"A Ramble on Hillary" By Richard Sale

 

(I told Pat that I was writing about Hillary Clinton, and wanted the article to be in two parts. This is the first part.  The second will attempt to describe the email scandal.)

Kissinger once observed that in contemporary America, political power “gravitates towards those who have an obsessive desire to win it by any means, and whoever does not monomaniacaly desire the goal of getting it, whoever afraid of it or disdains it, will fail, however great their qualifications.” To a political leader, voters are the means of attaining their aims. Voters are flattered, cajoled, admired, wooed, pressured and are endlessly courted and pursued.  The great bulk of voters are gullible and ignorant. They don’t reason, they submit; they are incapable of self-doubt. They reason that “if you’re right, you’re right,” and the door to their mind slams shut. In the TV interviews with the supporters of the candidate, they lack the intelligence to explain why they have chosen a candidate that they have.

Politicians are a bit like mosquitoes – they live on others’ blood. All politicians are creatures ruled by self-interest. The French aphorist Bruyere has written this marvelous passage: A politician is “a man who knows the ways of the Court (and) is master of his gestures, his eyes and his face; he is deep, impenetrable; he pretends not to notice injuries done him, he smiles to his enemies, controls his temper, disguises his passions, belies his heart, speaks and acts against his real opinions. All this elaborate procedure is merely a vice which we call deceitfulness, which is sometimes as useless to the courtier for his advancement as frankness, sincerity and virtue would have been.”

That is a perfect description of Hillary.

In very plan of political action, self-interest intervenes, and it distorts and corrupts, and the result is that vast numbers of people in politics who don’t really care for determining or admiring what is true, have a field day in politics. One of the first things to remember is that followers of a political party don’t realize that their membership takes away a portion of their self-ownership. Instead, there is a blind rush to discover and define what makes them think and believe what everybody believes as a party member. Of course, belonging to a party, diminishes your freedom of decision. Conformity reigns in a party, and unanimity acts to put solid ground under the followers’ feet. It escapes them that a unanimous error is all the more calamitous because it is unanimous. It is unfortunate but undeniable that politics encourages credulity, weak mindedness, lack of imagination and intellectual and moral blindness. Politics takes advantage of the reluctance in everyone’s personality to make the additional effort to think a thing through. The blizzard of images used in politics replaces the talent and labor required to reach a sound conclusion. It the art of politics to delivers the deceitful conclusion to the distracted and unaware that hunger for it.

 

The Inadequacies of Self-Will

It is plain to me that Hillary is a very self-willed creature. Self-willed people always think they know what is best, and give little time to doubts about their course of action. They never consult their conscience. Self-willed are people are people of narrow focus. Many of them go through life with a box around their heads. They are not aware of anything that lies beyond their immediate aim. They lack imagination, and they cannot see or imagine or picture the consequences that may occur if they succeed in their aims.  They see that narrow aim and that only. Too often, they are not very bright. I’m not saying that they can’t reason or that their minds can’t be well-stocked. But things on the periphery of their aim are not understood because they are not clearly seen. Only the goal gets the attention. Only the goal attracts the drive and the energy.

Self-willed people are very determined about getting the wrong goals. Once an action doesn’t produce the desired results, a self-willed person does not stop to analyze why the action miscarried. Their first impulse is to repeat the act, repeat it and repeat it, until it finally dawns on them they didn’t’ perform it correctly in the first place. In other words, their will tends to crowd out their judgment.

Politics is an enemy of freedom of thought.  It is unfortunate that politics encourages credulity, weak-mindedness, lack of imagination and intellectual and moral blindness. Politics takes advantage of the reluctance lurking in everyone’s personality that evades making the additional effort to think a thing through. The blizzard of visual images used in politics replaces the talent and labor required to reach a sound conclusions on your own. It the art of politics to deliver the deceitful and self-seeking to the distracted and unaware.

Abuse

From what I have observed, Hillary exhibits trace of child abuse.

