I Need Your Help, Vic!

     Today, the very day of the New York Primary, I received in the mail a letter from Hillary Rodham Clinton.
     "Dear Vic,

          This race to win the nomination is closer than ever, and we have a real fight on our hands."

     The letter runs to four pages, a long-ass appeal if you ask me.  She goes over her qualifications, which I actually don't doubt.  She is an accomplished woman.  In addition, I don't give a fuck about her role in the Benghazi screw-up.  I don't think she had much of a role in that, and there are many far worse events American leaders have gotten involved in that turned out with much higher American body counts.  The same Republicans who bitch about Benghazi and Clinton's alleged key responsibility for it, never talk about the corruption of the American regime in Iraq after the invasion in 2003; its cupidity as billions of dollars went missing, and the widespread looting of that country's antiquities under U.S. military authority acting under the non-interference orders of war criminal Donald Rumsfeld.
     What Hillary Clinton represents to me is a status quo politician of the Democratic slant.  She's an unquestioning supporter of Israel and its policies against Palestinians, which involve lopsided periodic wars against women and children.  She cares about women and children in America far more than those in other countries, but that's a typical power response of those believing in the might is right philosophy of empire, even a slowly disintegrating empire like America's.
     I look at political choices as symbolic of when they occur.  Sarah Palin came into the fore of our awareness in 2008, a culminating year for the Bush administration, when Republicans, demonstrating the human trait of glossing the truth in the face of failure, regarded the previous seven years as a strong time for a resurgent America, even though an economic collapse right before the election "happened on Bush's watch," and was made possible by pure greed exhibited by unrestrained and untouchable capitalists as dangerous to the fortunes of the common man and woman as terrorist bombers.
     What did we see in 2008 as a furtherance of Republican responsibilities to the nation and its people?  A Vietnam War veteran who seemed to want to beef up the already beefed up military, and his pick, a daffy MILF from Alaska who spoke as if punctuation had never been developed.  Obama beat these lousy opponents handily, as he beat Romney and Ryan without much difficulty.  Had he run against the kind of politician people in general would actually want for president, Obama may have had a much harder time of it.  He said in an interview a few months ago that he could win the presidency in event of trying for a third term.  A hypothetical situation, of course, but, given the Republican competition in 2016, he's probably right.
     The Republicans cannot come up with decent candidates for president.  They produce wretched possibilities, some of them, like Cruz, intelligent, but slimy, and Trump, heavy-handed and forceful, but too stupid.  Do you want a warlock (Cruz)?  Or a rock-smashing troll (Trump)?
     The warlock or the troll will face Clinton or Sanders, and, in spite of my not giving money to Hillary (I never give money to politicians, even those I agree with), her chances of beating either of them are good.  Still, she struggles to be liked.  I saw a picture of her posing with Britney Spears.  Spears has been doing a show in Las Vegas for a while now, and when Clinton was in Nevada campaigning, she visited with the singer long enough to get her picture taken.  Did Hillary realize Britney is, or has been, a Republican?  Was Hillary trying to come across to young people as hip, smiling in the same photo with smiling Britney Spears, who's thirty-four and a bit past her pop princess stage, but nevertheless is admired by her generation and commands a great deal of popularity?  If I could meet Britney or Hillary, I know Hillary would just have to keep writing me unanswered letters.
     In her appeal, Clinton mentions the importance of continuing the fight, that the struggle continues to bulk up the Democrats and hold back the Republican medieval flood.  She says that when she looks at her nineteen month old granddaughter, she realizes we haven't gone far enough.  This calls to the dangers of the future, like climate change.  I agree with Clinton on this, although I don't think she had to play the baby card with her own kin, even naming the innocent child in the process of asking strangers for money.
     I can't entirely pin down why I dislike Hillary Clinton.  It isn't one visceral thing.  My disgust for Donald Trump can be explained simply by showing images of him and hearing some of the crap that always ejects from his mouth.  He's an obvious villain, but Clinton seems okay until one spends time digesting her words and attitudes, her body language, her patrician manner.  Trump and Clinton have this in common: they're both wealthy sacks of bullshit.  The very idea that Clinton is a New Yorker is absurd.  She established residency there to run for the Senate, which she won, but she's from Oak Park, Illinois, from privilege.  She's also a lawyer, and her letter to me reads like the rhetoric of a lawyer, not like a caring human being wrote it.
     On the small contribution sheet that's headed, "Vic, are you with me?" there's a check-box next to, "Yes, Hillary!"
     Check-boxes for the contribution amounts follow; the typical $25, $50, $100, Other $_____.
There's also one for $20.16.  That's the year we're in, but it's a strange amount.  There's an asterisk by 25, with the note, "A gift of this amount or more would really help!"  If that's the case, why bother with the lower, and peculiar, $20.16? unless it's just a way to be cute while writing a check to the Hillary Victory Fund (yes, that's what it's called).
     Below, there's another space--"Send a Personal Message to Hillary!" and "I'd like to volunteer!"
     Please write to me, Hillary, and tell me how you got my address!
     I'll never give you my money!
     I think your wardrobe makes you look like you're trapped inside a concrete bunker!
     If you had divorced Bill after the Lewinsky affair I'd have more respect for you!
     You agreed with Bush and Cheney that we needed to attack Iraq, meaning you got conned by them about the fictional WMD, so fuck you!

     On the donation sheet there's a head and shoulders picture of Clinton.  She's Hillary, a mononym like Madonna, or Charlemagne.  Her symbol is a blue capital letter H with a right-pointing red arrow, indicating, I guess, going forward, but it also indicates going to the right.  Is this a hidden message?  The arrow, being red, suggests Republicans and right wing politics, while the two blue "towers" of the H suggest the left and Democrats, with the arrow shaft bridging the two, meaning moderate and progressive wings of the Democratic Party.  I don't know if that's what it really means, but I've noticed that no one on the news, that I've seen, has mentioned that the red arrow in the Hillary symbol points right and wondered what that might imply.
     She's looking more and more to me like the brick that will hold the wall steady against the Cruz or Trump possibilities, as horrible as they both would be, but Clinton will also not surprise me if she turns out to be an effective maintainer (not ender) of the war we've been stuck in since 2001.  It's hard to get anything humane done when the prime motivation is security and killing people.  If she's a hardass now, Hillary Clinton will be a stern ruler, even as she fake smiles at us.

                                                                                Vic Neptune