The Hillary Speeches Hoo-Hah

I've held off saying much about the Hillary Speeches Doc Dump because there isn't really a whole lot to say about it. I have read a few of the docs that have appeared or been linked from elsewhere. It's all but impossible to search WikiLeaks' archives itself (I tried "Podesta emails", for example, and came up with 62 of supposedly thousands of hacked emails.)

Anyway, what's in these emails and the partial transcripts of speeches Hillary gave to the High and Mighty for Big Bucks strikes me as pretty benign. She even tries to inject a modicum of social conscience into people and institutions that have none. No wonder this isn't getting a lot of traction in the media or much of anywhere else. Despite the headlines, there's very little there there.

There's so little there there that Lambert over at NC, always one of the most inciteful (heh) analysts of Things Clinton ("Clintoooon!"), had to say: "Reading these, I’m thinking the $675,000 had nothing to do with the actual content…."

We know from endless prattle of the likes of Lambert and many others that all things Clinton ("Clintoooon!") are the definition of corrupt. There is no political corruption on the face of the earth unless it is smeared with Clintoon shit. None. And these emails, according to Julian Assange would be filled with smoking guns of Clintoon corruption that would, somehow or other, destroy her campaign.

Well. No. Not so far anyway. 

They show her getting along with the Mighty-Mighty titans and malefactors of great wealth to be sure, but in every one of the ones I've seen, she's telling them to their faces that they need to get a soul and start treating the rest of humanity -- like all the millions who've been harmed by their shenanigans --  better. Sometimes there are details of what she expects of them -- such as lending to Main Street to get the economy going again -- and sometimes there aren't, it's just a moral(ish) declaration. "It's your obligation to do better for the Little People."[Paraphrase.]

So the question has been raised, "Why the hell didn't she just release this stuff when Bernie asked? 'Cause it sure doesn't look like there was anything worth hiding in what's been hacked."

Of course these aren't the whole transcripts, they're excerpts, but there's nothing shocking or more than modestly ear-grating in them. She doesn't have a way with words, let's put it that way. She's no great orator to the Great and Worthy or to the Rabble. But there's an inner coherence to what she has to say, and gets across her points relatively well. One of which is, "I'm your friend, and I want you to behave better."

Gee. Alert the media! Get this to Olbermann, stat! (An old joke, but sometimes it's fun...)

Her positions -- so far as I can make out -- are pretty much the same as Obama's when it comes to those people. Which has been arm's length but relatively friendly. Enough so that they're rolling in money while the rest of us have continued to struggle with little or no help from Our Betters.

I think it's Greenwald who has proposed that though the emails are not particularly damning or devastating, they do show how She (Who Must Be Obeyed) would govern, and it's not pretty. 

Well, no. It never is.

With Hillary it is perhaps less pretty because of her nature and background and her absence of oratorical power -- particularly problematical is her legal training and experience. I'm convinced it destroys otherwise good people who want to do right, but once they learn about the Law, they're lucky to do anything unless it conforms to custom and can be parsed to mean what it doesn't.

I come from a family of attorneys. I don't recommend their ways as a general thing. It's nuts making.

Big Dog has had many of the same problems of excessive legalism as Hillary does. 

I think it's interesting that it's called "corruption" when it is really something else again. Let's call it an excess of moralism based in flawed understandings of law and propriety. Or maybe it's inner defiance....

Anyway, it's gotten the Clintons in trouble more than once.

These emails don't show the kind of corruption that Hillary is incessantly accused of. The accusation of "pay to play" quid pro quos between Herself and the myriad High and Mighty interests she's dealt with don't fly in the end because there's no direct sign of a quid let alone a pro quo. Well, I should say, there's more than a few quid, in that many tens of millions of dollars have gone into hers and Bill's pockets and into the Clinton Foundation, but other than a "fair hearing" it's not clear that anything has been delivered to those interests that they wouldn't have already received anyway.  They didn't have to pay her for what they got on the other end. They would have gotten it anyway.

In other words, the charges of "corruption" are based in a fantasy understanding of how government is supposed to work.

Not an understanding of how it does work.

So what did they pay her for?

It's always a question, isn't it? Why do ex-officials, it doesn't matter who they are, cash in so heavily on the speaking-lecture circuit or gain multi-millions from legal partnerships or from sitting on boards of directors once they leave office? How does that work, exactly, and what are the parameters?

What do the speakers-partners-board-members provide the payers?