Abused children are full of fear. They flinch by habit. The first a thing an abused child does is to learn to conceal its real nature plus the child makes it a habit to cover and alibi the abuser.  An abused child can’t afford to be its authentic self because showing it will bring the wrath of punishment upon them.  The abused child’s major job to placate. Its personal safety is a stake.  The other effect of abuse is to disguise.  The child, having lost its innocence, develops habits of deceit and shiftiness. At all costs, the child must conceal and stifle any urge to criticize the abuser.  Such a child lacks courage.  Courage is the first thing to dissolve in the face of parental abuse. The rule of survival demands that you seem, not be.  What you are, your authentic self, has only earned punishment and contempt. You must appear different than you really are. Most of abused children are skilled dissemblers. They act and portray.

From my own experience, I believe that some inferiority sits at the base of the abuser’s make up. Somehow they realize that they are so incomplete, that they want to rule, to subject, to dominate.   The worst thing about them is that they rob their offspring of joy.

Some people emerge from brutal or authoritian parents like kicked dogs. Their first reaction is to secretly blame themselves: they are faulty children or they wouldn’t have been abused. But it soon becomes clear that the authority over them, that made them obey and submit, is unjust; it is not righteous. Authority is supposed to protect, teach, shelter and develop. Instead, its misuse inflicts humiliation and pain, and the child begins to pose and conceal its real nature in order not to be found out and punished again. By nature, the abused are cowards. They don’t dare to resist. They go along by getting along. They lack integrity.

It takes an abused child a long time to discover its real nature. Some children remain frightened and crushed, and many still have a tormented sense of self-loathing because of the many compromises they had to make in order to survive. Their nerves remain, to some degree, paralyzed. It requires a long time for a child to rebuild its courage. The chronic shyness and flinches still persist, but over time, the child finally finds that, beneath the timidity, their will has a core of iron.

There are different cases. Thanks to their abused childhood, some victims believe that there are some human beings who are marked for subjection. Having been ruled without mercy, the adult-child emerges with the desire to rule others. Being on top of others, above them, means safety. I think Hillary believes that. Since her abuse didn’t destroy her, the people that she rules and abuses and turns into tools of her will be survive. Of course, such a view is very hard-hearted.

By contrast, more highly endowed abused children vow they will never inflicted on others what a parent inflicted on them. They vow not to repeat the injustices that made them suffer so much pain. Gen. Grant suffered so many failures and humiliations that he refused to humiliate his enemies.

But from what I observe, Hillary is a deeply wounded soul. She is terribly vain and touchy, and from what I’ve seen, she takes no pleasure in herself.  She doesn’t relish her life. She completely lacks the wonderful value of liveliness, the depth of joyful response, spontaneity and the capacity for deep feeling. Her personality lacks things, and she knows she lacks them, and the knowledge acts to embitter her. She takes no joy in merely being alive. She is never carefree. Her instinct is to seem rather then be. To her, life is a joyless, bothersome chore. She acts as if she were being pursued by something merciless, and that only by securing some vast public success will her sense of being a victim will finally be banished. Only such a success will restore her pride.

She refuses to be like other people. To be like other people represents a failure to her mind. The result is that Hillary labors away at being what she is not.  There is always a struggle in each of us between the authentic and the fake, the sincere and the mask, the honest versus the false. She finds herself on the wrong side of such conceptions. To me, she is a very insecure perfectionist. She lacks that noble pride that is determined to depend on nothing but itself.  That it why she uses people the way she does. She is afraid that if she doesn’t reach the pinnacle of authority, at whatever cost and by any means, she will be consigned to the abyss. Her conduct exhibits signs of frantic desperation in her desire to win the White House.

She is a meddler, a busy body, always concerned with modifying her own circumstances for her own advantage. She clearly uses the mind she has, but how bright is it? How penetrating is it? Too what degree are her observations deformed by her desire to use them to promote herself?

 I believe that all political ambition is based o some inferiority or mind and character. The inferiority can be disguised in many ways -- extreme purpose, efficiency, competence which act to impress the world even while such things don’t impress her. Most inferior natures are enslaved to the desire of making a nice impression. She suffers from that as well. She is not a person of heart.  She is not straightforward. I had a friend in college who was convinced of his superlative ability in every field.  He had what looked to be a strong personality. He was very self- willed with a very bad temper if contradicted. He assumed leadership on every possible topic. He didn’t have much of a memory, but he was always quoting parts of things, never able to light on the key word to explain them. He was one who felt that by holding the right beliefs, you were exempted from thinking about then or defining them. He believed that unanimity of opinion was equivalent to wisdom.

He never admitted he fell short in anything. Nothing penetrated his conceit. Self-assertion would overwhelm any desire to acknowledge a defect in his character. He would often write hot tempered letters on various topics, to the newspapers and would give them to me to admire but almost always, the data of the argument was either missing or mistaken. But if I demurred, he would try to intimidate me asserting his mental excellence. He was a dragon if contradicted and a vindictive monster if criticized.  He didn’t collide with you directly. His was the art of the snub, the punishing silence, the withdrawal of any encouragement, all designed to make his critic recant. He was always the master of little slurs, cheap shots, emotional boycotts, indulging in neglect and, petty retaliations until the critic recants and confesses his sin.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Comments

[Jack Nix]

As always thank you for your wonderful insights. It is always a pleasure to see one of your essays featured on Col. Lang's website. I look forward to Part II.

Jack Nix

[Jack]

Richard

Maybe all voters are irrational. Those who believe they're very smart and rational decision makers actually maybe as irrational as the others.

Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman has an interesting thesis.

"Given an arbitrary world and arbitrary fitness functions, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but that is just tuned to fitness."

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/09/06/492779594/what-if-evolution-bred-reality-out-of-us

Hat-tip to Scott Adams the Dilbert cartoonist who had this link on his blog.

[Bobo]

"Trump’s followers are like people who travel deep into a desert waste in order to bury their IQ’s there"

The quote above is just to lay my claim prior to my comment. For all her ills Hillary is a better person than the box you just placed around her. Poor Hugh, now 47 years after releasing his parental responsibilities by sending his dove into the world the horse collar of Abuse is tossed around him. Whose father was not authoritarian in post WW2. Are you saying all us baby boomers carry that scourge with us or our parents did not read Dr. Spock enough. Even he grew as our parents did as well. Her reticence is more of the hardening she has learned over the past 30 years in public life a tool she has learned the hard way.
Deceitfulness is the politicians disease thus she has become adept at that also.
Self Willed, oh yes, you have her there a person who is very calculating and a "My Way or the Highway" type.
A person who has spent so much time and effort (along with Obama) supporting the congenital & genetic freaks of life (apologies for my coarseness), pandering to the racial classes, spilling the blood of our youth in God forsaken places, destroying countries for reasons even they do not understand, tossing the other 65% of us to the wolves while they tinker with their economic numbers and now calling us Deplorables or Irredeemables. Well is it no wonder we are now coming back from that desert, with our self worth, to elect Donaldo to clean her clock, to clean out that establishment, to clean up that Borg, to clean our government so it goes back to the day of representing all the people of this country.
Looking forward to the sequel.

[Degringolade]

It started out as a comment here. But grew into a post over at my place.

http://mightaswellliebackandenjoyit.blogspot.com/2016/09/dagny-clinton.html

Mr. Sale. Thank you.

[kooshy]

Sir, IMO,I think Hillary is more abused by her husband than in her childhood. Her husband dishonored her while she was the first lady and an internationally well known person and supposedly a role model for a nation. IMO she let that go because of her political ambitions.

[ex-PFC Chuck]

This could be the smoking gun of Hilary's email scrubbing hairball. That is if the FBI and DoJ can bestir themselves to pick it up and verify the (figurative) fingerprints.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/22/how-reddit-ruined-the-hillary-clinton-campaign/

[Doug Colwell]

Wow Richard. If she had a genuine friend they would take her to a quiet spot and have her read it. But that will never happen.

[Cameron]

I've been following this blog for a long time without ever commenting. When I first found it, my initial reaction was there were interesting informed opinions with politics that often differed from mine. In this election year, however, it seems to me to have become completely unhinged.

The above post is a prime example. It is completely devoid of facts. I suppose if someone comes to the article predisposed with a negative viewpoint of the candidate, it must feel like there's something being conveyed. Some confirmation of hatred. But for those looking at the candidates with some eye toward objective facts, it's just a rant of deep-seeded loathing. Giving it the title "Ramble" doesn't absolve it.

I obviously haven't given up on the blog. I'm hoping after the election there's a return to discussing actual events. Actual facts. Actual information. Here's hoping.

