What Hillary Clinton says about us
I couldn't have said it better myself.
The Explanation Hillary Clinton Owes
The truth is that Hillary Clinton is like most people. She's a coward. She looks around at everyone else and says, "What do they think I should think?"
And the Presidency is no place for a coward.
But that's exactly what we want. Someone whose hand we can force. Whether we know what we're doing or not. And, generally, we do not.
I opposed this war, up front. I thought and said that I thought it was a mistake, up front, for all of the concerns about Vietnam that so many people also shared. For whatever fucked up reasons, no matter how noble it often seems to liberate an oppressed people, they often clamor for repressive leaders, and find them preferable, at least, to foreign invaders, as seemed to have been the case in Vietnam. I attended protests. I argued against going when it was very unpopular to do so at a time when there was very little room to dissent. I was wrong about a lot. I didn't realize that the invasion would get the support that it got. I didn't anticipate the level of diverse, engaged and I must say, as I think about it, thoughtful debate on the matter that we got during this period, in contrast to the Vietnam War. I thought it was probably true that Saddam Hussein would have to be removed by force, but I thought that it should have come from an Iraqi led effort with, perhaps, overwhelming U.S. or international military support, which was the major impediment to it happening without U.S. involvement. I thought the U.S. should have engaged opposition parties and their alligned militias in an effort to covertly (or perhaps opnely?) plan an Iraqi led democratic revolution, which would have undercut political support for the insurgency, I believe, which is the oxygen off of which it feeds. But I opposed the war, even though it didn't tack with the current political mood.
And I am supporting this surge at a time when it is comparably unpopular. I'm not 100% sure that it will resolve this situation better. But I've not heard a better case than Frederick Kagan's case for the surge - that securing Iraq is a necessary prerequisite for a political resolution, that American forces are better prepared to support Iraqis in doing that, and that Iraqis need and their government is clearly requesting our assistance in securing Baghdad for that purpose - from those who oppose it as of yet. I just have a much stronger sense of responsibility for this war and for my thoughts on policy matters than Ms. Clinton does.
I'm not concerned with the fact that so many people, like Hillary Clinton, did not. Many people did what they thought was best. Many people did what they thought everyone else thought was best. And God knows I've had my moments of cowardice. Sometimes some pretty serious moments of cowardice. But I don't respect this kind of self-righteous cowardice that holds tight both to its own notions and to the political winds in the pursuit of power, either. And I know it is a dangerous instinct for a politician, nevertheless a President, to have. It is a dangerous dance between an ego driven public looking to absolve itself of responsibility for its popular notions, for the zeitgeist, as Richard Cohen says, and the tragedies they produce, and an ego driven leader willing and ready to appease those egos.
I am learning that the most important form of courage in the world that most people lack is the courage to admit when you are wrong. It is not President Bush alone who struggles with this kind of courage. It is all of us. On every side of every important issue that we face. And exactly the reason why we should not be trusted with the power or the assertion of the right to constantly force our neighbors' hands. And exactly the reason why liberal democracies, liberal democratic cultures, and people with the most genuine liberal democratic commitments are the most authentically strong amongst us.
Hillary Clinton is the alter ego to President Bush. She is someone whose self-righteous unwillingness and lack of practice and developed capacity for self-reflection makes her dangerously ego-driven, constantly rationalizing any decision in the name of being popular and pursuing her political ambitions.
We like Hillary Clinton because she is us. She's a coward who is attuned to our self-righteous selective memory and our willingness and desire to force peoples' hands to get what we want when we want it. She embodies our cyncism. And she forestalls our need to self-reflect and challenge our own assumptions about the world and ourselves.
Hillary Clinton is our egos working so desperately not to face our consciences that perhaps it is not President Bush, after all, who is alone responsible for this messy war.
It is us.
Love,
Ben
2 comments:
I'm not a Hillary fan and I agree, at least in principle, with the bulk of your critique of her.
I also agree with your assessment of what we should want in leadership and what we, as a people, seem to search out instead.
I'm not sold on the ostensibly short-term troop build-up in Iraq. However, reasonable people can disagree about those strategic maneuvers and I'm not claiming to have a monopoly on the truth. So, I don't have a beef with you there, either.
I do, however, have one gripe. It's about your use of the word "surge" to describe the current policy directive.
I think you're playing along with a little old-fashioned Orwellian language use. "Surge" sounds so good. Much better than escalation. Much better than intensification. Much better than forced pacification. Much better than _______.
That's why some whiz kid at the White House made sure that all of R gang came out talking about a "surge" in the wake of GW's policy announcement.
"The surge."
