Item: Donald Trump, despite his promises to the contrary during the campaign, has announced he will not seek to pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton over both her private email crimes while at the State Department, and her pay-for-play shenanigans vis a vis the Clinton Foundation.
A lot of Trump supporters are unhappy.
But lest we get too outraged we should be reminded about the politics of a prosecution going forward, and the history of such prosecutions looking backward. Politically, should a prosecution and conviction ever take place, no Republican will be safe from vendetta (revenge charges) from the Democrats, who have proven very creative in taking their revenge in the past once the Justice Department is theirs again. (This assumes the Democrats can regain control of government in the United States within the next 25-30 years, which right now is problematic.)
But the more damaging prospect is how such a prosecution of Hillary Clinton will appear in history, especially since we, the fact tellers, have not been entirely in charge of fact-based history for the better part of thirty five years.
If you’ve been paying attention, you already know there are two entirely different versions of American history and the way the Founders designed the US Constitution. One is true and one is false. But by far the larger universe has become the false. Ever since Howard Zinn presented to American high schools and colleges, to the growing acclamation of public school teachers and professors, his “People’s History of the United States” in 1980, the leftist vision of our history has been the template from which millions of high school graduates and college students have learned about our national origins; namely that half the founders were slave-owners and the other half didn’t disapprove enough to stop it.
And from that illicit beginning America began its journey, which has been largely downhill ever since, except for the benevolent intervention of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and of late, Barack H Obama.
It took them almost 70 years to make their rendition of history “the people’s consensus history”.
In 1913 Charles Beard published an economic interpretation of the Constitution which was leftist in orientation. It never really caught on as mainstream history, only in small niches of the academy. But they never gave up pushing it and teaching it, for it was taught with much more vigor when I graduated university in 1968, a must “A” for entry into the graduate program. Graduates who did not accept Beard’s interpretation could go on back to Harlan County to teach high school.
Beard’s army was growing, and by 1980 the academic ground was plowed and fertilized with four generations of successful crops, with larger yields each year, making the entire educational world, K-thru-grad school, ready for a full dose of Zinn’s socialist view of American history. By the early 2000’s it had become our mainstream and almost none of us who had matriculated before 1980 had known it was happening. Zinn’s timing was perfect, as he has educated mindless children we’ve been watching since Reagan snake dance and thumb suck through every event in modern history they’ve found offensive. In terms of teat-fittery, 35 years is a long time to go from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Then along came Larry Schweikart and Mike Allen in 2004, to offer a counter balance to Zinn’s apocalyptic view of human freedom, with their “The Patriot’s History of the United States“, now in its 10th edition. (As I have said elsewhere, this is the most underlined, dog-eared book I own next to my Jerusalem Bible, so is a must reference up on your bookshelf, too. Get it and read it. Twice. And the Patriot’s world history set is very instructive, as well. In that regard, as an old Nez Perce told me once near Lewiston, Idaho, “everything’s connected.” America was not an accident, and the accident we were designed to avoid is what is largely found in world history. If you want to know stuff just for the pleasure of knowing it, history probably even outranks philosophy, and you can’t do any better the “Patriot’s History” series to be able to connect all the dots.
Over 35 colleges and universities have adopted “Patriot’s History” as a text, and programs are available to high schools and home schoolers via the Patriot’s History website, But there is so much ground to be made up it will take a generation, plus a good aggressive plan, to make that happen. Government at the top can’t do this without citizens at the bottom kicking up. The good news is, because of “Patriot’s History” and the sort of people who read it 2004-2016, then went on to elect Donald Trump, in part because of it, we have a small army who has a sense of what needs to be done.
(As Woody Allen flashed on the screen in “What’s Up Tiger Lily”, this is”Author’s Message! Author’s Message.”)
In the same way Charles Beard begat an army which begat Howard Zinn over 60 years, the same thing needs to be on a massive national scale with the true interpretation of our history. Only we need to do it within 30, or America will run out of diapers and wet-wipes.