[Hood Canal Gardner]

Yes it does sounds familiar including the electorate intelligence asides. The bulk of your first note reads to me as psychoanalyst chic novel speak. Re your 'take' Bill and Chelsea + Arkansas are central to Part One. Your pencil call. I'm looking forward to what you are going to squeeze out of the email imbrogolio. Thanks for the read.

[John Minnerath]

Excellent article about the complexities that drive politicians, few are virtuous.
I look forward to more.
Many years ago I got involved in politics at the county and state level, taking part in and watching on going back room "negotiations".
What I saw were normal appearing people turning into nothing less than wild eyed zealots.
It left me with a very sour taste in my mouth for all politicians that's never gone away.

[LeaNder]

self-interest intervenes

Imagine Richard, Atlas Shrugged is banned in China:

ATLAS SHRUGS BANNED IN CHINA
ByPamela Geller on April 2, 2007
- See more at: http://pamelageller.com/2007/04/atlas_shrugs_ba.html/#sthash.Rz8RFFeA.dpuf

[Ken Roberts]

Thanks. I liked your previous blog post too...

http://mightaswellliebackandenjoyit.blogspot.ca/2016/09/alternation.html

Well, I dunno. It's your guys' prez choice but doesn't seem good options exist. The Cdn cons party called me yesterday, trying to stir up attitudinal trouble, but it's too soon; I told the called how happy I was that Stephen Harper was gone, gone.

I think it has to be grass roots. Dig out the weeds and help the good little blades grow up. Franklin and the credo of his Junto.

[Will]

my take: Hillary is a high functioning autistic person. Very little empathy- a cold fish. But the most damning indictment is that she is an inveterate, incorrigible, unrepentant war monger.
Every body by now has seen her Julius Caesar vini vidi vici moment- followed by insane laughter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmIRYvJQeHM

[Robert]

Did you actually read the story at all? Nobody banned the Ayn Rand book, they "blocked" a link to Pam Geller's lame blog atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com on, April 7, 2007- 9 nine years ago. The site appears to be abandoned, BTW. If you are going to comment on this blog, you have a responsibility to not post garbage and waste peoples time.

[steve]

Thanks for the link. Valid or not, who knows, but an interesting theory.

[Richard Sale]

Excellent.

Richard

[Richard Sale]

that quote about Trump followers was arrogant and unfeeling, and I regret making it. They are simply people hard pressed by life.

Richard

[Fred]

Bobo,

"Whose father was not authoritarian in post WW2."

There is a difference between being authoritarian and being abusive.

[Richard Sale]

Thank you, and no, it would never happen.

Richard

[Richard Sale]

I am writing an analysis of impressions, impressions gained about Hillary over a long period of time. I have read biographies of her and articles and I watch her.

I am not an acamdamic and I am not doing a term paper. If you have facts that disprove my impressions, please list them.

Richard

[Richard Sale]

Thank you very much. I appreciate it very much.

Richard

[Bill Wade]

I don't think Hillary was abused as a child but this is certainly a useful analysis. Bill C certainly abused her, couldn't keep a secret and that hurts. I believe Trump will be kind to her on Monday evening, it will be interesting. I'm not a Trump supporter myself, just happen to know a few contractors that he screwed over. Funnily, I believe he's running cause his casinos are empty, wants people to have more money so that he can get his hands on it. I won't vote for Hillary because I believe she is very seriously ill. The only good I see in a Trump win is for the Border Patrol guys, they deserve it if anyone does.

[LeaNder]

Sorry, I surely didn't research if her books were translated into Chinese. And strictly have no opinion about Rand or her life, maybe some questions about her followers though?

Is her blog abandoned? Lost trace of the hyena admittedly after a while. But it feels her site is only expiring on 12-Sep-2024 at this point in time acording to cq counter.

http://pamelageller.com/

I did read Richard's contribution, I tried to be "short and sharp". Beyond being an transparently genetic chatterer. If you read my comment as politically partisan concerning US elections you are misguided. I am not even sure if I have stopped to care.

[LeaNder]

Hmm, ok, are you suggesting that maybe even we autists don't like each other, after all tyler lately outed me as one.

[Martin Oline]

Chuck:

You nailed it on this one, and beat me by 11 hours. Your link points to a great time line of a conspiracy to obstruct congress. I had read the original time line of events but didn't comprehend the implications of the reddit conversations.