Sunday, September 11, 2016

Yes, we'll take the lying, shallow, narcisstic, short attention span, draft dodging man boy who we don't trust to do anything he promises and whose man-crush on Putin we find rather disturbing because - Hillary

I think the heading fairly summaries the view of Instapundit's Glenn Harlan Reynolds, whose list of Hillary misdemeanours includes:

*  the email issue (even when it became clearer than ever last week that she did indeed have encouragement from Colin Powell to do what she did),

* the fact that contributors to the Clinton charity meant people asked for favours, yet no actual serious scandal of someone getting something they clearly shouldn't have has been shown; and

* a reference to the IRS targeting conservatives (because, argues Reynolds, the civil service is totally in the tank for the Democrats.)

That last point (and by the way, has anyone actually shown corruption in the American tax investigations?)  reminds me of Australian political conservatives complaining about how the institutions are against them - be it the public service, the ABC, or the Churches.   Funny thing is, it never seems to occur to them that facing widespread organisational opposition might be a sign of a self created problem - some examples being  denying climate change (boo hoo, the ABC doesn't feature the backyard scientists who don't believe NASA scientists); believing that cutting taxes always helps an economy (why won't Treasury just get, like, totally on board with that?); and pretending that keeping a couple of thousand people - including children - in indefinite detention in third world countries because they attempted to arrive in a boat is not a morally compromised position (Churches, stop being namby pamby wimps).  

The only explanation for this pathetic justification of Trump support is that the American Right (and its Australian fan base) has become so self deluded by its Right wing media echo chamber about the Evils of Hillary and the outrages of Obama that they would prefer to vote for anyone but her.  Yes, some of them think Trump is a hopeless, lying, changeable, windbag with worrying connections to Russia; but he's not Hillary, the woman who clearly deserves to be in jail because (despite detailed and repeat investigations that never can pin anything on her) the Right wing media just can't believe that prosecutions of her would fail.

As for the fate of the Nation under Clinton, there is nothing to really suggest that the path of American policy  would take a large detour from what it has been under Obama, who, for a President in charge of an alleged hell hole nation, has a pretty good approval rating.  Can't they face the fact that the American economy has not tanked?

Reynolds has outed himself, as has large slabs of the American Right, as having become simply unable to accept and process evidence with anything even faintly resembling objectivity.  Turn off the Fox news, read something other than the WSJ,  fellows, and get a grip after all these years.

No comments: