{"id":6082,"date":"2016-11-01T14:32:08","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T14:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/11\/01\/the-clintons-as-grifters\/"},"modified":"2016-11-01T14:32:08","modified_gmt":"2016-11-01T14:32:08","slug":"the-clintons-as-grifters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/11\/01\/the-clintons-as-grifters\/","title":{"rendered":"The Clintons as Grifters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Victor Davis Hanson<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The Hillary\/Bill fortune \u2014 generated by pay-for-play influence peddling on the proposition that Bill would return to the White House under Hillary\u2019s aegis and reward friends while punishing enemies \u2014 hit a reported $150 million some time ago, a fortune built not on farming, mining, insurance, finance, high-tech, or manufacturing, but on skimming off money. The Clintons are simply grifters whose insider access to government gave them the power to make rich people richer.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The Clintons suffer from greed, as defined by Aristotle: endless acquisition solely for the benefit of self. With their insatiable appetites, they resented the limits that multimillionaire status put on them, boundaries they could bypass only by accumulating ever greater riches. The billion-dollar foundation squared the circle of progressive politicians profiting from the public purse by offering a veneer of \u201cdoing good\u201d while offering free luxury travel commensurate with the style of the global rich, by offering sinecures for their loyal but otherwise unemployable cronies, and by spinning off lobbying and speaking fees (the original font of their $100-million-plus personal fortune and the likely reason for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton\u2019s decision to put all her communications, mercantile included, on a private server safe from government scrutiny). Acquiring money to the extent that money would become superfluous was certainly a Clinton telos \u2014 and the subtext of the entire Podesta trove and the disclosures about the Clinton Foundation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Power and pride were the other catalyst for Clinton criminality. I don\u2019t think progressive politics mattered much to the Clintons, at least compared with what drives the more sincere Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Hillary, like Bill, has no real political beliefs \u2014 though she doesn\u2019t hesitate to pursue a mostly opportunistic progressive political agenda. By temperament and background, the Clintons are leftists and will follow a leftist vision, sort of, but one predicated on doing so within the constraints of obtaining and keeping power.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That's right.  Hillary is Ambition in a pant-suit.  What drives her are lust for power and greed.  Her leftism is merely the means to her personal ends.  But the main reason she must be stopped is not because of her vices, but because of her destructive leftism which will "fundamentally transform," which is to say, destroy, America as she was founded to be.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hanson ends with this curious sentence:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

And one wonders whether, in fleeting seconds here at the end of things, they still believe that it was all worth what they have become. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Is Hanson predicting Hillary's defeat in the election with the suggestion that they sense her defeat?  Or is Hanson alluding to the horror of those who, at the end of their lives, come to realize that they have sold their souls in pursuit of worthless things?  Or both?  Or neither?  Perhaps all he means by "the end of things" is the end of the presidential campaign, the last Hillary-Billary power-grab.<\/span><\/p>\n

On occasion a good writer may indulge in a bit of obscurity to make the reader think — or, less nobly, to make himself appear profound.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Victor Davis Hanson: The Hillary\/Bill fortune \u2014 generated by pay-for-play influence peddling on the proposition that Bill would return to the White House under Hillary\u2019s aegis and reward friends while punishing enemies \u2014 hit a reported $150 million some time ago, a fortune built not on farming, mining, insurance, finance, high-tech, or manufacturing, but on … Continue reading “The Clintons as Grifters”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-virtues-and-vices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}