I want to renew a call I made in the days just after the election, that trying and convicting Hillary Clinton for the long list of crimes she stands accused of doing may not be the best way to deal with her. Especially her legacy.
I mean this in the purest sense of wanting to punish her. Deterrence is not part of a my thinking here.
Parts of the conservative pundit class, Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity high among them, have been beside themselves that the FBI, still without a director and a new direction, and even Jeff Sessions himself, have not moved on Mrs Clinton for what are clearly crimes with an abundance of evidence.
But to what end?
Let Hillary be indicted and there will ten times the crowds at the courthouse to cheer her on than ever bothered to listen to one of her dreary speeches on the stump. Yes, they will be paid, but the optics will be all that matters in compiling an historic record.
Probably already heavily medicated, including various self-medications, and “feeling sorry for herself” does not even begin to describe Hillary sense of betrayal and loss. Right now her self-pity is limitless and she has not even begun the journey backwards in time to see where, or when, she went wrong. Self-reflection is not among her attributes.
But turn Hillary into a public martyr and she may well become refreshed and rise above her despondence, especially if she senses that even if convicted her punishment could end up with, at the worst, a short sentence at one of the feds’ more exclusive minimum security lock-ups, possibly home arrest, or maybe even probation. Her ability to venue shop and cut deals could prove prodigious.
You don’t believe me?
Ever hear of Sacco and Vanzetti? Two immigrant anarchists who killed a guard during a robbery attempt in Massachusetts in 1920 and finally executed in 1927? They came to this country hats in hand, poor as church mice, but marched to their deaths as heroes to the oppressed proletariat.
Mark these dates because the new Soviet state had risen in that period and so had its singing canaries in the American media. (And compare the 1920 s media’s-attempts-to-stir-public-reaction to the speedy trial and execution of the co-conspirators in the assassination of President Lincoln 60 years earlier, including the first woman to die by hanging, only 90 days after Lincoln was shot.)
There are still stories written about Sacco and Vanzetti. Even movies. Ennio Morricone penned a beautiful sound track for one. They were folk myths within 25 years..
Or how about Alger Hiss, the State Department official convicted of perjury in 1950, for being a Soviet spy, thus proving much of what Sen Joe McCarthy had been saying was true? There are thousands of Americans who still believe Hiss was innocent. And if the New York Times, Washington Post, AP, CNN, ABC News have anything to say about it, he will always be innocent.
Joe Hill was an immigrant labor activist and song writer who was arrested and convicted, along with another man, of robbing a store and killing the storekeep, then executed a year later. In 1915. His case also received international attention and appeals for clemency from the same usual suspects. But he was a song writer and therefore a man of the people, so was instantly martyred with stories and folk songs quickly following. Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger recorded “Joe Hill” and Joan Baez sang it at Woodstock in 1969, which is where I first heard it. On the Left his song was as synonymous with their cause (phony it turns out) as Horst Wessel’s was on the Nazi-Right.
This is the sort of fate that awaits Hillary Clinton’s brush with history if she is ever indicted and tried.
The last thing I want is for my grandsons to have to grow to manhood and hear any story or song that memorializes the memory of Hillary Clinton. (Or Bill.) In fourth grade I want them to hear the fairy tale of the Princess Hillary who threw the lamp at the maid who brought her undercooked eggs for breakfast, and then have the moral of the story explained by Teacher. I want the same for the story of Young Bill Clinton who chopped down his mother’s favorite dogwood tree, but when caught with the ax in his hand, told his mother, “Mother I cannot tell a lie, Vince Foster did it.” I want Teacher to explain this moral as well. Then, in 11th Grade I want the real Clinton’s introduced to my grandsons where the morals learned in 4th Grade fit into American History, as they are introduced the section on America’s Dark Days, 1992-2016, when those morals first taught in 4th grade make any sense.
Then I want them to go to college and be required, as a condition to graduation, to take American History I and II from the 14th Revised Edition of Schweikart and Allen’s “Patriot’s History of the United States” fitting Bill and Hilary into the bigger picture.
For these things to happen, Hillary Clinton must be totally debased in front of her base.
Yes, I know, there are tens of thousands of young Hillary’s out there, just like her. People who admire her broom and viperous tongue. From 20 to 70. But to the majority of Hillary followers, millions, who believed she was a saint, everything she really wasn’t, I want that Hillary exposed, publicly.
That way she will be exorcised.
Expose her to be 1) dishonest, even criminally dishonest 2) indifferent about national security, but worse, about innocent human life if it got in the way of her ambitions, yes, real blood on her hands indifference, 3) greedy, 4) vain, 5) arrogant, 6) mean, as in vicious, lamp-throwing bitch-mean, 7) back-stabbing spiteful….those things her voters don’t know about her and might be convinced to be a little more skeptical about the sales pitches of all politicians. With even the best of them it’s a crap shoot.
And the world, our world, would be a better place. I’m betting they would be less inclined to replace Hillary with an Elizabeth Warren. But they wouldn’t become conservative, or even a Republican, which I wouldn’t wish on any lonesome traveler these days. They would just become more mature and more skeptical voters, and somehow I think America would be better off because of it.
And Hillary may even have done America a favor by just being Hillary…and getting caught at it.
As for those tens of thousands little maidens who love Hillary because they want to be just like her, the simple lesson I can impart to them is that Crime Does Not Pay, and America still proves it.
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VASSAR BUSHMILLS
Contact: vbushmills@yahoo.com
Twitter: @Bushmillsvassar
Publications: Famous Common People I Have Known and Other Essays
Donald Trump, the Common Man and the American Theology of Liberty
(Both books in Kindle format only, Publishers and agents welcome, as both need to revised)
Support: Yes, I’ve never been paid a nickel to write.
Donations can be made to vbushmills@thesandsinstitute.org via Paypal
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