The Hillary Bot

I track politics quite a bit, as an analyst for the bureau, ok, for the fun of it.  This means I am abreast of the latest about Hillary's email server.  As such, I can't seem to understand how her supporters still, well, support her.

The obligatory, these days, disclaimer must be said, and then mostly disbelieved, that I don't care that Hillary is a woman.  I only care that she is a bad candidate.  She's not very good.

It amuses me to no end that her campaign has reliably been forced to trot out the fact that she is incompetent as proof she is not a criminal.  What do I mean?

The most recent bit, trotted out by her campaign, is that she doesn't even know how to use a computer.  She used a Blackberry because she knows how.

Wow, where to start.  This woman would have us believe she's competent to run the free world but not competent to use a computer?  That she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that her home server was secure but she doesn't know how to use a computer?  I can go on like this for a while.

A reasonably wise and competent leader would at least attend a class, break out one of the 'Idiots' books, or hire someone to personally teach her.  She's rich enough.  The fact that she hasn't even, minimally, done this suggests that she's just not that interested in being the best possible public servant she can be.

That isn't really a surprise; being a servant isn't part of her character.  She's an 'elite' in her mind.  She's better than the rest of us and we should be ecstatic, I tell you, ecstatic to let her be involved in running things because, well, there's something or other she has or does that makes it all better.

Except that it doesn't.  She wasn't particularly good as Secretary of State.  She was almost a non-entity as a senator.  As First Lady, her only policy effort failed, thank goodness, and has recently been held up by a federal court as a model of mendacity.

The only thing she shows any aptitude for is lying, although she's incompetent at that too.  Bill would lie and then stick with his story.  Hillary tells one lie, gets called out, shifts to a new lie, gets called out, then, sometimes, shifts back to the original lie hoping we've all forgotten.  Her lies are now too numerous to print.

The thing is that if she'd simply seized the narrative and said that she did use a personal email server, State was not aware of it, but it wasn't illegal and wasn't insecure, and, yes, classified information likely did pass through it but she was not aware of any, she'd now be looking at a slap on the wrist and it wouldn't likely affect her campaign as much.

It is the lies that affect her campaign.  It's not that she's dishonest; that was known because she is, after all, a lawyer and a politician.  It's the fact that her lies were all so transparently aimed at conning the American public into electing her, which, combined with the evidence she believes she's entitled to the office, paint a picture of someone who lacks the humility to properly serve the American people.

She, if elected, intends to get out in front of all of us and lead us to where we were going anyway, as she does not actually have an original idea.  The only things she intends to try to make happen that are against the public opinion are things that are very bad.  She is the caricature of the establishment candidate: led by the nose by special interests, only willing to stand up for ideas that are inconsequential except to harass populations considered evil by liberals, and completely certain of her personal superiority and therefore the right to make such decisions on our behalf.

What Is Really Going On With Donald Trump

Today I watched Hillary Rodham Clinton stand up with a grim look and pronounce that Donald Trump did not have the temperament to be president.  She then reminded us that the President of the United States would have the secret nuclear codes.  She felt this piece of knowledge, apparently, would shock those American citizens who support Donald Trump into supporting her.  She is very, very wrong.

For starters, her argument actually works better against herself: would you want someone as president who is not even reliable enough to avoid risking exposure of state secrets just for her personal convenience?  That is, of course, the most charitable explanation, that she is too incompetent and/or lazy to bother with following official directions.  Should such a person really be allowed to control the nuclear codes?

However, this post is actually about Donald Trump.  A problem most of the anti-Trump crowd has is that they assume that people are listening to politicians and rationally picking the one that makes the best arguments.  Were this the case, Hillary wouldn't be doing well, either, but Trump would certainly be doing poorly.

Trump appeals because he is not a part of the establishment.  From the fact that he is independently wealthy to the fact that his brash statements and lifestyle obviously show he is not beholden to public opinion, Trump sets himself apart from the serious society that modern politicians expend great effort aping.

So, when Hillary attacks Trump in this way, not only does she expose herself to counterattacks, but she also completely fails to get the point.  In a way, nobody in Hillary's position, or anyone in any talking-head position, can attack Trump effectively because Americans are pretty sure they're all lying to forward their own agendas because, well, they've been caught at it so many times.  Attacks from them mean little to a Trump supporter.

As a matter of fact, given how low the average American's opinion of the establishment has sunk at this point, getting attacked by the establishment merely burnishes Trump's appeal.  There is no effective way to attack this man.  That, alone, makes him one of the most appealing candidates in some time to the kind of people that want change.

The constant creeping of bureaucracy that has accelerated under Obama grates.  It has come to the point that nothing short of revolutionary effort will stop it.  I do not intend to become apocalyptic, but our current government attempts to control as much of our lives as possible under the guise of enlightenment.  Trump, whatever his political views, is seen as the only candidate that can effectively stand up to this, if only because he's a loose cannon, a bull in a china shop, whatever metaphor you like, and has the intestinal fortitude to steer his own course no matter what.

I am not praising the man.  I will vote Gary Johnson, as I did last election.  If you don't know who Gary Johnson is, you should take some time to Google him to see if maybe he presents a better option than the two presumptive nominees.  However, I am cautiously optimistic about a Trump presidency as long as he makes an effort to surround himself with good people.

Unfortunately, it could all go very, very wrong.  If he sets about to making new laws and new regulations, then he will just contribute energetically to the death spiral of over-regulation we seem to have slipped into and thus hasten the apocalypse (ok, a little apocalysm slipped in).  I still don't see, personally, how he could possibly be worse than the known evil of Hillary Clinton, the lying, manipulative, venal, corrupt and greedy woman who honestly does not care about this country so long as she gets to run it, something she sees as her entitled right for some reason or other that escapes me.

Just as a final shot, note that every single accusation she's leveled at Trump applies to her: she insists he's just doing this for personal gain (she certainly is doing it for personal gain), he's unstable and unfit to be president (she's never held an idea longer than it was of use to her personal political campaign), he's corrupt and pays for influence (she's corrupt and has sold influence, to Trump), and so on.  The personal gain argument is particularly mendacious as Trump will not make more money as president than he could as, well, the Donald.  As a matter of fact, he's spending his own money on the campaign.  Hillary, on the other hand, will make much more money after she is president, peddling influence, among other potential career opportunities.  This is the final advantage of Trump, that he has already made his money, so has no need of being bought.