Hillary Clinton health problems now appear to be serious enough to raise the prospect of replacing her as her Party’s nominee for President. After all the time, money and human effort invested in the primary election process, the Democrats’ nominee could end up being the result of a last minute deal struck in the 21st century equivalent of the backstage, smoke-filled rooms the so-called “progressives” in the early 20th century saw as the bane of the Party system of their day. High party “leaders” acting on the partisan equivalent of a survival imperative, will look for some familiar name, well known to the Party’s rank and file apparatchiks; and likely to be received favorably enough to assure that the open wound inflicted by Hillary Clinton’s withdrawal doesn’t lead to a tidal wave of defeat up and down the Party line.
Speculation centers on Vice-President Biden, a choice that would give the impression of continuity to the loyal core of left leaning grassroots Democrats who actually think Obama’s White House tenure saw great advances for their cause. This might include enough Black, Hispanic and libertine voters, particularly in urban areas, to keep the Party from being swept away in the wake of its leaders’ failure to make sure no disaster lurked behind the curtain of the fabricated public persona that is presently the sine qua non of the elitist faction’s partisan sham.
They pretend that it’s not all about lying. Which is true, in the sense that a consummate actress’s portrayal of a given role is true to what the character she assumes is supposed to be like. If the character is drawn from history, there is a real world sense in which her portrayal may have the ring of truth. If, on the other hand, the character is fictional, the portrayal may be true to type, even if no corresponding person exists, or has ever existed, as a matter of empirical fact.
But in the competition to be President of the United States, what type of character do we seek? How can we judge whether the political persona represented to us as a candidate for the office appears to be of that type when the present elitist faction sham seeks purposely to induce us to focus on their performance, and never on the character they are supposed to represent in that performance? We are invited to applaud or hiss their actions on the political stage, but only as they relate to one another, never as they relate to what best represents what they must be in order to fulfill their duties.
In this respect, it’s ironic that the present context could end up turning on Clinton’s bodily health. Having banished the issue of character from political life in most respects, the present sham Party process falls back on the issue of physical health. Yet, whatever the bodily fitness of a candidate for President, the office itself is supposed to involve representing the body politic in the use of the executive powers derived from the united capacities of people American people. More than any other official in the government of the United States, the President is supposed to represent our national union, the union whose perfection we declare, in our Constitution of that government, to be the first prerequisite it exists to serve.
But the health of this or that individual’s body is obviously not the same as the integrity of the union. The union depends on the common understanding of right that informs our establishment of justice; and the common commitment to do what is right that unites us in the pursuit of it. The union depends on the tranquility of mind that arises from the presumption of right doing to which our knowledge of that commitment gives rise; and the assumption that the laws will first of all defend the rights of those whose actions justify that presumption, and deal effective with the wrongdoers who abuse the environment of mutual trust that it creates.
Throughout the history of the United States, events have proven that, when push comes to shove, Americans do have a common understanding of right. That understanding is rooted in the premise of common humanity that holds each and every individual responsible for observing the rules of human nature, made out by the reasonable disposition that impels all human beings to cherish life, in themselves and their posterity, and therefore to do what they can to enjoy its fruits, expecting and aiding others who are willing to do the same.
In the record of their lives and actions neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump have shown much interest in or regard for this common understanding of right, plainly articulated in the Declaration of Independence as the cause of America’s constitutional self-government. If they were characters in a drama, they would each of them represent the type of person who disdains the law abiding disposition of ordinary humanity; whose sense of their own superior abilities, wealth or power impels them to put their own passionate interests, ambitions and priorities above respect for the common sense of decency that most people are inclined to display, if only on account of the sense of vulnerability occasioned by their lack of obviously superior traits.
In this respect Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton represent the disposition of most of those who are or aspire to be part of the elitist faction, now determined to overthrown the constitutional self-government of the American people. Neither of them has shown the slightest serious interest in the premises and principles of right and rights, including liberty, on which that self-government depends. Both have, either in their private activities or public policy positions, joined in the various assaults that are now taking place aimed at discarding those premises, and reducing America’s political life to a contest of raw power. In both ancient and modern times this has been acknowledged to end inevitably in some form of self-serving oligarchic tyranny.
No matter which of them is elected, that agenda will be served. But Donald Trump has thus far successfully exploited the vacuum create by the GOP quislings’ betrayal of those in the party’s political base who are sincerely committed to America’s founding principles. If he is elected there is a good possibility that their credulous emotional investment in his candidacy will forestall the kind of opposition occasioned by Obama’s advancement of the elitist faction’s anti American agenda.
By the time it is clear that he is, in principle, of the same ilk as Hillary Clinton, he could very well have put the finishing touches on the tyrannical repression of representative constitutional self-government that is the elitist faction’s aim. His disturbing claim that “I alone can fix it” will by then have revealed its true meaning, which is to dispense with the good will of the people except as a manipulated rubber stamp for the governing power of an elitist few, and the figureheads who represent them.