You can't get a clear understanding of this System from all the yapping going on about it, particularly not from all the puerile insults being thrown around: "Clintoooon!!!!" Etc.

Yes, it is a System, fully formed long ago, by which those who once served in high government office (and sometimes not so high) can profit mightily and legally once they leave the marble halls of government, and by which they can thence return to the Hallowed Corridors of Power, rich as Croesus, to start the cycle over again. It is the custom of the tribe. Dick Cheney, anyone?

We may disagree with it -- I certainly do -- but it is legal, and it is all but impossible to prove a direct pro quo for the quid, so legally it's not corruption. No, not really. Really!

It's especially so the higher you go up the ladder of the System. Lower ranks can and do get in trouble or sometimes go to jail for relatively minor indiscretions in squeezing the teats of the System, but the higher the rank, the less likely one is to have one's tits put through the wringer.

The System itself is corrupt, but we don't hear about that, and passions rarely rise over the whole damn thing. No, it's individuals like Hillary who are pilloried for working the System to their advantage, for profiting legally (or sometimes not) from the opportunities on hand.

That someone else does likewise, say Colin Powell or Condolezza Rice to pull two names at random out of a hat, is not a problem -- they're not running for office of course -- but they're profiting from the same System Hillary has. The list of profiteers is almost endless.

That Hillary has worked the System better than many must be galling to her rivals who are convinced she's just not that smart, but the emails show her with a clear grasp of issues and the interests of the people she's speaking to, and the interests of those who have been left behind, a fuller grasp than I would have expected. She may not express herself artfully -- far from it -- but she's no slouch or dullard when it comes down to it.

I suspect she suffers from being "too smart for her own good."

What she seems to lack is good judgment. This has led to some catastrophic misjudgments and utter horror for millions of people in the Middle East, North Africa, Central America and elsewhere. Her husband suffered from some of the same problems of poor judgment Hillary has though perhaps on a different plane...

Yet strangely, or perhaps not, Hillary's poor judgment seems to be right in line with the theories of how things ought to be as they are the accepted consensus among the Ruling Class. In other words, even her moral scolding -- and moral failing -- is taken by them as right and proper.

They should be doing better by the Lower Orders. But they don't. Aww, such a Pity so many have to suffer...

All the Hag-Hate in the world is not going to change that. It will have no affect on the System at all. It's a diversion. Perhaps even an engineered one to ensure that nothing will interfere with the System as it is.

Trump, too, seems to be a diversion.

Keep the Rabble entertained enough and at one another's throats enough, and Wah-Lah! Their impotence for another cycle is assured.

That is key to keeping the Overclass on top and the Rabble incapable of doing anything about it.

Part of the President's job assignment is to soothe or tame the Rabble. Obama is a master at it; there hasn't been anyone as skilled at it since FDR. Hillary is not skilled at it, not at all, and Trump's apparent goal is to rile them up so much they commit mayhem or even a Revolution from the Right.

TPTB cannot tolerate that, of course, but they must be disappointed in Hillary's failure to connect with, let alone tame the Rabble who might well rise up on their own against what they see as an inappropriate continuation of an unacceptable status quo.

The situation puts the Overclass on the spot. Clearly they have decided on Hillary for the White House, but as she is incapable of properly taming the masses, something or someone will have to supplement her rule. I don't see Mr. Kaine being much help in that regard. Certainly Bill will face the same sort of difficulty he did when he was president. Nor would Democratic control of one or both houses of Congress do her any favors. In fact, given the historic fecklessness and misrule of the Democrats, and their lack of interest in progressive policy solutions to domestic and international problems, I can easily imagine a Democratic majority in either or both houses of Congress would be even worse for Hillary than it was for Obama when he had a Democratic majority.

If the Rs keep the House -- likely but not certain -- who would be surprised if articles of impeachment are filed within minutes of her taking office? Who would be surprised with endless "investigations," scandal mongering, hysterics even greater than when Bill was in office? The media will eat it up, just as they have with the sex-accusations against Trump.  They don't care about other aspects of his history, though, do they? The man is a gangster and a con man, and he is a representative of his class, but none of that matters when there is sex on the table.

Nothing matters except The Sex.

It strikes me that there's a revenge drama running through all this nonsense, "get back" for past slights and mistakes. How all that works is a topic for another day.

Right now, though, the Hillary Speeches Hoo-Hah is a lot of sound and fury signifying almost nothing.