The Old Windbag

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(Although this is a rather strong criticism of Hillary Clinton, it does not automatically follow that the author must be a conservative.)

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The self-promoting over-the-hill sleazebag "Hillary" who is unable to find her policy towards Egypt, Libya or any other country, once said: "It Takes A Village." With enough persons invoking the concept of "community" (and here I recommend the scholarly book, "A Body of Individuals," by Sue-Im Lee, for more on "community"), it starts to "sound good." Community - not unlike the Village thing - could become a kind of catchword. Try it: "community."

Are you feeling anything yet? (if you are, there is more to consider: is it a "real" community feeling or a "fake" one? Maybe "only your hairdresser knows for sure." And if you are too young to get it, there's always the Memorex commercial -- or am I just hopeless/dated?)

You can tell from some of Hillary's earlier books -- and, (I didn't actually read "It Takes...", but I looked at a couple of 'em: like the one I got from a conservative type of church's basement sale, for five dollars, in Arizona)-- and, you can tell that Clinton always behaved like a marketer, and in fact seems to be one. Hill is a self-promoter; it's woven right in; it seemed to come naturally to her and it was embedded as it were in the text of the books. That is why I say that she was a big advertiser or self-promoter. Now we see how hollow it all is.

Of course some are dead (Libya, Afghanistan - drone -- get it yet?). [Maybe Nugent has a comment here? -- About how war is necessary? Thanks, Ted. I think I'll just fill in your drivel for myself, OK? -- Or did I hurt yer little feelings...]

I would characterize the U. S. air strikes using foreign policy parlance, as: overly ambitious. It is good that we intervened. I wanted that. But there is only so much we can do; some things we can do and some things we really cannot. We cannot, for example, stop the government (Libya) forces on the ground from entering persons' homes. No, I don't think so. This recent U. S. intervention was not well-considered. (Which seems more or less consistent with recent history) There were other, more skillful things that the U. S. could have done to engage Libya, to make various offers, to increase communication, etc. --- not just merely killing a few persons. But the U. S. does not seem to be able to wrap its mind around any deeper methods that respect the human complexity of the situation.

I would honestly ask: What is the problem? I think it is that of the professional class, and I think that the professional class that we presently employ in government does not have the requisite culture, knowledge, and depth to formulate policy worthy of a world leader. They lack class, would be shorter way to say that. The greatness of the United States, assuming that this once existed, does not lie in the willingness to use violence. Neither does it lie in "the people" somehow cut off in the wild, having no access to their institutions. The willingness to use violence is not a special feature of a democratic state. The special feature of a democratic state is its ability to project a good government, which is to say project something of real quality, onto its own institutions, and the greatness is in the culture, depth and knowledge of those institutions.