wanted to use her private e-mail server to save time and money while remaining efficient in her government job. She wanted to be able to access information from her workplace AND also be able to remain in contact with her husband and daughter. In other words, Hillary wanted to do what most busy working women wanted: to be available and accessible on the job and on her home front.

Needless to say, because Hillary Clinton didn’t grow up with 21st Century Technology, she must have been in contact with specialists who advised her on setting up such a system and how to most effectively use it. That’s probably what happened — circa 2008 — over 15 years ago. No doubt the experts in the field at the time also assured her that data like e-mails would never actually be “erased” and gone forever. No doubt they also assured her that this system they would design had so much built-in security and “firewalls” that sensitive info would never be compromised. No, no, there would never be any security breaches of the personal, confidential, classified, or top secret information she would access on her personal server.

Of course, now we know that any high-tech system designed to provide the ultimate in security protection can be easily infiltrated by any whiz kid in the classroom or by any Geeky nerd hiding out in his mother’s basement. Nothing involving computers is ever 100% foolproof. I doubt if Hillary Clinton every got that kind of warning, though. In fact, she probably went ahead and used her private server in the way she’d initially envisioned because these experts gave her such positive, confident reassurances. Too bad these experts were wrong.

Does anyone really believe that if Secretary Clinton HAD known about the risk of using this private e-mail server, she would have used it, anyway? I personally doubt that anyone as conscientious, as intelligent, as organized as she was — and still is — would have flagrantly misused and mishandled such sensitive information.

The real question here should be this one: Why did no one stop her from using this private e-mail server in the first place? Even more questions should have been posed to these experts who(probably) gave her bad advice. More importantly, who gave her the go-ahead to use it? They should have been quizzed about what they told her and why. Why was it that none of these experts — with either government or computer backgrounds—warned her of the risks associated with using such a private e-mail server? Why did no one explain to her that using such a system could compromise the sensitive information to which she had access?

Probably because the focus was about condemning her, not about finding out what really happened. Continually repeating “Hillary and the e-mails” is more destructive than the truth. Remember, the GOP script has never been about the truth, the whole truth, or reality. Better to be hypocritical than to give a Democrat like Hillary a fair shake.

When it comes to Trump now, the latest GOP trope declares, “In this country, you’re innocent until proven guilty. Let’s just leave it to the courts to decide.” And yet, when it came to Hillary’s e-mails, there was a resounding” Lock her up! Lock her up!”

What about her rights? Wasn’t Hillary Rodham Clinton innocent until proven guilty, too? Not in GOPLAND. Not in TRUMPWORLD. In 2016, The Donald himself publicly declared, “When I get elected President, the first thing I’m going to do is throw her a** in jail!”

Now imagine what would have happened if things had been reversed in 2016. What if Hillary had been elected President because she lost the popular vote but won in the electoral college? And what if Trump lost the Presidency because he won the popular vote but lost votes in the electoral college?…Close your eyes and you can almost hear The Donald screaming, “Not fair! Not fair! Not fair! I got elected, but I didn’t get enough votes in the electoral college? That’s bulls***! We’ve got to change the Constitution before we lose our country!”

Suddenly, Trump would have made everyone call him Mr. President and Mar-a-Lago would have become the new White House…and all the good little Republicans would have gotten in lockstep with his demands, just like the obedient lemmings they really are.

Funny, for years we’ve been telling women they weren’t smart enough to be President. Then when an intelligent and motivated woman like Hillary does come along and wants the job, we refuse to vote for her. We don’t like her. We actually hate her because she reminds us of that snotty girl who was the smartest one in school.

Meanwhile, we’re okay with electing a fascist pinhead who wants to give White Nationalists a place at the table because he’s the kind of guy we want to have a beer with…Gee, it really seems like we don’t want any woman in the Oval Office at all, doesn’t it?