This article originally appeared as a contribution to OnyxTruth.com on July 15, 2016.
“Words Used To Describe Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trebek.”
I’ve been doing some thinking.
I’ve been hesitant to vote for Hillary Clinton. A lot of thinking. The usual thoughts. There’s so much water under the bridge between me and Hillary. She’s been investigated by everybody under the sun, for decades, for every crime known to government. She represents an old way of thinking, an old way of governing – one that I’d like to put in the past, truth be told. She’s really not liberal enough for me. Crime bill. Tim Kaine. Interventionist policy. Debbie Wasserman Schulz. I’ve had lots of reasons, made tons of excuses.
Do I intend to vote for Hillary? Likely. This year is different from any other year. The specter of Donald Trump is a heavy ballast on my decision-making process. And, given an option, I think it’s time to move on from the leadership of the Baby Boomers, who’ve largely failed spectacularly on both sides of the aisle. Avarice and amorality are a bad optic no matter how it’s spun. I’m not enthusiastic about voting for Hillary, but it feels important to me, and that feels kinda bad.
There are plenty of reasons to not like Hillary Clinton. But, like I said, I’ve been doing some thinking. And I’ve come to a conclusion.
Call her what you want, but don’t call her a criminal.
The first time I ever heard of Hillary Clinton, her husband was being accused of screwing around on her when he was the governor of Arkansas. She didn’t do anything wrong, but every Republican I know immediately hated her for not dumping Bill, and has hated her and regarded her with suspicion ever since, for putting her own ambitions over appearances, and having the gall to decide for herself how her marriage should work and for not giving a damn what you think.
The next time we see Hillary Clinton, she’s advocating for universal healthcare. The plan was overly complex and probably wouldn’t have worked, but she gave it a shot, well ahead of its time. If anything, she’s guilty of trying to make everybody happy all at once, but she takes the heat – willingly, mind you – for designing an overly complex, unworkable system, in her unofficial, unpaid role as First Lady.
The next thing we know, Republicans are investigating Bill and Hillary for Whitewater. Some investigator for the Resolution Trust Corporation won’t let go after an S&L involved in a bad investment collapsed, and insists that the Clintons used their political position to pressure a banker into making a bad loan, long after everybody’s forgotten about the transaction.
Despite the fact that there was zero evidence that this ever happened, the Clintons were subject to an investigation that stretched from 1977 to 1998, a 21-year odyssey that uncovered something called Travelgate, which was somehow a scandal even though no laws were broken, something called Filegate, about which special prosecutor Kenneth Starr himself cleared the Clintons of any involvement at all, and the sullying of the name of Vincent Foster, whose death was ruled a suicide by no less than six independent investigations, including Kenneth Starr.
At some point in here, Bill Clinton got an undetermined number of sexual favors from Monica Lewinsky, and again, Hillary wasn’t offended enough to please the Right. Bill was acquitted in the Senate, which really, really made Republicans mad at Hillary.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but a Republican-appointed Special Prosecutor spent six years using Congressional-level subpoena power and unlimited scope of investigation trying to make anything, ANYTHING stick to either Bill or Hillary, and the only charges he was able to file related to Bill lying about an unauthorized blowjob.
Some stuff got moved out of the White House when the Clintons left, and apparently it was Hillary’s fault that she couldn’t read the minds of the people who gifted the items, who apparently gave them to the White House itself rather than the Clintons. Republicans were incensed when the Clintons voluntarily returned $20,000 worth of government property, presumably because nobody was actually robbed at gunpoint of $200,000 in irreplaceable American artifacts.
Hillary runs for the Senate and wins, despite not being New York-enough for the Right.
Hillary instantly becomes one of the most-liked, most-respected and most-effective Senators on the Hill. Republicans really, really hate this, despite praise from both sides of the aisle for her policy knowledge and her willingness to learn the ways of the Senate like a rookie, rather than big-timing her colleagues.
Hillary runs for President for the first time, and loses the primary to Barack Obama. Republicans are furious at Barack Obama for being the President, but even angrier at Hillary for not beating him in the primary.
Hillary is named Secretary of State, moves into the OEOB and discovers that the technology at State is still at the vacuum-tube level. She sees what other Secretaries of State have done to solve the problem, and implements a similar solution, only she pays for it herself instead of foisting it off on the Republican Party, like Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice did. Upon discovery, she is immediately subjected to a full-power FBI investigation that, despite full subpoena power and a Republican FBI director, fails to produce enough evidence to even get an indictment, let alone a conviction. Republicans are absolutely unhinged at this.
Somewhere in here, a revolution pops off in Libya amid budget cuts for embassy security. Four guys unfortunately die horribly, but despite eight Congressional-level investigations, nobody is found to have broken any laws or is found to have behaved improperly except Trey Gowdy, the Senator leading the investigation, who falsified e-mails to make Hillary Clinton look bad. Hillary proceeds to spike the football and do the Ickey Shuffle during a marathon testimony session during which she completely pantsed Senator Gowdy and ran his boxers up the Capitol flagpole. They were, of course, red boxers, which infuriates Republicans to this day.
I have yet to see where Hillary Clinton has done anything except be clean enough to repeatedly be cleared by some of the lengthiest, most intense, most involved investigations with the most power to collect evidence and the most professional investigators of any politician in American history. Time and again she’s been cleared of wrongdoing by people who had every reason and every desire to crush her career and life.
I don’t understand why people think she’s a criminal.In fact, the more I think about it, the more I believe Hillary Clinton has been subjected to more unfair treatment than any politician in American history. She has been repeatedly investigated under conditions that no impartial court would accept – investigators and prosecutors appointed to the job by her political enemies and given the right to make their own rules, investigations repeated ad-nauseum because the political masters didn’t like the results, trial in the court of public opinion by unscrupulous investigators who leak information and make public statements without giving her an opportunity to rebut or cross-examine her accusers, and an unwillingness by any of the pack of rabid wolves in this fruitless chase to accept the results of the investigations that have cleared her, over and over again, despite the best efforts of her political enemies to use their own political power to try and convict Hillary of doing exactly the same thing they’re doing to her – undue and inappropriate use of political influence.Sometimes I wonder if Republicans hate Hillary so much because the last thirty years of her life represents their greatest hypocrisy.Like I said, there are plenty of reasons not to like Hillary Clinton. But I’m tired of hearing people call her a criminal. It’s just not true, and there are plenty of lies in this election without these ones.Dislike her, don’t vote for her — that’s your right, just like she said about Bill in 1992. But don’t slander her. Don’t call her a criminal. Because she’s not.