By now, anyone with one eye half-open knows the Clinton campaign and Hillary Clinton herself are awash in lies, half-truths, opacity, misdirection, quid-pro-quo favoritism, pay-to-play pandering, influence peddling, tinkering and rigging of the electoral process (yes, Bernie fans, the DNC screwed your candidate), and numerous other ethical lapses and transgressions. This isn’t new behavior, nor is it driven by the exigent need to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. This is who they are, this is who she is. Despite all this, people still support her, deny her misdeeds, extol her fabricated virtues, and plan to vote for her on Tuesday.

What do you achieve by supporting her and voting for her? Do you think that Clinton will undergo an ethical rebirth? That she’ll suddenly become the champion of good government? That these shenanigans will be things of the past?

By supporting Clinton, you are rewarding every lie, every obfuscation, every dirty deed, every bit of corruption that has come out of her camp and the Democratic Party. By supporting Clinton, you will be telling her and her administration that they can do whatever they wish, that they can continue to lie to you, to break your trust, to violate the principles of representative government and our Republic, and laugh at you behind closed doors for being an enabling puppet. By supporting Clinton, you are in essence handing total control over your life to someone who has no respect for you or for the limits on the power of the Presidency written into the Constitution. By supporting Clinton, you are telling the Democratic Party that you are willing to accept unaccountable rule over you and everyone else in the country.

Do you think that they’ll be “good people,” despite the fact that their path to power was a dirty and corrupt one, strewn with scandal and littered with broken lives, careers and reputations? Do you somehow know that they’ll do all the right things, simply because you’ve decided you want to be on their team?

How about all those news organizations that have broken from the fundamental principles of journalism in their efforts to bend the election in Clinton’s favor? How about the social media platforms that filter what you see and read, that block “inconvenient” and unfavorable content, and that actively skew search results in Clinton’s favor? Do you expect them to suddenly walk back from such questionable behavior and become neutral or critical towards government?

The only thing you’ll get by rewarding lies and corruption is more lies and corruption. She will fail to deliver the fantasies you’ve projected onto her, she will operate above the law, she will continue to surround herself with people who will act with no regard for the public trust, for the limits of power written in the Constitution, or for the ethical responsibilities expected of the office. She will be abetted in this by a compliant and complicit press corps, which has been utterly derelict in its traditional role of keeping the government honest and transparent.

Are you among those who flat-out deny the lies, cheats, corruption and giant ethical miasma? Are you among those who claim there’s “nothing there” apart from a right-wing witch hunt? You’re denying all this:

Money:
– The Clinton Foundation scandals (alone enough to fill a tome), including pay-to-play from the King of Morocco and others, the selling of seats on Commerce Department junkets, the Haiti aid debacle, the Russian uranium deal, the UBS intervention, the donation to a company owned by Bill’s alleged mistress known as ‘Energizer,’ and its essential nature as a slush fund to support their lifestyles and those of their people.
– The “renting out” the Lincoln Bedroom and the selling of White House access.
– Whitewater, a shady investment deal that landed a number of people in jail.
– The skirting of campaign finance laws with six-figure fees for speeches given to Wall Street firms, speeches whose transcripts she won’t release, speeches where she tells Wall Street that she’s on their side. Massive donations to the Clinton Foundation from these banks and Wall Street firms – but I’m sure she’ll “rein them in” once President.
– $26M in donations from Sweden as Sweden lobbied the State Department to forego sanctions against Iran, where Sweden was doing business.
– Donations from Boeing while she was Secretary of State. Boeing got billions in Russian contracts soon thereafter.
– Illegal contributions from foreign sources orchestrated by John Huang, Charlie Trie and Johnny Chung.
– Norman Hsu.
– Chinagate, where American satellite and missile technology was given to China as millions of dollars were donated to the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign for 1996.
– The cattle futures scandal/lie, where she turned a $100K profit on a $1K investment thanks to political connections, but claimed that she merely studied the Wall Street Journal to figure out the investment.
– The looting of furniture from the White House.

Lies:
– She set up a private email server in contravention of federal rules. She destroyed emails that, by law, are part of the national record. She mishandled top secret information. She lied about it, repeatedly. She stonewalled investigations into it for months.
– Knowing full well that the Benghazi attack was a preplanned and coordinated effort by Islamic militants, she nevertheless spread the lie that the attack was a spontaneous protest resulting from a YouTube video.
– The “dead broke” absurdity. Her fabricated ‘descent into sniper fire’ story in Bosnia. Her story about trying to join the Marines at age 26. Her “family story” about being named after Sir Edmund Hillary. Her assertion that all her grandparents were immigrants.

Cheating and Corruption:
– Her camp and the DNC cheated during the primaries in a successful effort to deny Bernie Sanders a shot at the nomination.
– She was fed debate questions by CNN’s Donna Brazile, both in the primaries and in the general election season.
– She was complicit in the character assassination and IRS targeting of numerous women with whom her husband had had affairs.
– Travelgate, a classic bit of patronage where White House travel office employees were fired under her direction and replaced by a firm with ties to the Clintons.
– Filegate, where one of her people improperly accessed FBI files of political opponents.
– Pardongate, where Bill issued pardons to a number of people, including Marc Rich, who donated to the Clinton Library.
– The Vince Foster scandal, where she halted the investigation of his files, where files were removed from the Rose Law firm under her direction and ended up hidden in her closet.

All this stands apart from her dismal record and her terrible policy ideas, themselves sufficient to disqualify her.

Of course, the excuse is that the Clintons have not been convicted of any crimes, so therefore they must be innocent. Yes, and I’m sure that OJ Simpson and Casey Anthony are as noble as Gandhi and Mother Teresa. I’m sure that those of you who trot out this absurdity also grant the same “clean hands” presumption to Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, who’ve never been convicted of the war crimes and other bad acts alleged against them. I’m sure you apply this “not convicted means proven innocent” in all your judgments.

The Clintons’ continued success speaks far more to their skill, their buffers, their web of protection, the sycophantic media that runs interference for them, and you, the people who pretend that this mountain of dirt is somehow just lies, false allegations and a giant partisan smear job.

You want to vote for her? Go ahead. When she continues to lie, when she continues to act in a deeply deceitful, opaque and unethical manner, when the insatiable greed that has driven so much of her past behavior continues unabated, you’ll have only yourselves to blame.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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