I've had a couple posts circulating around in my head, but finding the time to solidify it and type it out has been hard. I can't let myself get sucked into my writing headspace too much...if I do that, then I start thinking about it too much at work. And then I'm not doing what I actually am paid to do. So I try to figure out what I want to type in the evenings. When I'm not unwinding from work, or reading something new, or taking my Little to go swimming, or whatever. Point is, life gets in the way....which is only to be expected in a hobby like this. :)
The downside to this is that I occasionally come across some really, really good articles and I have to either do a quick link (that may not do the article justice), or shift some of my other posts aside to cover the new material (still got one I'd call 'Step 2' on Making America Great Again, focused more on foreign policy and strategy), or forget it entirely.
This article was one of them, and I want to discuss what it means to me. I think I've made it clear I'm not a Hillary fan. I want to go into that a little bit first, actually. I was talking to an aunt of mine about the election a few months back, and she asked me when I first started disliking Hillary. I originally said it was when she chose to 'stand by her man' after the Lewinsky scandal, but that's not quite right. (I never really understood why that was considered a good move. Some politician does some bone-headed and idiotic thing and gets caught, and next thing you know they're trotting out his wife - who privately might feel or think anything, and probably hasn't had time to really get through their own anger and shock. If it was a shock. Anyways, they trot her out to give some line about how she forgives him and we all should forgive him too. But hey, their marriage is not actually my business. Any of them. I just think most of the public speeches are lies meant to smooth the political waters, and I have more respect for wives like Jenny Sanford than for any of the ones that put on the standard show.) In thinking about it, however, that wasn't quite right.
Or rather, I had picked the moment but not the real reason. The reason had to do with how both Clintons reacted to the affair. Deny, deny, deny. Deny until you absolutely can't deny any more, and then when you have to, admit to some sort of failing...but not anything like what your opponents are accusing you of. This is, apparently, good politics. I think it's absolutely atrocious leadership. I suppose that comes from the military, or my own upbringing. Where you respect people for owning their mistakes, taking responsibility, and working to fix things. In many ways, it isn't even the scandal itself (which is sometimes extremely stupid). It's the way they respond to it.
I've come across a couple of articles that, if not exactly reconciling me to it, at least make me understand better why they'd make a choice that reflects so poorly on their characters. I could write an entire post about why character matters in a president, and I might do that some other time. At this point I think a quote from The American President is appropriate -
"For the last couple of months, Senator Rumson has suggested that being president of this country was, to a certain extent, about character, and although I have not been willing to engage in his attacks on me, I've been here three years and three days, and I can tell you without hesitation: Being President of this country is entirely about character" (emphasis mine)
I have a friend who follows politics, and one of the things that bothers me in our discussions is how little she cares about character. To her, all politicians are corrupt. All politicians are liars. So it doesn't matter what scandal you catch them doing, since they all are doing it anyway. (Some just got caught, that's all). And so she focuses only on the issues. To me, you can't separate them out like that. Character is what drives your reactions to the things that aren't pre-planned and vetted out. Character is what makes you decide what to fight for, and when to follow the crowd. (Though this, too, can be open to debate. Do we elect politicians to do what we voted them in for? Or because we expect them to use their judgment and make wise decisions? If the former, than following the political winds makes sense.)
So anyways. This article discussing the racial divide revealed by the Bernie/Hillary primary seemed important and enlightening for entirely different reasons. I remember when the OJ trial occurred, and how most every (white) person considered it a travesty of justice. We're almost certain he was the murderer, though of course you can't convict someone based on public opinion. Yet it seemed like he did it, and he got away with it. And murder! One of the most horrific crimes out there! And yet to African Americans, this was important for an entirely different reason. It showed that a rich black man could get the same justice as a rich white man...what mattered was having the money to afford that slick lawyer.
And as I've been reading about modern slavery, I decided to pick up a book that my friend (mentioned above) gave me when she was clearing off her bookshelf. It's called Dwelling Place, and it's about life on a plantation in the slave-owning south. And the thing of it is - when decisions were so very arbitrary, and justice a pipe dream, can you blame the southern slaves for not caring so much about the points I just made? And when you have a culture that knows justice is a joke, that life isn't fair, and that the people who claim to have 'character' are the same ones that enslaved your ancestors, can you really blame them for deciding to support someone who stands for the issues they care about? Regardless of their character?