I hope the right minds will come together in making this happen.
Our advantage is that in the past 12 years Schweikart & Allen have far outpaced Zinn in that all important category of “adults who can actually read for comprehension” category, rendering up an election win this year while the Children of Zinn are still snake dancing around city thoroughfares uttering vain repetitions and cursings that were meaningless and stale even when I was in college in the 60s.
The key to taking back the academy is found in the history departments.
Thus endeth the lesson.
Hillary and History
In those hidden left corners of the academy there have always been exotic histories and heroes. In 1927 two anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were executed for murder in Massachusetts. The worldwide left proclaimed their innocence. And still do. In 1977 Gov Michael Dukakis issued a kind of pardon and apology to those men, proving the Left never, but never, leaves one of their martyred behind. They write folk songs, and plays that actually can make it to Broadway, films galore, glorifying, in some case, stone-killers.
Then there were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who sold America’s A-bomb secrets to the Soviets in 1945 and were executed in 1953. The Left still maintains they were innocent even though documents obtained from Russia after the USSR’s fall proved they were part of a cell. But the Left defends them still, only now not because they were innocent, but because they were justified. The Left still defends Alger Hiss on the same acount.
So, step back, then, and take a clear view of just how “innocent” Hillary Clinton will be in the eyes of history now that the Left controls more than just those little dark corners of the academy, but the entire “history apparatus”. Had Trump not won, and had those millions who elected not read real history, we were just a few years away from a Sacco & Vanzetti commemorative stamp, honoring their suffering “for the cause”.
On second thought then, maybe just walking up and slapping an indictment on Hillary’s nose isn’t the best way to cement her proper role in history, since we know the dominant universe of history, the non-factual one, would define any criminal charges as the grossest form of political crime. And Hillary would become the most sacred and honored of martyred victims just by being charged. Her trial would be more heinous than the conviction and execution of Joan of Arc, er, the Rosenbergs for selling A-Bomb and starting the Cold War.
The good news is that fate has dealt Donald Trump three Aces and a pair of Queens, for there is another way to skin that hairless Sphynx, and that is by allowing her best friends, her staff and loyal go-fers, to hang her instead.
All have lied for her, even perjured themselves for her, or plead the 5th with the understanding they would never be prosecuted. Hillary Clinton committed dozens of crimes in which there were armies of co- conspirators, none of whom can find sanctuary now that Trump and Jeff Sessions is up there on that horse. No place to run, no place to hide.
These real crimes at the State Department, and among Hilllary’s private staff, and at the Foundation, all need to be pursued and prosecuted to the fullest extent It would be a dereliction of duty not to. But that can be done while leaving Hillary outside the circlet of fire, to mutely stand by and watch her minions fall, one by one, cutting deals by making a public record of her crimes by pleading the Eichmann defense, “just following orders”
I doubt Hillary will take one step forward to exonerate any of them, as loyalty is not her long suite..
Especially, there’s Huma (Abedin) and Cheryl (Mills) and Sidney (Blumenthal) and Lord knows who the pimps were over at the Foundation. They are all lawyering up as we speak, some even re-lawyering. And the only way they can avoid serious jail time is to sing like birds, all of them pointing a finger that eventually leads up to Hillary Clinton.
No need to indict her. No need to try to jail her. Or Bill. Just let them watch their entire history and legacy evaporate before their very eyes. And with it much of their fortunes. Maybe a nice little 2-acre spread on a lonely beach on Elba and an allowance of $7500/month, with Chelsea smuggling hooch for Mom will suffice.
That done, not a single word will issue from the American media or the American leftwing academy because Donald Trump will have kept his word. Hillary Clinton will be publicly damned, by her own class, even double-damned by the rest, but not one mark will be upon her that have been made by the Trump Administration, and could work its way into a Woody Guthrie folk song. Even the Left doesn’t memorialize their fools.
Trump didn’t prosecute Hillary Clinton, but he did shoot her star out of the sky, allowing her leftwing friends to pick up the fallen debris.