This election pageant has devolved into a cage match between Creepy Clown and The Hag. Some of it appears to be as scripted as a pro-wrestling match, other aspects seem to be ad libbed to the point where the contest is running the risk of spinning entirely out of control.
The irony is that the riveted focus of the contest is on the Sex Thing; dredging up Big Dog's past while all these new accusations against Trump are put in play. And blaming Putin and the Russians for the leaked Podesta emails...
Which puts a whole other layer of irony on this mess of a presidential campaign.
Sex sells, of course, so I guess we should have anticipated this focus on doing the nasty. Which, without consent, makes it assault and/or rape. Nasty indeed. Now of course we all know that Bubba was vehemently accused of doing likewise a couple of decades ago, and that got him in several tubs of hot water, including winding up impeached -- but not removed from office -- by the august majesty of Congress Assembled. It was quite the goon show. That was right around the time I started writing and commenting online. The impeachment of Bill Clinton triggered a lot of us to make some waves and call for... some semblance of reason in Our Government.
The thing was, there were plenty of things to criticize Clinton and his administration for. PLENTY. Every time the focus turned to The Sex though, all those other things -- from NAFTA to Serbia and Rwanda, the dismantlement of welfare as we knew it, the free rein given the banks, and on and on --
were shunted aside. And it quickly enough became clear that that was a prime motivation for focusing on The Sex. Keep the Rabble amused and entertained with prurient stories of Bubba's libido and poof, all those other things disappear.
Sure enough, it worked. It wasn't just the Rabble being entertained, either. This was hard core Presidential Porn for vast swaths of the Government as well. The Congress was entirely captivated; the media likewise. Special prosecutors went wild with glee. It was insane.
The echoes of all of that in the accusations once again being hurled at Bill Clinton, and by extension somehow tainting his wife ("The Hag") are dredging up plenty of revulsion among the masses. "Oh please, let us not go through all this again. Please!" I'm seeing the same sort of hyperbole about Bubba -- he's a rapist and worse, oh much worse, and Don't Forget Vince Foster, and Mina airport, and so much else that he's guilty-guilty-guilty of! -- being injected into the commentary about Trump's libido. It's as if the insanity of those times was institutionalized, and is now a permanent fixture of the government/media complex.
Of course many young people are being exposed to it for the first time. They didn't live through it like old codgers like me did. They didn't experience the utter hysteria the first time around, so this current hoo-hah must come as something of a shock to them. WTF? Right?
Not just the hoo-hah over Trump's stunted adolescent pawing of females and "locker room talk," but all the stuff about Bubba being a cad and a heel and an inveterate womanizer, too. Not that no one knew about it, it's just that until recently it wasn't much of a Thing anymore. Then suddenly, BOOM. It's back in all it's sleaze and tattered glory.
Somehow this is supposed to impugn Hillary ("The Hag") for sticking with Her Man, yadda yadda. I'm surprised that the accusations that she's a lesbian or that Web Hubble is Chelsea's father haven't yet surfaced again. Let's try not to be shocked/surprised if they do.
There's a whole encyclopedia of accusations to draw from, after all.
Hag-Hate is a definite subculture in the USofA. What Bubba did back in the day -- and more importantly what he is accused of doing -- is a fundamental part of Hag-Hate. She was there, she enabled, she probably (an accusation) procured. She's therefore as Utterly Evil as he is.
Policy discussion and issues of (shall we say) more global importance get shoved to the background.
But isn't that the point? I think so.
In point of fact, the Clintons ("Clintoons" in the puerile lexicon of Hag-Hate) and their supposed rightist political opponents agree on most issues of global importance. Such disagreement as there is on the Important Issues comes from the left, not from the right. Never has been all that much disagreement on those Important Issues on the R side of the aisle, as there still isn't.
That's why I've said many times that Hillary ("The Hag") is running as the Establishment Republican candidate, not really as a Democrat at all. As many have pointed out, some of her policy proposals are to the right of Nixon. She isn't even as "leftist" as a Rockefeller Republican. Her belligerence and warmongering are direct throwbacks to Bush-Cheney, but they're rooted in the Kissinger perspective of world domination that flows through White House regimes like a river.
We the Rabble don't seem to be able to move or channel this river of hegemony in any way.
But who cares? It's not about The Sex, is it?
Trump is being portrayed as the prototype Creepy Clown, and I won't go so far as to say that's unfair. He's self-aware enough to understand that because he's rich and famous ("") he can get away with most anything he wants when it comes to Female Flesh, and he can crush his male rivals one by one or in batches (at least in his own mind.) This is the mindset of a gangster and conman. No surprise, that's what he is.
That should be something the electorate pays attention to, but it seems that there's little or no comprehension of Trump's nature. Some see him as a bully and a predator -- but they like it. ("At least he's our Bully!" That sort of thing.) No, no, no. Trump does not bully on behalf of anybody but himself. Do you understand? No, they don't.
He's conning his supporters. Oh, but they like it. Whether they know it or not, they like being conned by Trump, because at least he's bothering to tell them what they want to hear ("Lock her up!") whereas the sticks in the mud "regular" Republicans endlessly tell them to sit down and shut up. Much as the "regular" Democratic Pooh-Bahs tell the rest of the Rabble to do likewise. "Sit down and shut up; there is no alternative."
