Clinton and "the lie of the silent assertion"

With the presidential election quickly becoming a contest between one candidate fanning the flames of white supremacy in the manner of your typical Ku Klux Klansman, and a career criminal for whom corruption is a part of her very essence, I vacate the stage to this country’s most accomplished satirist. In his advanced years, Mark Twain became more and more cynical about human nature, raging in his own inimitable way against various examples of human failings. On occasion he let his self-righteous anger get in the way of facts, but most of the time he was spot-on with his observations. In his essay “My First Lie and How I Got Out of It”—which more or less describes Hillary Clinton’s life-long occupation—he spoke of that peculiar kind of lie that denies that what people know is wrong is actually “wrong.”

It is thus that Clinton supporters are infected with what Twain called “the lie of the silent assertion”: the “silent assertion that there isn’t anything going on in which humane and intelligent people are interested” which “is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable.” To put it more bluntly, it is in the service of the assertion that “nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men (or women, probably more so in this case) are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop.” 

Outside a few uncorrupted examples in the media (such as the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial board which urged voters to examine Clinton’s history of corruption and deceit, and deem her unqualified to be president), there has been universal denial by the mainstream media that Clinton’s continuing inability to stop from heaping lie upon lie on her already steaming, putrid pile of perfidy is something anyone should be interested in. During debates it was seen as a “personal attack” to ask her to explain any of her numerous crimes. 

And because of the media failure, a majority of voters also seem to believe that there is nothing of interest to them. It was all so “long ago” that it is like some naughty thing done as a child, the memory of which might cause some temporary embarrassment, but is quickly relegated back to the dark hole from which it inconveniently escaped. For Clinton, there are many such “memories” eagerly awaiting “inconvenient” escape; Bernie Sanders has not wished to make them an “issue,” but Donald Trump and his supporters might not choose to be so “genteel.” 

But of course, in reality evidence of Clinton’s corrupt, unethical “values” continues to this very day, only waiting for the day when the FBI does its duty and releases a recommendation of criminal charges against Clinton and her aids in relation to the server business and what other crimes are related to it. Not of course that I have any expectation of this, since one suspects that the FBI does not want to be accused of “sexism” in making trouble for a media-anointed female candidate that many have made a vicarious connection to, and any pain inflicted on Clinton is like sticking a pin in a voodoo doll for  her intellectually and ethically zombie-like followers. 

The lies just go on, and on, and on. People either do not care or refuse to see the lies, and unfortunately their lies are the ones that ultimately count in the end; without that mass of lying, Clinton would be just one more anonymous liar amongst them. Unfortunately, what we see is a mob of thoughtless lemmings who follow the lie that Clinton lies for them, not for herself.