by Rob Urie
In broader understanding, the
German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey developed the ‘telos of becoming’ to
describe life-purpose as it unfolds historically. In contrast to passive
theories of pre-ordination, Dilthey’s purposiveness is brought into being
through the act of living. In a social sense this theory places the policies
and practices of Bill and Hillary Clinton on the path to those of George W.
Bush as necessary precedents. In more straightforward terms, Mr. Bush’s crimes
against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan were preceded by the Clinton’s
sanctions and bombing that killed
500,000 innocent Iraqis. And Mr. Bush’s capacity to wage war was
facilitated by the political
cover provided by both Clintons.
The American relationship with
political violence has always been schizophrenic as the storyline of
‘benevolent’ violence overseas is met by the facts as lived by what remains of
the indigenous population and the descendants of slaves whose forebears were
kidnapped and held as chattel when not being raped and / or murdered. Thanks in
large measure to the economic and carceral policies of Bill and Hillary
Clinton, the portion of the population that isn’t currently incarcerated lives
with the ‘passive’ violence of outsourced jobs, privatized public services and
generally diminished lives. And lest this idea of passive violence seem effete,
the suicides, drug addiction, divorces and domestic abuse that accompany
economic stress are demonstrably
real.
When Black Panther and
all-around lovely human being Angela Davis was asked in 1972 by a Swedish film
crew about the alleged penchant of the Panthers toward revolutionary
(political) violence, she
made the point back that Black people in America have lived with three
centuries of political violence not of their making. Those old enough to
remember the murder of Black Panther and all-around lovely human being Fred
Hampton at the hands of the Chicago police as he slept next to his pregnant
wife likely cringed knowingly when permanent Clinton confidant and Chicago
Mayor Rahm Emanuel covered up the vicious
murder of Laquan McDonald by the very same Chicago Police Department four
decades later. Depending on one’s class and race, political violence in America
is either an everyday occurrence or something that doesn’t affect you.
Whether one agrees with their
motives and tactics or not, a goal of the Weather Underground bombings that
took place in the late 1960s and early-mid 1970s was to ‘bring the war (in
Southeast Asia) home’ to Americans who supported the war while being safely
removed from its consequences. As was the case with George W. Bush’s war
against Iraq, the American penchant for pointless slaughter exists in
proportion to the remove that Americans perceive themselves to be from the
murder and chaos they claim to support. Hillary Clinton’s reflexive militarism
is imperial prerogative combined with a pathological disregard for the consequences
of her actions. Mrs. Clinton’s moral tenor is sociopathic in the sense that the
alleged benevolence of her wars is a function of who prosecutes them (the U.S.)
and not their consequences.
The remarkable policy
continuity between ‘the two wings of the capitalist Party’ has so reduced even
the appearance of political choice that it must come from outside of the two-Party
system if it is to exist. The differences cited by Liberals and Conservatives
are largely the residual of a bygone era. Nowhere is this convergence more
apparent than in policies of war where Hillary Clinton could have fit well into
George W. Bush’s ‘war cabinet.’ Barack Obama’s drone murders are the
morally-drained conclusion to policies that proceed from the premise that
nothing the U.S. does, no matter how horrific, is morally suspect. When merged
with neoliberal economic policies, the realm of moral concern places 99.999% of
humanity on the outside.
The one-sided caution against
political violence comes from inside this realm and from the Liberal apologists
who have few moral qualms over grotesque slaughters as long as they are couched
in the language of empathy. The ‘helpful’ caution has grown in direct
proportion to the militarization of the police, the build-out of the
surveillance state, the radical concentration of economic power in the hands of
a few thousand plutocrats and mass economic dispossession across the developed
West. Through their neoliberal economic policies the Clintons have been the
prime movers behind both the concentration of wealth and mass economic
dispossession. And through their neoconservative politics they have been a
central force behind ‘benevolent’ political violence that only they and their
supporters see as benevolent.
A consequence of the frame of
‘humanitarian’ intervention is to send history to the margins of political
understanding. ‘Reactive’ violence is posed as defensive when actual American
history is as the most aggressively violent nation in human history. George W.
Bush was able to sell his aggressive war against Iraq as ‘pre-emptive’ defense
through this reactive posture. Hillary Clinton likewise poses her unhinged
militarism as protection from real and imagined enemies as if they generated
themselves into existence. Her creation of ten million refugees across the
Middle East through wars in Libya, Iraq and Syria begs the question of what
possible good outcome could ever have been imagined by such mass dispossession.
Manufacturing enemies to keep the existing order in power works until it
doesn’t.
Ignorance of ongoing American
political violence through national, class or racial privilege hardly erases
its facts from those who experience it. Wall Street and the executive class
that support the Clinton’s have few qualms about sending tens of thousands of
jobs overseas knowing full well that the consequence will be suicides, drug
dependence and anti-social behavior. Use of this ignorance as a political wedge
by posing a few angry Democratic convention delegates in Nevada as the ugly
underbelly of American politics is as cynical as it is ignorant of life as it
is lived by most people. The U.S. destruction of the Middle East, with Hillary
Clinton as prime mover in recent history, is ugly political violence. The mass
incarceration which the Clintons helped engineer for political gain is ugly
political violence. The jobs lost through Bill Clinton’s passage of NAFTA is
ugly political violence. A few righteously pissed Democrats in Nevada doesn’t
rise to the level of a bar fight, let alone a political debacle for those
involved.
The political motivation for
making an issue of righteous anger over cynical Party machinations is to
suppress resistance to demonstrably corrupt Democratic Party politics. The
contention that only registered Democrats should be able to vote in closed
primaries would be well and good if the Party establishment didn’t join with
Republicans to make it virtually impossible for third-Party candidates to
compete. From rules that make it onerous for candidates to get registered on
state primary ballots to rules that exclude them from major debates, the major
Parties have colluded to create an exclusionary process that puts the onus on
them to prove their own political legitimacy. Pointing to Hillary Clinton’s
leading position in this exclusionary process is roughly akin to George W.
Bush’s ‘mission accomplished’ moment when all that was proved was his own
ignorance of the political moment.
Ironically, in the sense that
fears are being matched against known outcomes, Republican boogeyman Donald
Trump has no publicly available body count to his credit whereas Hillary
Clinton has one in the low millions. Mr. Trump’s bellicose racist and nativist
rhetoric is indeed frightening, most likely in relation to one’s perception of
their own vulnerability should it be turned into a national program. But in the
same ironic sense, Hillary (and Bill) Clinton’s actual history is of racist and
nativist policies like mass incarceration, immigrant bashing and the wanton
murder of Black and Brown people across North Africa and the Middle East. The
question the rest of the world is likely asking is: how many are likely to die
under a Donald Trump Presidency versus that of Hillary Clinton? With history as
a guide, it’s Hillary Clinton that has the body count.
Democrats will do as their
wont. Apparently lost on the establishment is that some fair portion of the
populace already thinks that everything coming from their mouths is cynical
bullshit anyway. Hillary Clinton is approximately the leading proponent of
political violence in the world today. Her willingness to use violence as a
first choice combined with her control over the mechanisms and institutions of
mass violence makes her one of the most dangerous people alive. Liberals and
establishment Democrats who support her accept the implied premise that the
lives of ‘those other people’ don’t matter as long as their own bellies and
bank accounts are full. A raised chair in Nevada is a pale ghost, barely a
shadow, to the everyday horrors visited upon innocents around the globe by the
U.S. military at the behest of the ‘humanitarian’ interventionists who resigned
from their own humanity some decades ago.
Rob Urie is an artist and
political economist. His book Zen
Economics is published by CounterPunch Books.
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