The Self-Inflicted Pain of Electing President Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton’s use of private email server adding to her woes?

In 2009, just after she was appointed Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton solicited and received a memo from Colin Powell. In it, the 5-star General, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and erstwhile Secretary of State gave her bushels of wisdom on how to do the job. And Powell also, supposedly, suggested that she use a private email account to conduct her business. In his experience, a private email address would allow her a wider amount of flexibility and latitude. However, Powell counseled, Clinton was to specifically avoid using her private email account for classified material. Well, Mrs. Clinton ‘seems’ to have missed that part of the Powell Memo. Not only is she said to have used her private email for EVERYTHING; Clinton, we’re told, took things even further by installing a stand-alone email server in her Chappaqua, New York home. That server sat in what everyone erroneously says was her closet space until things went tits up between 2013 and today as she campaigns to make the kind of history Barack Obama made.

Salacious as this ‘campaign fodder’ may seem to the unsophisticated – perhaps, ourselves included – one wonders what the Republicans would be talking about had they not had this silly email ‘scandal’ to talk about. We hear that an additional treasure trove amounting to over 14,900 plus pages of information were discovered recently. Could Barack Obama’s blackberry password be amongst this material? Shall we soon discover where all Bill Clinton’s ex girlfriends are buried? We can hardly wait to learn Hillary Clinton’s evil plan to hasten the Zombie Apocalypse.

Crooked Hillary?

In the meantime, Clinton Opponent, the ebullient Donald Trump, calls her ‘Crooked Hillary.’ Whenever he does this at a rally, his massive crowds thunderously cheer their approval – egged on by a conservative media corps – somewhat endorsing the idea that Hillary is much too dangerous to be trusted; deserving only of jail [or execution by firing squad, for treason]. Well – all this seems to be working against Clinton, but interestingly, not necessarily in Trump’s favor. Yes – People do not trust Hillary Clinton. They continue to assign certain dark dystopia to anything she touches. In the same vein, a quick look at recent polls shows that although she is the favorite to win the November 2016 presidential election, people have never been quite as squeamish about a potential president as they are about Hillary.

But let’s back up a little: What did Hillary do that was so bad? What was in those 33,000 emails she deleted? Did she actually delete these emails, or was she not too keen to let people in on her private life? Some argue that Clintonite Emails usually contain things that affect lives – like the lives lost in Benghazi Libya. But could Clinton have sent an email that ordered her subordinates to ensure that Ambassador Stephens died from smoke inhalation? Did she personally prevent the CIA military contractors from rushing to protect the consulate from attack? We know that she told her daughter that the deadly Benghazi attack was caused by something other than an anti-Islam video. However, is there a chance that she wrote something else to another person? Are we really able to discover the Heart of Darkness from anything?

Of course, people will argue that the more emails they find, the easier it will be to decide whether Hillary serves as 45th president, or is relegated to a future where Donald Trump roasts his own brand of steaks on the White House lawn. And that is the choice America faces today. One could argue that the recent treasure trove of emails from the Clinton Foundation show that there was no delineation between Hillary Clinton’s State Department, and the Clinton Foundation. That Cheryl Mills, who served as Clinton’s Chief of Staff, also worked at the Clinton Foundation, and that there was some sort of pay for play going on – enough to make the Clintons millionaires. Yes. We could argue till the cows come home.

However, we must really stop and think for a moment: What are we really skeptical about? Are we that scared of a woman who sent some emails? Yes – some might argue that we seem to question Donald Trump and his famous Tweets. He, after all, like Hillary, sends something into cyberspace. So, in this regard, Trump and Clinton make for splendid bedfellows in the untrustworthy sense. Invariably, tweets and emails are on different sides of the aisle, pun unintended. Tweets are meant to be seen by all and sundry, while email, unless sent to the world, are more inward looking. Many of us use email for very private and very specific things. And people forward or send some ungodly things to the unfortunate amongst us. Therefore, shouldn’t we empathize with someone who does not want to share their ‘laundry’ for the world to sift through? Aren’t we entitled to a little privacy, or does Mrs. Clinton deserve nothing short of a burn at the stake? Surely, if Hillary Clinton was as evil as we think she is, her head would have, at least, partially exploded by now!

The United States will, forever, be a nation of conspiracy theory. Barack Obama was the Manchurian Candidate; a Muslim in Sheep’s Skin. Bush II was a compassionate conservative with a direct link to Osama bin Laden. Clinton was black, and so was his heart. George H. W. Bush was a wimp that needed to prove something by thumping Saddam Hussein into the ground. We cannot help but go on and on and on. Wasting so much space. In the meantime, we’re doing two things: instead of electing America’s first woman president – making more history and improving the world – we are stuck debating whether Donald Trump is a more deserving candidate for president, against a woman we do not trust for an email server that was installed on the back of a need to be efficient. Secondly, we are, seemingly, denying another competent politician [an oxymoron, yes] the mandate to carry out the serious reform the world’s richest economy deserves. What a waste of opportunity!

The Habari Network
August 24, 2016