By Irene F. Starkehaus -
Entirely enthralling was the recent interview of Lanny Davis delivered by the AM 560 morning team (Dan Proft, Amy Jacobson) on October 23. For those readers who are struggling to place the name, Mr. Davis was special counsel to the President from 1996 to 1998. He acted as spokesman for President Clinton regarding legal issues, which included former President Clinton's impeachment trial.
Ostensibly, the goal of the hosts in this interview was to discuss the results of the previous day's Benghazi hearings, and to tease out whether Clinton's wanton relativism has had any influence over the Left's serene psyche. Mr. Davis's objective, it would seem, was to lay out a pithy, patronizing defense of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's performance during those hearings as well as during the terrorist attack on the American embassy in Libya on September 11, 2012.
From a purely stylistic perspective, the interview was a brilliant display on the part of Mr. Davis. His condescending yet simmering anger is vastly different than any Khrushchevian shoe slamming that might engender defensible ire. Per usual, listeners were left confounded at Mr. Davis's lack of empathy for those seeking justice. I recommend that this should not act as a criticism of AM 560's hosts. Marginalizing public disapproval was, I think, quite the objective of Lanny Davis. I would suggest that he's well-schooled in the art of making the sane question their sanity.
Mr. Davis's obstinate non-rebuttal was, in fact, what one might expect from those who have all their ducks in a row, who have nothing to fear from resistance and who have grown weary of the pestering plebeians who have not yet emotionally registered that they've been conquered.
Whether America truly has been conquered remains to be seen, by the way. In political conflict, the only battle that actually matters is the one that permanently ends the discussion, so I would suggest that this conflict may be far from over. More's the pity. The Left's persistent progress in degradation has the markings of a bloodless blood feud. Nevertheless, progressivists are clearly confident that jurisprudence has been subdued.
Hillary Clinton's and Mr. Davis's unflinching rejection of conscience merely underscores their growing devotion to this Machiavellian "democracy" in America. Alas, the "unflinching" part is what remains so unsettling about this dark era in American politics. You'd like to see just a flicker of rectitude somewhere in the eyes to reassure you that there remains shared humanity between the two viewpoints.
If that shared humanity exists, Hillary's posture certainly doesn't register it. That unflappable confidence that she is emotionally unrivaled effectively rattles the confidence of the opposition at the same rate that it increases the opposition's frustration.
Paraphrasing an op-ed by KT McFarland that appeared on the Fox News website on October 23, what we are witnessing is a hint of Hillary Clinton's calculated inhumanity. Quoting McFarland:
She brushed off blame by saying security decisions were handled at lower levels of the State Department professional staff, not by the secretary.
She didn't receive Ambassador Stevens' requests for more security -- implying that if only she had things might have turned out differently.
It was a masterful performance. She showed enormous discipline and nearly super-human stamina.
She let nothing slip. But in the end she let everything slip. She got a perfect score, but failed the test.
She didn't mean to, but she showed us a glimpse into her soul.
It was chilling.
Chilling indeed, but entirely predictable, I think – going as far back as 1998, most Republicans knew where the public's embrace of the Clinton imprecation might lead.
That Bill Clinton ran for reelection after being impeached, that the Senate lacked wherewithal to move past impeachment into conviction and removal from office foreshadows the inevitability of Barack Obama's presidency and Hillary Clinton's candidacy.
Paralyzed by the morbid curiosity over how far the Clintonistas would go before some semblance of conscience would kick in, many submissively looked on waiting to discover the baseline by which they might discuss the terms of peaceful negotiation. Negotiation quickly evolved into surrender, because what else can you do with political nihilists who work their way into power other than try to wait them out? The lesson that history will take from this era is that – when push comes to shove – Republicans blink. Democrats do not.
The joke's on us, I guess. When it comes to the degree of squalor that might be wrought by these unflappable autocrats, we have found a philosophical abyss. "Machiavellian" is the accurate description, because the Clintons appear convinced that their anything goes justifications are philosophically sanctioned by the universe, that all good demagogues go to heaven and that vicious actions are often necessary for the good of the state. If the state and the Clintons happen to be one and the same, then so be it.
Further, Clinton success breeds copycats the way the success of Al Qaeda bred ISIS. Everywhere you look now, wannabe autocrats are trying to out-repress and pacifists are trying to out-prostrate. Progressivists with their Dragwlyaian-styled political reforms focusing on calculated cruelty, sadism, extravagance, and perversity are in it to win it, and all conservatives have is our "shining city on the hill" to keep our frozen feet warm during this protracted battle.
My apologies to John Winthrop and Ronald Reagan, but to hell with the nonsense of this quasi-Camelot because it's a consuming imagery that can't be achieved by reaching across the aisle to work with moral relativists. As Clinton prevails against Trey Gowdy's investigation and Trey Gowdy becomes the MSMs whipping boy for all things wrong with the science of law, the MSM will simply use these hearings to conjure Hillary's imperial rise to power.
In that fiction, Hillary Clinton will seek to promote the utopian goals of social justice and outline what she will denounce as the continued conservative persecution of her and her noble efforts. And the goals of social justice will then be equated with the shining city on the hill as a model of Christian charity, which is already a difficult thing to reconcile in the minds of illiterate Christians. Camelot built by nihilists would be equivalent to the ghost towns of China. Superficially perfect until you realize that no one actually lives there. Or would want to. A Hillary Clinton presidency will be the personification of those ghost towns and culmination of Republican failure to hold the Clintons accountable for their wrongdoings as we are witnessing through the Benghazi hearings.
