The Clinton Cult

By Bernie Quigley for The Free Market News Network – 9/21/2007

We face today three admitted failures – two virtually on a catastrophic level – and yet we constantly seek out the narrow-minded and myopic political avatars who brought us these failures in the first place: Alan Greenspan, the one, who tells us that he was in error in flooding the market with cheap loans in 2001, causing five years later the greatest number of mortgage defaults since the Great Depression and bank runs like London hasn’t seen since the 19^th century.

Yet he says it with such quiet wisdom in his voice that it somehow seems like our fault for being so stupid and listening to him. (I feel as if I should punish myself somehow, even though I didn’t listen to him).

Then there is Robert Kagan who correctly tells us this morning in the NYTs of the end-of-the-world scenario we face ahead with China, India and Russia teaming up against us while we are lost in a Medievalist fog in Iraq. He even tells us that he supported that Iraq war: Indeed, the Iraq war was Gateway to the Second American Century; craziest of all ideas cooked up by Kagan and his buds to ward off the Yellow Peril and settle us into a lobbyist’s delusion of a Christian America and an Israeli-centric nation. Again, when he says it, it somehow seems like my own fault and I feel so stupid about it but I don’t know what to do. And then there is Hillary, standing in place to seek revenge all these past years, as she wheels out the same program on health care that she brought to us and we rejected 14 years ago.

This is no longer reflex and knee-jerk partisanship. The Sword of Discrimination has fallen back into the Lake: It is political cultism; it is idolatry.

Greenspan’s thoughts this week are welcome – particularly his observations on history’s cooking time – after the DOT com crash in the late 90s it was in error, he said, to drop the rates and flood the world with easy cash, some five years later causing mortgage defaults and a few half million or so (so far) of the country’s most vulnerable driven back to the streets – opps!

But warfare is even more fluid a spirit than economy: reading Barbara Tuchman’s observations of the Anarchists early awakening in Europe – a random and irrational dynamite bashing of the rich and royal in the 1880’s which grew into a shadow that would darken the world until 1985, and bring us, as we reach the edge of the new millennium; two vast tracks still working through a process; Mao’s China and Stalin’s Russia.

Tuchman’s discussion of the early Anarchists echoes the terrorist bombings throughout the Islamic world awakened today by George the Little and his own band of miscreants.

Islam has lost its tribal connections in Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East; the sea in which its spirit carried for 1,000 years. Like China and Russia 150 years back, the Islamic places have today lost their natural glue – had it taken from them in fact – and Islam is no longer a Life Force but now only an Idea; as Marx was an Idea and Stalin and Mao were Ideas. In this context it is a Hegelian substitute for natural culture and natural nations. It is now an Idea in opposition to another Idea, namely, Us.

All of Islam could well consolidate now into a vast global federation fed only by a singular purpose as the Marxist Revolution of Buchanan, Trotsky, Lenin and Mao did. The gates have already been opened and the rite of entry is has already been passed through: A year now we may find it impossible for Israel to keep safe (and I was told of this turning by an Israeli psychiatrist almost 15 years ago) and Russia well engaged in the burgeoning maelstrom still rising in the Middle East.

Yet the Democrats simply turn away: I think the Hillary campaign is about to turn into a full-tilt clown show. The Move-on ads against General Petraeus this last week are identified with her and the adolescence of the Clinton Cult which is primarily a Leftover-from-the-Sixties operation. In the Senate these last few days Senator Clinton was one of the 25 to officially oppose collegial respect for General Patraeus.

These Dems have entered the realm of Revenge Demon, which finds Hillary so fitly. This condition – which would seem primarily a condition of poor taste and begs the question. “Who raised you?” - will have a skyrocketing effect on Giuliani, whose foreign policy vision verges on the half-mad. We’re seeing here a Faux Sixties – complete with quotes on the mall from Malcolm X and make believe Black Panthers in the heartland raising the clenched fist of the Anarchists adapted to fit an Age of Leisure and a primarily suburban crowd. But that which evokes from intuition and principle in the natural order and process of politics history in the first generation devolves to feeling and sensibility in the next: Joseph Stalin, who knew something himself about political cultism, said it very succinctly: “Second time around it’s a joke.” As it did with McGovern, it will bring a full meltdown of the Democratic Party in 2008 from which they will not recover until they run the brilliant and decent Mark Warner for President in 2012. And if he or Joe Sestak (PA) or John Lynch (NH) or Kathleen Sebelius (Kansas) do not run they will not recover at all.

Senator Clinton’s comments this week on health care show the Revenge Demon – a Buffy the Vampire Slayer - anti-archetype, for fans of the occult - to be close to her nature. The chance of Hillary restoring the Democrats to power is about as likely as Yoko Ono reuniting The Beatles.

She says, the Americans "won't be fooled again” (a quote from The Who at Woodstock if you happen to be under 60 years old) by the insurance companies who went after her last time. Her internal understanding is that she is Leviathon and the Will of the People is her Will which was only thwarted by the Insidious Capitalist – and when the Insidious Capitalist is sent into remission She will be at one in Equilibrium with the People; the Manifestation of The People . . . and this has been long and unfairly kept from her.

Back when, most people like myself were however surprised when she suddenly and out of nowhere first popped up; Bill Clinton's hitch-hiker chick out from behind the bush - the sudden, new Secret Dominatrix of the new Administration. Not only did her program fail miserably, but it gave hubby’s new Admin a rough start which lasted two years and after that the Dems lost both the House and the Senate to the Republicans. Again, for the under 60-set, it was sort of like when The Beatles produced that neat White Album; it was kind of cool and different but random and uneven – because Ms. Ono was in fact - out of nowhere - actually participating in the production.

Indeed, Americans will not be fooled again. She is building up a head of steam now and that will make it worse for the Dems.

We are at one of nature's in-between, the biggest one since Yalta, and waiting, waiting, for the next big thing to happen. Even TV doesn't know what to do. In such times, they repackage and repeat (like Freud's neurotic who does not learn and remember but repeats compulsively, the same patterns over again): And - psychiatrists alert - there is a new Frazier show out this fall, named something else but pitching the same shtick; a charming but benign Clinton-era situation comedy repeated and repackaged . . . Hollywood too is waiting, waiting, like Lucky and Pozzo, for the world to start again.

It is always Personality Cult which sends the electorate to a wife, daughter or secondary family member. It won't hold. Like Peter the Great's Catherine, John’s Yoko, Mao's Madame Mao and Bill's Hillary, the afterglow gives a sense of loss rather than renewal to all but the idolaters; the Shining House on the Hill has been passed by and the age has descended into shadow.

Note to Democrats: Let go.