Maggie Thatcher must be so pleased and proud looking up at us from her perch in Hell.
Sigh.
But again, none of that matters when the story is all about The Sex.
It's been noted that the obsessive focus on who did what to whom when is practically overwhelming the story of the Podesta email hack that is supposed to be exposing all the "devastating" details of what Hillary ("The Hag") really believes about the World and Everything.
And of course it's all Putin's fault.
Jeebus.
What I've seen of these emails (note, it's useless to try to search WikiLeaks for anything of interest), suggests to me that there's essentially nothing in them that we didn't already suspect or know, and that to a surprising degree, Hillary ("The Hag") was using her position and the opportunity to inject something resembling a social conscience into the crowds of malefactors of great wealth before whom she was speechifying. WHAT???? If there's a smoking gun of perfidy worthy of more than a passing glance, I haven't seen it. But then, we only see what others want us to see...
In other words, if she were smart, and her campaign wasn't so focused on the Creepy Clown, she'd actually be using these leaks in her defense; if she and her campaign were smart, they would have been using these things from day one. No, she doesn't come across as an antagonist to these High and Mighty Owners, not at all; but she does come across as a Persuader, "helping" them to do the Right Thing for once in their sorry lives. In this, she really strikes me as akin to a Republican moralist of yore.
But no. The focus must stay on the Creepy Clown and how Outrageous he is.
It's political malpractice, but then, side issues are always more important in the Pageant, aren't they? Gossip and scandal, you know? That's what the People really want.
And of course, Blame It All On the Russians.
I've been thinking about this anti-Putin, anti-Russia propaganda campaign quite a bit. It makes no logical sense at all. It's not just out of bounds, it's crazy, and it could spin out of control at any time, leading to God only knows what. But why? Why does it exist at all?
A theory is that it grows directly out of the neocon "Project for a New American Century" which is the blueprint for the catastrophe in the Middle East, and the plan for establishing and extending American Hegemony over the entire globe. The destruction of Russia -- regime change, followed by dismemberment -- is part of the long-term goal. So, too, the destruction and dismemberment of China. Any rival to American Imperial Power must be destroyed, vanquished or absorbed. The two strongest rivals are Russia and China, so it is proposed, and taking them out is in the National Interest. Or something.
So Putin, fully aware of this, sees the saber rattling and tub thumping coming out of DC and particularly from the Clinton campaign as an existential threat to Mother Russia, never mind to himself. That's actually quite rational.
But the blaming of Putin/Russia for everything is propaganda-silly. When I see it parroted in the "news" and online, I'm just gobsmacked. Have we learned nothing from the barrage of lies and half truths that led to the monstrous invasion and occupation of Iraq? And all the continuing fall out from that? What? How can Americans still be so gullible?
Dear God, no.
But I think there's something more than merely the Plan being followed. No, I think the current propaganda barrage is the result of something more immediate: Snowden. What?
Think about it. Russia-US relations changed fundamentally when Putin-Stalin granted asylum to Edward Snowden three years ago (or whenever it was, I forget now...) That act was blamed directly on Putin, and it was cited as defiance of US orders and demands that he be turned over to American authorities forthwith.
Not only has that not been done, but Russia has provided Snowden with a home, apparently with a good living, a girlfriend, and much, much more. He has become well integrated into Russian high life. And he is being carefully protected by the Kremlin.
Anti-Russian and particularly anti-Putin propaganda ramped up immediately, and it has now reached a fever pitch unseen since the propaganda barrage preparatory to the invasion of Iraq. We're seeing a similar anti-WikiLeaks propaganda barrage, which I attribute at least in part to WikiLeaks' assistance in spiriting Snowden into comfortable exile in Russia.
For a long time, I thought Snowden was a black op, a "limited hangout". Perhaps he started out that way, but something changed along the way, and once he was protectively ensconced in Mother Russia, his revelations became less about domestic spying and so forth (which the NSA, etc. were quite prepared to "explain") and more about international spying, some of which was quite embarrassing from a diplomatic point of view (let alone from the security state standpoint.) In other words, he crossed a line that was unpermitted. That enraged his former supervisors at the Agencies. And revenge became their prime directive, no just revenge against him, but revenge against all those who had helped him.
That sort of revenge appears to be in play in the actions of the Clinton campaign to literally destroy the Republican brand and if possible take Congressional power away from them -- while utterly destroying Trump in the process.
It's revenge for the impeachment and the follies that followed.
It's all very, very personal.
Yes, our governing class is just that nasty. Oh yes.
All this is sickening, but there's nothing we can do about it from our position Outside the Gates. Our Betters don't listen to us. They govern contrary to our interests. They dismiss our pleas.
They are Bourbon-like. This would be true no matter which unacceptable candidate is in office. It is who they are, and it is what they must do. No matter who it is. We saw quite clearly how this works with Obama's transformation once he was installed in the Big Chair. He became the creature of those he had denounced.
So we're screwed once again.
But meanwhile, we can focus attention on the All Important Sex Issues once again.
Save us.
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