Give me a break. It's bad enough that pols create bogus names for legislation. No Child Left Behind. The Patriot Act. I think the new congress will probably call their minimum wage package The Eternal Happiness and Great Prosperity Law or something.
When we call what's happening in Iraq a "surge" instead of what it really is (in a real way), we're hiding a lot of the truth. we're also playing along with the kind of lousy spin that serves to keep us all distanced from what government is really doing.
So, Ben, you suck because you said "surge." But you don't suck THAT much, because your dead on about Hillary being one of the governing cowards too many of us love.
CDB
I don't know, Carson.
See, I don't see adding troops as all that involved a policy choice. They want to surge troops to both keep up with the concerns of commanders that there is much more that can be done in terms of security and training and maintaining supply lines to soldiers and Iraqis with more people and to assure troops there that they are committed to getting to a real resolution of this thing, which involves a political resolution, rather than slinking back to the U.S. with their tails between their legs, which is unnecessary and would probably destabilize Iraq.
I don't think it's just rhetoric. I'm sure it's a rhetorical device as much as "redeployment" is a rhetorical device.
But there is a substantial choice, here, between staying put, pulling back or out, and adding soldiers to commit to a sustainable security, independent of the rhetorical devices. I don't have a problem with the use of the words surge or redeployment.
But it probably would be to the advantage of the administration to call it "committing to a policy of securing Baghdad sufficiently enough to allow for a political resolution of the civil war and violence breaking out there." I like the idea of using a long title like that one because it makes it so much harder to avoid the substantive debate, which is too much of the propaganda/discussion out there.
I mean I would have a seriously hard time voting/arguing against the The Eternal Happiness and Great Prosperity Law, just because it has so many words that it almost looks like a real discussion of policy rather than a nice name for a one-sided proposal.
And you know what is scary about Hillary Clinton, to me, Carson? That if adding troops to the effort in Iraq were popular, she would be right along with it. Because that's just how Hillary is. She's a follower who thinks that if she follows closely enough she can earn the right to be a leader. It's so dishonest and bullshit, I can barely stand it.
It's not Hillary alone who is guilty of this. The President has his own issues with it. Plenty of Republicans play and are playing this game, right now. Plenty of Democrats play this game.
But it's also not honest to people like Barak Obama or me who opposed this war, up front, or folks who supported the war but are more honest about their responsibility in their support rather than blaming the President for being deceived when you had all the same access to, largely, the same information, which is a sign that you don't deserve to be President, ironically, if people were really thinking about this one rather than just trying to pick a winner.
And worse, for me, is that it lets the American people off the hook by scapegoating the President that they supported in this whole mess. "I'm not responsible. I just do what the President thinks is the right thing to do," a lot of people reason all over their lives, nevertheless with the war in Iraq, rather than taking responsibility for both the thinking and facilitating the thinking and engagement themselves, and being responsible for choices made rather than sluffing it off when it doesn't suit them.
I have much less problem with people screwing up who have some honest sense of responsibility for the screw-up, as I think President Bush does, to some degree, than I do with people distancing themselves from a screw-up that they supported because they don't want to take responsibility for it.
Because the bullshit that Hillary Clinton symbolizes right now, Carson, is that the zeitgeist to force our way through issues, that got this whole war started in the first place, is going to pass. And everyone is going to say, "It was the President," or "It was those Democrats". When the truth was that it was all of us.
It's the one lesson from World War II that doesn't seem to get learned. The German people supported a regime based on force and imperial ambitions, not just out of coercion. It was Hitler's popularity and pressure from Hindenburg's closest associates which brought Hitler into the Chancelorship and a Nazi-led government. The German people were, generally, responsible for the Nazi regime. And the Allies generously absolved them of that responsibility so that the world could move on.
We will have to absolve responsibility on this zeitgeist, as well. But what we don't need is Hillary Clinton being the symbolic leader of "if I don't take responsibility, then there is none to take" line of bullshit. It's one thing for George Bush to only slowly and quietly acknowledge mistakes in this war. It is a whole other thing to have Hillary Clinton self-righteously carping against those mistakes that she was complicit in and has taken no public responsibility for.
It's too much lying. And the idea that that kind of bullshit would cynically be substituted for more honest government and policy-making and choices makes me sick.
What we need is more honest and substantive policy discussions and decisions. And I don't give a shit what propaganda people use, as long as we get to those discussions and stop rewarding people who flatter our vanity that we really never have anything to rethink because we're always right or close anyways.
We're all a bunch of big fat fuckin' liars is what we are. And the more we pretend that we've had it right all along, the bigger liars we are.
