2

It’s probably not usual to explain a book’s dedication but this book aspires to be a trailblazer in more than a couple of ways..

Rather than let the reader hypothesize about my chosen subjects of dedication I figured I’d do an explainer.

1. Hillary Clinton is fairly straightforward, of course. I’ve been a huge supporter and admirer of her and her husband since 1993. Like many I was despondent about not just that she ‘lost’ but the way she did-the scare quotes denote that fact that her ‘loss’ itself wasn’t legitimate.

On #Election2016: @HillaryClinton did not lose because of an upset. She lost because of a set up. At some point her victory must be affirmed.

— Rev Jesse Jackson Sr (@RevJJackson) February 18, 2018

You had just some of the most cluelessly vile media coverage that did everything it could to weaponize the fake scandal Emailgate, the rogue anti Clinton pro Trump FBI agents and Russian active measures via Wikileaks and social media. With all the pundits complaining that Hillary doesn’t do any soul searching or introspection, it’s clear that most of the MSM believes in introspection for thee but not for me as few of them have done any introspection about their own awful coverage that far from informing the public misinformed and made people more ignorant after consuming MSM news than before.

There are a few exceptions-notably Brian Stelter certainly has tried very hard to figure out where the media went wrong and how to do better. Katy Tur seems to do some self questioning in her book though her coverage has at times reverted back to the classically bad habits of most MSM punditry.

Of course the most notable and best exception of all is Amy Chozick-if only a few of her colleagues would take her book to heart.

Then, of course, there was the relentless anti Clinton campaign of the GOP and the vast right wing conspiracy that  Hillary Clinton was totally right about way back in 1998-what else is new? Hillary says something that’s totally 100% correct but the MSM decides they don’t like something about it and freakout for months on end-ignoring the substance of what she said-while the level of rightness of what she said only becomes clearer and more undeniable as time goes on.

But Hillary was also the best democracy has to offer. She had the intelligence, the knowledge, as well as the passion for public service. It might not be lost on you that I’m something of a fan of Hillary Clinton. Let’s be clear: #StillWithHer, #AlwaysWithHer, and while I’m pretty certain she’s not going to run in 2020 if she were, you better believe I’d vote for her over any of these other eager applicants-a dream ticket could be Hillary-Kamala.

Again, there are many who feel the same way. Her base of support is bigger than that of any of the other current prospective candidates.

https://twitter.com/MrDane1982/status/1075902316555984896

Amen Mr. Weeks, you speak for many of us. I discussed in Chapter A why I decided to write this book-and also run in the NY2 primary-though lesson learned, next time I will not allow anyone to talk me out of staying in as some loyal supporters now keep reminding me!

But the predominant feeling was there’s something wrong with this country if this is what they do to a fine, competent, brilliant, compassionate public servant like Hillary. Brett Kavanugh can kvetch all he wants about vengeance on behalf of the Clintons and he’s right-I will never forgive any of  them for what they did to Hillary Clinton-you best be believing. 

But for the Furies who have been roused over what was done to the first female candidate of a major party-who Obama rightly called the most qualified candidate for President ever  there’s no real difference between vengeance and justice. 

And there is such a thing as legitimate righteous anger and indignation.

I’ve always personally felt a good deal of affinity with Hillary in case you haven’t yet guessed! Part of it is while I’m a man myself, since I was a young man when Bill ran in 1992-that was the first election I could vote-I was also a big supporter of feminism who wanted to see the Democrats elect a powerful female President. While there was a furor on the Right and in the MSM, when Bill said ‘two for the price of one’ that seemed perfectly reasonable and legitimate to me.

But beyond my desire to see the glass ceiling shattered I came to feel that she and I are also ideological soul mates-when you read what was on her mind when she gave her Wellesley commencement speech way back in 1969 I feel that she was always looking for a kind of sensible center in American politics that has proven very elusive-the Center cannot hold.

In footnote reference the chapter in his book with that title.

