Why Bill Clinton is a political genius
who continues to reveal the rot at the heart of the Republican party
Fareed Zakaria: Why were economics so good in the 1990's? Bill Clinton: Well, we stopped doing what didn't work and started doing what did work. And that's what you do in your life as well.
The wording is only approximate and the italics are mine. But this is close to an exchange that I heard on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS on CNN this morning.
This little touch shows Clinton’s genius—a talent that almost no other living politician can master. Say what you want about his self-destructive and abusive sexual predation thirty years ago, but he always brings the truth down to a level of comprehension that normal human beings possess.
He easily relates the truth to something so obvious that no one can argue with it. “And that’s what you do in your life as well.” Everyone—even the most thick-headed, misdirected, uneducable person—has to agree with that. Indeed, such dreglike people probably think they are already doing what work—even though their lives suck.
Republicans hate Bill Clinton for this ability. Even they have to agree that what he’s saying here is true. Even they have to preach that principle.
But then they champion stuff that just doesn’t work—not for society’s benefit at any rate. Ruthless capitalism doesn’t work for society. Racism doesn’t work for society, nor does hating on your enemies, vilifying LGBTQ+ people, voter suppression, insurrection, hyper-gerrymandering, or capturing political positions that will allow Republicans to decide that they win every election.
Nothing they want is good for society. They are entirely selfish and anti-social, except for promoting the twisted demands of their own tribe.
And that is precisely why Republicans cannot do what works for everybody. They only care about what works for them. And here’s the kicker: they are wrong about that too!
Take the current contretemps that Southern Republicans have stirred up—shipping Central American asylum-seekers to Democratic-run areas of the country. Republicans think that this works for them. Why? Because their tribe thinks it’s hilarious. “Owning the libs” they call it. They can hardly hold back their laughter on the Republican propaganda media outlets. And the rank-and-file love it so much that they gave the disgusting Trump-wanna-be Ron DeSantis a standing ovation for the stunt he pulled moving asylum-seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard.
The only criticism I’ve heard about this heartless political gimmick from Republicans is that the red states have to pay for it. OK. Those critics at least see one way that it doesn’t work for them. Typically, however, they care about money more than people.
But they don’t care at all about the moral turpitude of treating human beings like pawns on a chessboard. They don’t care that these people and their children have to step off a plane or a bus where no one is expecting them or prepared to meet them. They don’t care that these people have nothing but the shirts on their backs. They don’t care what happens to them when they get dropped off without any assistance whatsoever.
What a contrast they make with the “libs” whom they think they “own.” Wherever asylum-seekers turn up unannounced, Democratic leaders actually help them, find them supplies and housing, treat them like Christ would have wanted. “And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Matt. 25:40.)
But while Republicans are slapping their mean-spirited, anti-Christian sides at their hilarious joke, they don't see that it doesn’t work even for them. Like virtually everything Republicans have been doing and trying to do since they anointed King Donald the Butt, this overt baring the Republican soul only reveals more of its putrescence. And Republicans are so giddy about Trump’s having freed them to show their true feelings that they revel in their depravity. Their incandescent joy at meeting with large crowds of like-minded pond scum, spiting all the benchmarks of decent society, blinds them to what others see.
Others—those of us who are still decent, public-spirited Americans—see the dropping of the Republican veil, that gossamer film of dog-whistles, cynical sophistries, and outright lies used since the 1960s to try to conceal the festering welter of demons that riot within the Republican soul. The Trump hordes have flung the veil aside willingly. They are only too happy to expose their naked viciousness to the rest of us.
The Republican rot has been there since the Nixon’s Southern Strategy that lured racist Souther Democrats into the Republican party. It became only too clear to Democrats with the ascendancy of Newt Gingrich in the 1990s. Now the Trumpist hordes are finally making it blindingly clear to everyone with an ounce of decency in his or her heart.
The rest of us, Decent America, are actually the majority. We have only to look squarely at Republican depravity, be properly disgusted, and redouble our efforts to stop Republicans once and for all.
November is the last stand.
Let us rise up in defense of decency and drive Republicans from power everywhere in this nation.
Then we will be in a position to demand the decency that all Americans deserve, and pass the laws that will punish the deviant behavior of the criminal cult that is the Republican party.
He is a genius!