Hillary Clinton ran left during this period to cynically appeal to the vanity of liberals that they've have all the right answers all along, just as George Bush ran right to do the same among the scary zealots amongst his bunch.
And we need to stop making it so damn hard for people to speak their true thoughts and to stop rewarding these liars and flatterers. And, more importantly, we need to stop lying to ourselves and one another about how much we've really figured out and how much we haven't.
And we need to start having more genuinely open-minded, open-hearted, flexible, responsible, freedom-respecting, collaborative discussion about policy options, where everyone feels far freer to say what's on their minds and where we are all responsible for the choices and their consequences.
But we can't do that as long as everyone is always scared about having the popular will of the moment enforced upon them, even though the popular will so clearly and frequently turns out to be wrong. And Hillary Clinton and George Bush totally reflect the complete dysfunction of this fucked up little game we've created where we pretend that we know more than we do, in the moment, and then enforce our foolishness that we are convinced is right, in the moment, on everyone around us, including our politicians, and make it very, very difficult to have a more honest and substantive policy discussion.
I have to say that I like George Bush more now that he is down. And I am sure that I will like Hillary Clinton more when she is down, as well. Being down gives people an opportunity for humility, generally, if they'll take advantage of it, which is where all of the really important and good thinking occurs.
What we need to do is face up to just how fucked up this whole cycle is for our public and even private discussions and stop rewarding people who pander to our vanity that everything is really so much better than it really is.
And with an almost inevitable Democratic President after the 2008 election, Hillary Clinton is the most dangerous reaffirmation of this whole bullshit cycle of any of the candidates available right now. We get to support her, ignore the mess that this way of engaging in politics and engaging one another has created for us, and self-righteously distance ourselves from all of the consequences of our choices. It's very much like the Soviet Politburo or the Nazi war machine except that we have more freedom to call bullshit on the whole exercise, including on ourselves.
The truth is that we need to face up to just how dysfunctional this whole mess is, as with the dysfunctional messes in the markets and in the culture that precipitate so much of the this and the larger political mess.
But we can't do that as long as we're always rewarding people who are telling us that we are right, all the time, or that we belong to the right side, or that it was someone else who was responsible for all of the choices that we don't like, in retrospect, that we favored, supported, and often pressured and strong-armed for.
And Hillary Clinton represents exactly this dysfunctional and dishonest tendency, so none of us really has to take responsibility for or change anything about ourselves or how we engage one another, in the political discussion or otherwise.
The surge is partly substantial and partly symbolic. I support it because it matters to me that we get to a substantial resolution of the mess we created in Iraq rather than wiping our hands clean of it. And Hillary Clinton's stances on this war reflect for me exactly the kind of cowardice, failure to take responsibility, and lecturing and legislating for the world how they should take responsibility that so repulses me, right now, in the height of its hypocrisy. George Bush is also guilty of that kind of hypocrisy, though he is not running for President in 2008.
Hypocrisy is not something that I have an issue with, per se, since I think hypocrisy has to do with making all kinds of good and bad choices, dealing with consequences, and learning from them. An open hypocrit, then, is much more honest than most people, I think, because most people are hypocrits who just don't talk about their hypocrisy out loud, largely for fear of how they will be punished and how people will think about them. And Hillary Clinton is one of those people who takes advantage of that position as if it should get more traction than it should. It is cowardice being mistaken for virtue by a lot of folks who wouldn't know the difference, enough, because it appeals to their vanity that their own cowardice really is virtue that it is not. And the whole display makes my stomach turn.
I don't care what you call this thing in Iraq. I just want some substantial resolution to a mess that we helped create, no matter how much most folks try to wipe their hands of that. And I want cynical positioning by folks like Hillary Clinton and George Bush to stop being rewarded and enforced by folks who just don't want to admit that they are largely responsible for these kinds of messes because they decided to bully their way through problems that need more substantial and genuine discussion, with more honest and open-minded and open-hearted commitments to finding more genuine resolution and not just looking out for one's own career and personal ambitions because the truth is people have given up on trying to find a genuine resolution of the issues they care about.
At some point, it seems to me that we need to face up on this one and the failures of the current zeitgeist. Electing Hillary allows us to postpone that until we can work up the courage to do so, or maybe indefinitely. Although, while we're cynical and stupid enough to postpone it for awhile, the saving grace on this one has always been for me that we are not stupid and cynical enough to postpone it into perpetuity. Because doing so would mean failing and hurting a lot of people in the name of that failure for good until we face up.
I think you're right, Carson, that the really big thing that's gotten sacraficed over the last 7 years or so and the really subtantial progress that we've needed to make and have made some substantial progress on, I think, is a more honest and substantial debate and discussion. But the dominance of the propaganda and the lack of more frank and substantial and more genuinely open-minded and open-hearted discussion is a function of the failure of liberals to engage that kind of discussion as much as conservatives.
