Hillary Dissembling Again

An article published on the now utterly defamed and ostracized RT news website this morning by Joshua Roberts (through Reuters) entitled “Conservative site funded Fusion GPS anti-Trump project before Steele dossier – report” got me thinking.  The article, being published on a non-United States mainstream media source, seems strangely objective, very short and to the point; “just the facts mam”, how strange; perhaps that’s why RT has been banned by Twitter and will probably be banned on other social media platforms operated by the new generation of billionaire oligarchs seeking to fit in.  Still, there’s that Reuters connection.

There’s a great deal about Trump-GOP policy proposals and policies worth criticizing and seeking to defeat although understanding them and their premises in an objective manner would seem an essential first step in deciding whether or not they should be opposed, and then, in developing decent and honorable opposition tactics.  Reflexive rejection is not a tactic geared to attaining the common welfare or to generating the consensus required for democratic governance.  Demonization of the opposition for blatant political purposes is a tactic that works in the short term but, as in the fable of the little boy who cried wolf, wears thinner and thinner as time passes and eventually, when real issues need to be addressed, credibility and urgency have been dissipated.

American politics by both major political parties are mired in polarizing quicksand based on reliance on wedge issues, issues that are not really subject to resolution through governance and thus can be counted on to persevere, manipulative issues with behaviorist buzz phrases that almost inescapably generate emotional reactions.  Issues like gun control and abortion, immigration, taxes and, crystalizing first with Bill and Hillary Clinton and now Donald Trump, the politics of hate, calumny and personal destruction.  Truth, as always seems to be the case, is the first casualty, and its perversion and destruction have become an art form approaching status as a science.

Given the accuracy of the foregoing, a quarter of a century of civic, social and political experience with the Clintons seems like falling into a black hole’s gravity well.  Perhaps it’s the realization that both being lawyers and expert in lawyer’s tools, their ethical center has been erased.  Rhetoric and clever manipulation of facts, hiding and ignoring some, coloring others with cleverly designed phraseology, planting plenty of loopholes and plausible deniability are now their hallmarks and they’ve infected not only their political party but almost the entire mainstream media.  Those tools are based on a belief that those on whom they are used are malleable enough to mold as one pleases.

We are those on whom they are used.

Some of us, optimistic by nature, have some faith that Abraham Lincoln, himself a lawyer like the Clintons and a master of the arts verging on science they now practice, had a point when he declaimed that although all of the People might be fooled some of the time and some of the People might be fooled all of the time, all of the People could not be fooled all of the time (a paraphrase).  Still, of course, that leaves fooling enough of the people enough of the time to attain one’s goals as a distinct possibility, one that the selfish pragmatists who control both major political parties in the United States rely on as the cornerstone of their electoral strategies.  “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me” is an old adage but we are in the age of fool me constantly shame on whom?  Not everyone is constantly fooled but through divisive strategies and crafted messaging enough of us seem to be constantly fooled to accomplish the popular control necessary to create the illusion of democracy in a totally undemocratic world.  We seem addicted to being fooled, perhaps so that we can avoid facing the reality of those ultimately to blame: ourselves, although blame and fault, though related, are not necessarily synonymous.

An illustration of the “magic” being worked on us involves the Russiagate hysteria and now, revelations concerning what I refer to as the “Dirty Dossier”, superficially dirty because of its salacious contents but profoundly dirty because of the manner in which it was compiled, marketed and because of the manner in which responsibility for its creation is being misdirected.  The Dirty Dossier is, in a sense, an allegory for the manner in which we are consistently manipulated.  I concentrate on the Clinton’s Democratic Party coalition because they seem infinitely more sophisticated in their tactics than are bumbling Republicans, and thus much, much more dangerous.

The “Dirty Dossier” stemmed from an opposition research group, Fusion GPS, initially hired on behalf of Marco Rubio through The Washington Free Beacon and billionaire Paul Singer, but whose work product was subsequently acquired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC.  However, as the RT article clarifies, the Dirty Dossier was not developed during the time the Rubio campaign was involved.  It was entirely a Clinton campaign-DNC production.  Nevertheless, now that the feces has hit the proverbial fan, as is always the case with almost anything involving the Clintons and now Obama, it turns out that things were structured so as to avoid responsibility and cast blame on the victims with the mainstream media as prime enabler.

Remember Paula Jones and the “Bimbos”?

Now that the truth is escaping, the Clinton makeover crew is trying to shift the blame through cleverly crafted distortions.  The fact: the Dirty Dossier is a DNC, Clinton-Obama production abusing federal power to trigger a dangerously deceptive new cold war.  The selfishness and hubris associated with these tactics and the disdain demonstrated for the welfare of the American people is astounding.  But then, the American people are merely an inconvenient obstacle in the quest for political and economic power, a ludicrous obstacle imposed by starry eyed idealists enamored with illusions like democracy and liberty and pluralism on the elites who really control the world and who are consequently forced to waste their time energy and capital overcoming.  Think of all the energy, resources and unnecessary risks associated with having to pay lip service to such purely theoretical concepts.  After all, if you gave cattle the right to vote, how much filet mignon would you ever get to enjoy?  And what about fish?

It certainly seems easier to just give up and avoid the whole silly charade, to just lie back and try to enjoy the abuse hoping it will be over soon.

But then, there’s progeny to consider.

I wonder how cattle feel about theirs.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2017; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia although he has primarily lived in the United States of America (of which he is a citizen).  Until recently he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  He can be contacted at wacalvo3@autonoma.edu.co or guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.