Like her, I’ve always been more Center Left than hard Left-though I should point out that when I ran in the NY2 primary I ran on the New New Deal-which is more progressive than anything St. Bernie has even dreamed of running on: a Job Guarantee (JG), a Universal Basic Income (UBI), and an increased and expanded Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

FN: His big issue is what? A $15 MW and ‘the end of bad trade deals…’

The reality is I support a $15 MW but it’s not in itself a panacea-as NYer I can say this first hand-we’ve had a $15 MW on the books for a few years now and it’s hardly proven a panacea-to be sure it’s been implemented so slowly…

But even if you did do it faster it’s helpful but far from sufficient in achieving what needs to be achieved-raising wages.

End FN.

As it turns out great minds think alike-certainly she has a great mind. And she revealed in her best selling book What Happened that she had considered coming out for the UBI in 2016. While the media keeps saying she doesn’t ‘take responsibility’-why is she the first candidate who has to ‘take responsibility’ for a loss much less a ‘loss?’-she rightfully admits that she misread the electorate in 2016 and had she seen it she would have run on UBI-and therefore totally taken away the ability of the Berners to claim that only he was the True Progressive

It’s too bad she didn’t run on UBI and overall it’s clear that she-much more than even Bernie who-like Trump-focused on ‘bad trade deals’ correctly diagnosed the ongoing problem in our economy over the last 18 years-automation which is why she called for regulating Uber-naturally, the GOP wrongly accused her of wanting to shut them down.

FN: Regarding ‘unfair trade deals’ in a summit  with Chris Hayes in 2017 a Trump voter who states he also likes Bernie said he was ‘against all unfair trade deals even GAAT.’

If you consider GAAT that was setup by John Maynard Keynes to be an ‘unfair trade deal’ there’s no such thing as a fair one. When Trump and Bernie say they aren’t against trade deals just ‘unfair ones’ the fact that they can’t name a single fair trade deal belies this talking point.

End FN.

But the country’s retrogression and-to use a big word of Nietzsche’s-decadence is such that we can no longer have nice things or qualified and dedicated public servants. In 2016 it seemed lack of qualifications was a selling point.

I often think of her as in a way a throwback to an earlier, simpler time. One of the big illusions in recent American politics is the idea of candidate centered politics.

This idea is essentially a fallacy, particularly today, ironically enough, as tell me what party a candidate is and I can tell you 90-95% of their positions on policy. Yet many people run around bragging of their independence in not caring about party only the candidate. Ok, so basically every time they vote on a candidate they are willfully flying blind-they essentially attempt to reinvent the wheel to judge candidates when the party label is the most important tell.

What people who insist on being ‘against partisanship’ don’t get is that if you eliminated the parties tomorrow, new ones would emerge. I mean it’s rather silly to be a fervent gun control advocate but to insist you’re nonpartisan-only one of the two parties believes in gun control or that you care about immigration reform-only one of the parties believes in reform or racial justice or gender equality-only of the the two parties believes in it just as only one of the two parties thinks climate change is real.

Parties are very helpful and ultimately essential which is why they emerge. Unfortunately there are a lot of these progressive types who insist on hating the Democratic party to prove their ‘independence’ but what they fail to see is that their ideological goals are tied with partisanship. You can’t have one without the other.

However, despite all this talk about being nonpartisan, evidently in 2018 voters caught up:

In the midterms, voters basically voted for the party, not the person 1/ https://t.co/bq7v592nAS

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 20, 2018

Again Hillary seems to be to be a throwback to when the country didn’t have these illusions. The Right wing National Interest upon reading Ezra Klein’s interview of her in 2017 went out and attacked her for her militant pragmatism. 

But the joke’s on them-I actually love that phrase and would call myself the same-a militant pragmatist. Indeed, it well sums up what I was discussing above-that I feel a good deal of ideological affinity with her.

And this is why this book is dedicated to Hillary alongside, Alexander Hamilton, and Nietzsche. To call her a throwback is ironic in a way as, again, she was the first female major party Presidential candidate. Going back 50 or 60 years in American politics takes you to the time American women were first starting to demand their place in society.