And the failure to do that is exactly why so much political conversation and discussion is so self-righteous and one-sided and far too certain of itself. Because without more genuine and honest engagement of people and ideas with which we disagree, we stew in our own sense that we've figured it all out better than we have and we consequently lobby for our side to win at all costs.
Kids and teachers are like this, I have found. They each have their own conversations with each other about how the other is foolish and nasty and otherwise incompetent to roam the earth. There's truth to all of it. And there's a lot of self-righteous bullshit in there too. And it is all reinforced, often, by the lack of discussion of engagement of people with one another, especially with those with whom we disagree.
And I do have to say that working in a school has taught me a lot about how much constantly forcing and fighting your way through issues shuts that conversation down. I've learned it as much if not mostly through personal experience, as my own efforts to swagger my way through issues perpetually fails, no matter how much I want to make kids be decent and smarter and work hard in school and treat each other and teachers nicely. Even as I have more knowledge and understanding and expertise and commitment around a lot of these issues than a lot of my colleagues. The kids resist all of these things. And they all do. Even the kids who are more relatively smart and decent and hard-working.
It's been good practice for my own children, I can only hope.
And until we take those discussions more seriously, politicals remains more meaningless spectacle with big consequences. It becomes like trying to predict the highest grossing picture or the highest grossing rock band or the most popular movie or the most popular musicians or the most popular TV shows. When the truth is, all of that is premised on the zeitgeist of some popular moment that really doesn't mean much of anything substantial in the big picture, except as a sign of whether we have moved forward or not on the big things (and whether someone has lined their pockets or their political fortunes doing so).
And Hillary Clinton is exactly the creature of that kind of popularity contest that has little do with anything substantial. She's like dating the popular cheerleader. It feels good for the moment, but it doesn't mean anything in the longer scheme of things. And, in this case, we put off some much bigger reflection that we need to be engaged in to make the substantial progress that we need. Namely, our need to improve the quality of our discussion and commitment on public and private questions of importance.
On so many levels, Hillary is the antithesis of that kind of progress, which its both ironic and bears out the propaganda, the glittering generality, as we just studied in Ms. Smith's 7th grade reading class, of calling her a "progressive."
Real progress is found in a better quality public discussion about what progress constitutes and a genuinely critical, open-minded, and open-hearted examination of both our own premises for our concepts of progress, of how to get there, and of all of the likely obstacles to that kind of progress, including those of our own doing.
I'm pretty clear, at this point, that this involves the least possible necessary aggression, which means neither forcing others to get everything we want nor avoiding aggression, war, and violence at all costs. It means only using aggression when we have to, out of a commitment to everyones' lifes being safe and secure, but not as a rationalization to use aggression to make others do what we want with the persistent excuse that we are doing it to make them safe and secure.
The critical difference for me in Iraq is that the Iraqi government says they still need our help, and it looks likely that they would really struggle containing sectarian violence without our help. If they can do it without us and American soldiers don't want to make the sacrafice, then I say so be it. But if American soldiers want to help out and the Iraqis say they could still use a hand, I think it's kind of incumbent upon us to pitch in and help out since we helped create this mess in the first place.
But Hillary Clinton represents those Americans who both supported the war uncritically up front and then self-righteously oppose sticking with it on the back end as if they found "the way," when they haven't found jack shit. And dishonestly acting like her desire to be a winning horse for the Democratic party is somehow some kind of substitute for her lack of critical and thoughtful engagement in the discussion. Tacking with the political winds and trying to be a winner is not the same thing, at all, as engaging the policy discussion honestly. To the contrary, it's fairly dishonest. It's wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Which everyone wants. Including Stalin. But I'm not supporting that shit when it means confusing and demeaning the shit out of the public discussion.
I can definitely see the point, Carson, that a surge can also serve as similar propaganda to gloss over a failed military campaign. But it's also another policy option, that, when not viewed through the prism of partisanship, needs to be considered to figure out something to do with this mess. When Bill Clinton invades Bosnia, conservatives oppose it because a liberal wants to engage in reckless humanitarian intervention that is not in our nation's strategic self-interest. When George Bush invades Iraq for similar reasons, though different conditions, admittedly, liberals denounce it as war-mongering by an crusading fundamentalist. There's plenty of propaganda. And then there's the substance of the discussion. Is this a good idea? How can we make the situation better? What are our options?
Which is exactly why I also hate the propaganda so consistently swamping the more substantive discussions because it confuses the discussion and makes it harder for people to make more informed and intelligent choices about policies and then take responsibility for their successes and failures.