I still don't like Hillary, I still think she's an awful choice, and I'm pretty disappointed at how much the Democratic Party (and the media) appears to have pushed her through as a candidate. If the Republicans could have come up with a decent candidate she'd have been in real trouble. But I get, to a certain extent, why she has some of the support she has.
The downside to this is that I occasionally come across some really, really good articles and I have to either do a quick link (that may not do the article justice), or shift some of my other posts aside to cover the new material (still got one I'd call 'Step 2' on Making America Great Again, focused more on foreign policy and strategy), or forget it entirely.
This article was one of them, and I want to discuss what it means to me. I think I've made it clear I'm not a Hillary fan. I want to go into that a little bit first, actually. I was talking to an aunt of mine about the election a few months back, and she asked me when I first started disliking Hillary. I originally said it was when she chose to 'stand by her man' after the Lewinsky scandal, but that's not quite right. (I never really understood why that was considered a good move. Some politician does some bone-headed and idiotic thing and gets caught, and next thing you know they're trotting out his wife - who privately might feel or think anything, and probably hasn't had time to really get through their own anger and shock. If it was a shock. Anyways, they trot her out to give some line about how she forgives him and we all should forgive him too. But hey, their marriage is not actually my business. Any of them. I just think most of the public speeches are lies meant to smooth the political waters, and I have more respect for wives like Jenny Sanford than for any of the ones that put on the standard show.) In thinking about it, however, that wasn't quite right.
Or rather, I had picked the moment but not the real reason. The reason had to do with how both Clintons reacted to the affair. Deny, deny, deny. Deny until you absolutely can't deny any more, and then when you have to, admit to some sort of failing...but not anything like what your opponents are accusing you of. This is, apparently, good politics. I think it's absolutely atrocious leadership. I suppose that comes from the military, or my own upbringing. Where you respect people for owning their mistakes, taking responsibility, and working to fix things. In many ways, it isn't even the scandal itself (which is sometimes extremely stupid). It's the way they respond to it.
I've come across a couple of articles that, if not exactly reconciling me to it, at least make me understand better why they'd make a choice that reflects so poorly on their characters. I could write an entire post about why character matters in a president, and I might do that some other time. At this point I think a quote from The American President is appropriate -
"For the last couple of months, Senator Rumson has suggested that being president of this country was, to a certain extent, about character, and although I have not been willing to engage in his attacks on me, I've been here three years and three days, and I can tell you without hesitation: Being President of this country is entirely about character" (emphasis mine)
I have a friend who follows politics, and one of the things that bothers me in our discussions is how little she cares about character. To her, all politicians are corrupt. All politicians are liars. So it doesn't matter what scandal you catch them doing, since they all are doing it anyway. (Some just got caught, that's all). And so she focuses only on the issues. To me, you can't separate them out like that. Character is what drives your reactions to the things that aren't pre-planned and vetted out. Character is what makes you decide what to fight for, and when to follow the crowd. (Though this, too, can be open to debate. Do we elect politicians to do what we voted them in for? Or because we expect them to use their judgment and make wise decisions? If the former, than following the political winds makes sense.)
So anyways. This article discussing the racial divide revealed by the Bernie/Hillary primary seemed important and enlightening for entirely different reasons. I remember when the OJ trial occurred, and how most every (white) person considered it a travesty of justice. We're almost certain he was the murderer, though of course you can't convict someone based on public opinion. Yet it seemed like he did it, and he got away with it. And murder! One of the most horrific crimes out there! And yet to African Americans, this was important for an entirely different reason. It showed that a rich black man could get the same justice as a rich white man...what mattered was having the money to afford that slick lawyer.
And as I've been reading about modern slavery, I decided to pick up a book that my friend (mentioned above) gave me when she was clearing off her bookshelf. It's called Dwelling Place, and it's about life on a plantation in the slave-owning south. And the thing of it is - when decisions were so very arbitrary, and justice a pipe dream, can you blame the southern slaves for not caring so much about the points I just made? And when you have a culture that knows justice is a joke, that life isn't fair, and that the people who claim to have 'character' are the same ones that enslaved your ancestors, can you really blame them for deciding to support someone who stands for the issues they care about? Regardless of their character?
I still don't like Hillary, I still think she's an awful choice, and I'm pretty disappointed at how much the Democratic Party (and the media) appears to have pushed her through as a candidate. If the Republicans could have come up with a decent candidate she'd have been in real trouble. But I get, to a certain extent, why she has some of the support she has.
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