But temperamentally I think it fits in some ways-2016 really seemed like a time that was not her time-which was not her loss but ours. And Trump is the dream walking of the great anti democratic political theories like Alexander Hamilton and philosophers like Nietzsche. Not all dreams are good, Trump was truly a nightmare come true.

Hillary would be the hope of a Hamilton and Nietzsche-that the best citizens-the most qualified and public spirited-would rise to the top to lead the people but Trump was what these cynics of democracy in their heart of hearts feared. With the ‘election’ of Trump we became a kakistocracy: a system of government which is run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.^[

Trump is only literally the most unqualified and most unscrupulous person in the country.

https://twitter.com/benjaminwittes/status/885114984551903232

I always feel a close affinity to Hamilton as well-both for his ideology of a strong central government, his opposition to xenophobia, as well as thanks to the Alexander Hamilton rule I like he in his own time can never run for President.

FN: I was born in England you see…

It really is a pretty pointless and mistaken rule and it was used to prevent one of the best of the generation, best of all time, Hamilton from ever being President.

Indeed, as Bill Kristol says, there’s a good case that Hamilton predicted-warned of-the rise of Trump. 

Federalist 68, by Alexander Hamilton, is not much read today. It consists of a defense of the original Electoral College in which the electors, chosen by the people, would assemble in each state and deliberate on their choice for president. This version of the Electoral College never really took hold and has faded into the mists of history. So this essay might seem irrelevant.”

Ironically, there was a push in the immediate aftermath of November 8, 2016-a day that will live in infamy-to urge electors to use their own discretion rather than just mechanistically going with their states but this was ultimately a quite stillborn effort-more Berners withheld their votes from Clinton than anyone withheld their votes from Trump.

Here’s Hamilton:

We were reminded again and again in the first year of the presidency of Donald Trump, of “the share which the executive in every government must necessarily have in its good or ill administration.” We will be reminded again and again of this in 2018.”

FN: Hamilton’s hope that the process will protect us from ” any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications” has clearly been dashed, alas.

Speaking of which, yesterday was yet a new watershed for Trump’s incompetence and ignorance. 

As for Nietzsche his criticism and skepticism of democracy is well known. 

He also talks in aphorism 328 of The Gay Science about the need to harm stupidity. 

Alas, there was heretofore nothing more stupid than media’s coverage of the 2016 election as well as it’s overall-continuing-Clinton Derangement Syndrome-their new trick, now that they can’t talk about the emails anymore is to demand that she retroactively call for Bill to resign 20 years later over a consensual affair-amazingly they defend Trump and Stormy Daniels-after all it was consensual! So Bill needs to resign 20 years later but they still call Trump ‘Mr President’ and Brett Kavanaugh’ Justice Kavanaugh’ proving yet again, they could care less about sexual assault, this is just the same old anti Clinton wine, in yet a new bottle.

But regarding Hillary Clinton and the 2016 election, the end  aphorism 213 in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil is particularly apropos.

For a philosopher to arise, many generations must have done the preparatory work. Every single one of his virtues must have been acquired, cared for, passed on, assimilated, and not just the bold, light, delicate walking and running of his thoughts, but above all the willingness to take on great responsibilities, the loftiness of the look which dominates and gazes down, the feeling of standing apart from the crowd and its duties and virtues, the affable protecting and defending what is misunderstood and slandered, whether that is God or the devil, the desire for and practice of great justice, the art of commanding, the breadth of will, the slow eye that seldom admires, seldom looks upward, seldom loves. . . .”

What has been more misunderstood and slandered than Hillary Clinton?

UPDATE: In Chapter A, I note that in another sense this is a very Nietzschean boook-in that it could be seen as unChristian as it refuses to just turn it’s cheek over the last 50 years of GOP abuses of power and subversion of democracy.

Clearly this is not what Hillary Clinton’s devotees will accept.

https://twitter.com/MrDane1982/status/1077794973981073408?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1077794973981073408&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fevilsax.pressbooks.com%2Fwp%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost.php%3Fpost%3D98%26action%3Dedit