But someone has got to ante up on this. Either politicians have to get more honest in their engagement of policy discussions and/or citizens have to expect more out of their politicians and themselves than just looking for someone to appease their vanity that they really always have the right answers and the nations' interests at heart.
Someone has got to get more honest for this discussion to get more honest and thoughtful.
And somehow George Bush and Hillary Clinton could not get more honest but I could. So it's clearly possible. It's just what do you want more? Do you want better policy more? Or do you want power more? I chose the former. They chose the latter. And I'm tired of their stubbornly pursued bad and less substantial choice - and the bad choice of everyone who supports them - persistently confusing and interrupting my pursuit of better substantial options and choices, and I hope the pursuit by everyone of better choices.
And the whole discussion is just so profoundly distorted by that pursuit of power, right now, that it's hard to even have a more honest discussion because its what so many folks have glittering right there in front of them.
And the irony is that, in the biggest picture, it doesn't mean shit.
Maybe, because the process is lacking so much substance, at this point, what we should do is just flip a coin. Heads, we pull out. Tails, we surge. Because without a more substantial discussion of what the consequences will be if we stay or if we leave with genuinely open minds and hearts about what options might be our best options, that's about as substantial a way of making the choice as we are engaged in today.
I am very much concerned that leaving means a lot of blooshed and ethnic violence with a smaller likelihood of a political resolution or greater likelihood of military force used to pressure for political compromises more favorable to one group or another. If Iraqis will not stop fighting no matter what work on a political resolution is done or if Americans are genuinely concerned that Iraqis are not committed to a political resolution (which I think is inaccurate at best and, at times, a dishonest rationalization for using pressure to solve a problem that we don't have a solution for), I can understand why Americans may not want to risk any more American lives. And I definitely don't think that any soldiers should be deployed to Iraq, anymore, who do not want to go. Some means of allowing soldiers to opt out should be made available, at this point, I think. Though I have very little confidence that this will be made an option.
I haven't heard a better contrary argument. But I'm open to one.
And I am much more concerned, in the bigger picture, about arguments not being used or needed, at all, to justify policies or actions as long as a group coalesces around an option that creates the appearance of a unified front, as Republicans did before and leading up to this war and as Democrats seem to be doing in its aftermath.
I've not heard Hillary make the argument for a cap on troops. But I'd be open to argument if she would make it.
But as long as politics is about just getting the necessary votes and power to get what you've already decided is a foregone conclusion to support, rather than a more substantial engaged discussion about what kinds of policies, generally, and what specific policies will actually achieve goals beyond good intentions and which are more desireable, generally, then we can't get a more substantial policy discussion to make a lick of difference except to hold up a mirror to those who put power before thought and say, "This is what you have wrought."
That too they will avoid responsibility for. We all will.
And until we get clear that playing that game has consequences, we are all in for one long tragedy-filled ride.
And electing Hillary Clinton as the "progressive" candidate under that rubric would be a huge step backwards, as far as I'm concerned, and an not-so-insignificant irony of history.
More important than finding someone who agrees with out policies, we need someone, right now, who will lift up our discussion. We need someone who will engage in a smarter conversation and expect us all to do the same or sit and listen.
That's why I'm leaning towards Obama, even though I disagree with him about this surge. Because I think he has a greater likelihood of doing that of any of the candidates I've seen, right now, including Ron Paul or Rudy Guliani or any of the Republican candidates that are less unattractive to me and/or more attractive to me, right now.
And I think that honest and thoughtful discussion is more important than any of the choices that we make. Because it means a process that gets us to smarter and better choices, generally and hopefully, more than getting any one choice, no matter important, to my pleasing.
If the Iraq war has taught me anything it is that the uncertainty over even the most important issues we face is far greater than any certainty that we might have that might warrant our right to compel others. Even in those more limited times when we may actually need to use force.
And, for all of the glitter and bullshit, what we need right now, more than anything, is someone who is more aware of that than not.
Barak might be that guy. Ron Paul might be that guy. There's always an off chance that Rudy Guliani or John Edwards or John McCain or Hillary Clinton might be that person.
But that's what we need, right now. Even if it might be in conflict with what we want, which is someone who will tell us that we are, we were, and we ever will be right all along. Which is too often what we clamor for. Both in politics and even in more academic policy discussions.
Our political bases, as with our base impulses, are often at odds with what we really need. Because they both draw from the same stale, insubstantial well.
If Hillary Clinton and George Bush and anyone else want to drink deeply from those wells, I say so be it. But I want someone to lead us to fresher water.
Ben
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