Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Musings about Hillary

The law in its majesty bows to the throne.  Queen Hillary beat the rap.

This will not work out well for her.  Consider:

The entire western world  is suffering from a crisis of governmental legitimacy, as an increasingly isolated technocratic governing class can no longer hide its incompetency and venality.  The populations see the game is rigged, and increasingly are rejecting the elite.  We see this explicitly with the UK voter's Brexit choice (and the related constellation of exit from other EU countries: Frexit, Nexit, Auexit, etc).  The elite can only respond by clamping down even harder, further fanning the flames consuming perceived governmental legitimacy.  Where this dynamic ends is clear even to the dim wit talking heads.

On these shores, Donald Trump will use this mercilessly in his "Crooked Hillary" campaign.  And quite frankly, she is crooked, and the optics are inescapable for her.  After all (as she put it so many years ago), what did she know and when did she know it?  The drip, drip, drip of Trump's water torture (along with likely FBI leaks from career bureaucrats enraged at the subversion of the law of the land) may cost her the Presidency.  We shall see, but none of this is good for her.

If she wins, the twin memes of "Crooked Hillary" and "the game is rigged" will make it very difficult for her to govern.  The bonfire of governmental legitimacy will burn much brighter - after all, perhaps 40% of her own party thinks that the game is rigged and that she's a crook.  The numbers are certainly higher with non Democratic voters - they may vote for her, but they will never like her.  As she pays off her big money donors they will like her less.

And she is perhaps the most paranoid public figure of the last 40 years.  She is likely to keep a very small group of insiders as a ruling cabal, each of which will collect big money for access to her royal throne.  This will further alienate the public.

As she cracks down on her enemies - gun control, anyone? - expect to hear the first serious rumblings of secession.  After all, if the ruling center is illegitimate and unpopular, this opens opportunities for regional figures to gain at the center's expense.  The UK just seceded from the EU; other EU member states may follow.  There's nothing that says this can't happen here, for the same reasons as there.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

We did indeed vote to secede from the EU, although it remains to be seen whether our ruling classes find some way to wriggle out of it or otherwise cock it up.

Comrade Misfit said...

Respectfully, it won't matter a bit as long as Trump keeps running his mouth and Twitter feed.

The Crook or the Racist. Both are not above enriching themselves by the use of government tools. Both are less than dedicated to upholding the rule of law, let alone the Constitution.

This election will truly be choosing the lesser of two evils.

matism said...

Comrade Misfit? Is that you, Lyin' Ryan? Or are you instead the ncurrent om de plume of George Will?

Borepatch said...

Comrade Misfit, I don't believe that Trump is a racist. I think he is a nationalist.

In other words, I don't think that he is prejudiced against hispanics who are here legally; rather, he is prejudiced against those here illegally. There's a whole discussion in there, but it's not about race.

Which is not to say that Trump is right or wrong. However, the "racist" moniker fails because it does not predict how he will act in the future.