MUST READ! Chris Hedges: ‘Giving’ and Taking (on Bill Clinton and the Corporate Dems)
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One Response to “MUST READ! Chris Hedges: ‘Giving’ and Taking (on Bill Clinton and the Corporate Dems)”
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Give me a break! Hedges is playing his usual extremist, historically selective game. I’m not going to suggest that Clinton was an angel, or that some of his policies did not do more harm than good, or even that some of them were not a “betrayal” of sorts. But Hedges is one-sided in the extreme.
Two specifics. First, along with Clinton’s harmful policies, there was the fact that he was the first president in history to balance the budget, pay down the deficit (the famous “debt clock” in Times Square was turned off for the first time since it was installed) and create a budget surplus – a HUGE surplus (which Bush then went and squandered almost overnight, creating the largest deficit in our history in the shortest amount of time in history). And he did this with minimal tax increases.
Second, the idea that it has become impossible to choose “between the lesser of two evils” is neither new nor accurate. Both parties have been largely “corporate” parties for some time. But does anyone REALLY think that Gore would have (i) squandered the global goodwill shown to the U.S. in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, (ii) created a policy of unprovoked, pre-emptive regime change, (iii) lied about a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, (iv) gone into Iraq in response to 9/11, (v) ignored global warming and politicized science in general, (vi) squandered the budget surplus left by Clinton, and (vii) kow-towed to the Christian Right and its ilk? Please. And that’s just a few things that come to mind immediately.
Finally, Hedges is wrong to presume that Clinton’s philanthropy is politically motivated or, more importantly, that Clinton does not really believe in what he is doing. (I will be posting a link to an article in Atlantic in this regard.) And while, again, I am not suggesting that Clinton is a complete angel, to suggest that he is a devil in disguise – or even that his motives for philanthropy and charity are not largely (if not entirely) genuine – is not just insulting, but bad journalism.
Peace.
Posted on 17-Sep-07 at 2:04 pm | Permalink