The Clintons — At the End of All Things

National Review ^ | November 1, 2016 | Victor Davis Hanson

[COUNTrecount]

Epic greed, power, and pride : Where’s the bottom?

With Bill and Hillary, there’s no telling. What was the Clinton telos? The end point, the aim of all their lying, cheating, criminality, dishonor, and degradation? Given the latest Weiner scandals coming on top of the latest WikiLeaks scandals, we wonder, what did the Clintons really wish to end up as — and why?

Are they Goethe’s Faust or tortured souls crushed by the weight of their money bags in Dante’s Fourth Circle of Hell?

For a few criminals, remorse comes with old age; but for the Clintons, near-70 was to be the capstone, the last chance to trump all their prior shenanigans. They were artists of amorality, and the election of 2016 was to be their magnum opus.

The FBI reopened investigation, WikiLeaks Podesta trove, revelations about the Foundation, the e-mail–server scandal, DNC disclosures, and theoff-the-cuff campaign remarks of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and one then ponders what was the point of the Clinton shakedowns, the loss of reputation, the crude lawbreaking, as they neared their seventh decade.

To paraphrase Barack Obama, in his progressive sermonizing on making enough money, did the two ever think they had enough money, enough honors, enough power already?

The Hillary/Bill fortune — generated by pay-for-play influence peddling on the proposition that Bill would return to the White House under Hillary’s aegis and reward friends while punishing enemies — hit a reported $150 million some time ago, a fortune built not on farming, mining, insurance, finance, high-tech, or manufacturing, but on skimming off money.

Clintons are simply grifters whose insider access to government gave them the power to make rich people richer. Long gone was the Scrooge-like need to write off used underwear

[going hot]

Bonnie and Clyde had class, in a criminal way. They were admitted bank robbers.

These grifters make their monies beguiling and outright fast talking gullible hayseeds out of their hard earned dollars. They are operating the big store, the biggest one ever, and hope to score big.

[knarf]

I was thinking more like ... the end of 'em.

Or Mussolini

[going hot]

Up next the wall would suffice.

[knarf]

That was OUR phrase in the sixties ... UP AGAINST THE WALL, MF'ER ....like the blm hands up don't shoot.

WE were cooler