Hillary Clinton, the "flawed candidate". [View all]

[JHan]

Last edited Wed Apr 19, 2017, 12:41 PM - Edit history (1)

Last night I watched Brian Williams interview the authors of "Shattered". The authors have done some sterling work in the past, which includes their book on HRC's stint at the State Department.

But Brian Williams persisted in using the phrase "flawed candidate" with reference to HRC and the authors agreed.

"flawed candidate" is one of the most inane phrases in politics. It's an asterisk that denies a person their greatness and an absurd caveat.

U.S. Presidents still held in high regard were "flawed". Some of these men owned human beings and had sex with them, today we would call that rape. Some of them had insane egos, were notorious philanderers, were liars and cheats. Some would not survive in today's climate of politics yet their actions helped us evolve into a more compassionate society - like the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, the civil rights act and an awareness that politics should improve the lives of people who are different to us. These flawed presidents used the system to improve lives, and they are viewed as "Great Men" - not flawed, not "establishment" men per se, but Great Men - period.

Enter Hillary Clinton, and her belief that the system can do good - and this is seen as shocking and her being out of touch because she is an "establishment" candidate. The broadsided attacks of the "establishment" by populists created an insatiable appetite in the Political Media for more chaos because chaos breeds ratings. "Flawed" was handy to drag Hillary, who never made it a secret she despised the press, to the level of her opponent, a charlatan who hates the system and lacks the skills to make the system work even if he cared a damn. He is unscrupulous so he wants to tear systems down for the sake of it because systems are complex and contain checks and balances that hold people to account.

The desperate attempts to disparage Clinton using the "Flawed" meme reached its zenith with the email server use and the witch hunt that was Benghazi . Hillary is no more a warmonger than past Presidents but you'd swear she was Idi Amin if we go by the histrionics of her harshest critics and her husband's scandals aren't her scandals. A public servant was equated with a man whose narcissism is only excelled by his ignorance and yet Pundits, commentators and journalists couldn't, for all their experience in politics, suss this out for themselves. They fed and keep feeding the anti-establishment narrative and for all their outrage, unwittingly helped elect the most unsuitable person to the presidency in decades.

Peter Daou? put it best "All of this mess, every last bit of it, is because the media, left and right wantonly smeared and slandered this lifelong public servant"