“If Trump is such an undesirable presidential candidate, why not jump on board with Hillary?”
In the past month there have been dozens of opinion articles in the Duke Chronicle almost exclusively criticizing Donald Trump’s candidacy, and it has been assumed that Hillary Clinton is the “go-to” November ballot option who will spur America towards brighter and better prospects.
In the Duke community, it is “in” to bash Trump; this is unsurprising and for good reason, since Trump has committed more politically-incorrect and morally-depraved offenses than any other similarly prominent politician in the modern era—from gloats of his sexual predation and “textbook” racist comments to the scams of Trump University and his casino empire. As a politician, Trump is neither consistent nor honest; he is an insecure narcissist who compulsively “punches back” without prudence or empathy, as shown most recently in his nuking of Paul Ryan and his encouraging the Trumpkins to leave the lower-ballot blank for Republicans who fled in the wake of the latest “Trumptapes” scandal.
Trump simply doesn’t care about maintaining Republican majorities in the House or Senate, about nominating constitutional originalist SCOTUS justices or passing conservative legislation. If he's going to burn, Trump will bring the whole GOP down with him and concoct the myth that he was “stabbed-in-the-back,” all to preserve his brand as a winner.
But if Trump and his campaign are an oil tanker on fire, is marking the ballot for the only electorally-viable alternative, Hillary Clinton, a good move? I would argue not; I see Hillary Clinton as one of the most corrupt, dishonest and militantly Leftist figures in American politics.
While Clinton’s detractors often have partisan motivations for investigating her misdeeds, it is also true that those in Clinton’s camp are equally incentivized to cover up her misdeeds and politically protect her. Remember that although Trump’s nomination was an unforeseen fluke and his union with the GOP establishment a shotgun wedding (just look at the responses of Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz and John Kasich), the Democratic establishment has deep personal loyalty to Hillary Clinton.
They planned her nomination from the beginning, blackballing competitors (like Bernie Sanders) and trampling standards of integrity to secure her trajectory. This rigging of the Democratic primary was only brought to public attention because the DNC was hacked and their emails dumped. Hillary then immediately hired the disgraced Debbie Wasserman Schultz as chair of her campaign—an act of pure cronyism. If you genuinely care about the truth, don’t expect accountability from the Democratic establishment and those in the media partial to her. Always examine all the available facts carefully, regardless of the peddlers’ motivations.
Obama has notably insisted that Hillary Clinton is the “most experienced” and “qualified” person ever to serve as President of the United States. And yet her “experience” as Secretary of State has been mired with charges of corruption and incompetence. The Associated Press reports that “at least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs,” and that these donors contributed “as much as $156 million.” The overlap between cash and face-time with Hillary Clinton while Secretary is staggering; this has all the appearances of a pay-for-play operation.
We may never know the full inner workings of Hillary Clinton’s State Department because of her creation of a private email server, which meant that from the onset the U.S. government had no access to her emails and no ability to maintain mandated records, and that classified information would certainly have been transmitted to and from, and stored on, an unsecured system. Hillary’s server was even “less secure than Google’s Gmail” despite her claims that it was secure. What ensued in early 2015 was a Bleachbit annihilation of 33,000 emails that flouted federal regulations for record preservation, in some cases even after the FBI issued a subpoena for them.
The information collected during the FBI investigation demonstrates that Clinton’s use of a private email server involved wild incompetence or corruption, and possibly both. FBI Director James Comey declined to recommend prosecution because there lacked proof of “intent.” However, the standard of the law does not require “intent;” even the category of “gross negligence” in handling of classified materials can be prosecuted for a fine or up to 10 years of prison. Interviews with the FBI reveal that Hillary had no understanding of how classification systems work or that the designation “(c)” stands for “confidential.” Clinton’s ignorance with regard to handling classified information is roughly the equivalent of being a 4-year Duke-UNC game tenter and not knowing what the “K” in K-ville stands for.
Many of the statements Hillary has continued to repeat about use of her email server have been proven false by information revealed by the FBI. She has fishtailed on policy, repeated pants-on-fire anecdotes and even spoken highly of having “both a public and private position” on various policies.
What Clinton lacks in conviction, she tries to make up for in radical Leftist rhetoric. Consider her statement in the First Presidential debate that “implicit [racial] bias is a problem for everyone.” This is an euphemism for saying, “All Americans are unconsciously racists.” She ostensibly only means white people, because as Leftists like Marc Lamont Hill will argue, “black people don’t have the institutional power to be racist or to deploy racism.” This judgment against collective white America is unjust, and it hinders efforts to combat real words and actions of racism in our society.
Hillary Clinton is also one of the most pro-abortion US politicians ever. The Democratic platform as a whole has moved left, from considering abortion as an option that should be “safe, legal and rare” in 1996 to pushing for essentially “abortion-on-demand.” Hillary Clinton is passionately in favor of revoking the Hyde and Helms Amendments so that U.S. taxpayer dollars will fund abortion domestic and worldwide. She also believes that unborn children have no rights, and that abortion is a fundamental human right. Clinton has even compared pro-life Americans to "terrorist groups." For those who regard all human lives as inherently sacred with truly inalienable rights and don’t want to be complicit in funding abortion, Hillary Clinton is a zealous and determined opponent.
Furthermore, Hillary has a Leftist vision for the Supreme Court similar to that of Jeffrey Toobin, who openly hopes that SCOTUS will become an “engine of progressive change” that can supersede the legislature, ostensibly through the invention of “rights.” True, God-given rights are entitlements that each person has in the absence of other people; these are rights you possess simply by being a living human being, such as the right to life and the right to free speech. Yet it appears that Clinton esteems the devising of new rights (such as the “right” to an abortion and the “right” to health care) over the protection of “the rights actually enumerated in the constitution.”
Between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, we as citizens are presented with two awful candidates. But the biggest pitfall of this election is that people on both sides are disregarding moral standards and principles out of partisan loyalty and the perceived need for political calculation. If your instinctive response to hearing a criticism of Hillary is “But Trump...," you’re doing it wrong. The problem with the lesser of two evils logic is that it gives a pass to Clinton for her corruption, dishonesty and radical Leftism, so long as she is not “worse” than Trump on a particular vector.
I concur with Ben Shapiro when he writes, “My vote is not only a tool of political calculation, it is my personal moral and political affirmation.” And so, in this election, I am not just #NeverTrump; I am also firmly #NeverHillary. If we wish to preserve our republic, we must affirm what is right and not make excuses or cover for what is wrong. Truth, honesty and moral standards must prevail.
Addison Merryman is a Trinity senior. His column, "deep magic," runs on alternate Wednesdays.
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