As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].
– A. Lincoln, Letter to Joshua Speed, August 24, 1855
Hypocrisy is alive and well in our country 161 years and 30 presidents after Abraham Lincoln’s famous letter decrying this vice.
During this presidential election season, the media is the biggest enabler. The key barometer of this lies in the fact that we are actually getting hard news about Hillary Clinton and her team from Julian Assange’s Wikileaks, said a prominent judge and best friend of the late Justice Antonin Scalia in response to “America Likes Her Heroes Humble.”
On Friday, October 7, Assange released a batch of emails from John Podesta, Clinton campaign chairman, just after the Washington Post released the 11-year oldAccess HollywoodTrump ‘hot mic’ tape.
They were all the news—Trump’s words, that is. Yet, the emails included Clinton campaign research director Tony Clark sharing excerpts of Clinton’s Wall Street speech to Goldman Sachs-Black Rock in 2014 that he thought needed to be ‘extra-scrubbed.’ Indeed. While Clinton grew up middle class, she told the Wall Street heavyweights, “... now, obviously, I’m kind of far removed because the life I’ve lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy…”
The ‘extra-scrub’ also included pay-for-play at the Clinton Foundation that might surface. In fact, subsequent Assange email releases, through batch three, revealed possible collusion with respect to the FBI investigation of Clinton’s 33,000 missing emails—emails that many believe would reveal pay-for-play. (Yesterday's Wikileaks of "The Podesta Emails”—the fourth batch—delves deeper into this subject and includes the bombshell that, in fact, staffers discussed deleting emails after they were subpoenaed, despite knowing it was against the law.)
Other speech excerpts also revealed Clinton favoring Canadian-style single payer healthcare and her comments about the need for bifurcated policy positions. “Politics,” she said, “is like sausage being made. It is unsavory… but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.” That and her “dream” of “open trade and open borders” shared with Brazilian bankers.
As the Wikileaks email releases continue, three through October 11, the damaging facts cascade. Yet the big headline in the major papers yesterday focused more on the source than the substance, with the New York Times and Los Angeles Times blaring, respectively: John Podesta Says Russian Spies Hacked His Emails to Sway Election; and Top Clinton aide accuses Trump allies of leaking emails to distract from tape scandal.
Both papers failed to mention the Clinton campaign’s Catholic-bashing. Namely, that John Halpin of the Center for American Progress wrote Podesta and Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton communications director, in 2011, complaining about all the prominent conservatives who had become Catholic. “It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith,” he wrote, “They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.”
To paraphrase Lincoln’s 1855 letter, we now practically read the Declaration of Independence, ‘all men are created equal, except Catholics,’ “deplorables,” the “
Meanwhile, Morning Joe tried to revive the Access Hollywood tape, their grand finale being President Barack Obama’s North Carolina remarks: “… If you want to send a message in this election,” he said, “make it a resounding message… Turn back the forces of racism and misogyny and send a message for progress. Send a message for facts ... send a message by voting for Hillary Clinton.”
Facts, indeed. If it had been a Republican whose emails were leaked with similarly damaging revelations, you bet your bottom dollar they would have come out onMorning Joe,New York Times, LA Times, etc.
But, then, as the Podesta emails also reveal, the media is actively colluding to help elect Hillary Clinton president—even giving her advance debate questions. Then there’s Clinton surrogate Bill Ivey’s discussion with Podesta on how they have ‘conspired’ to anesthetize the public: “Secretary Clinton is not an entertainer, and not a celebrity… I’m certain the poll-directed insiders are sure things will default to policy as soon as the conventions are over, but I think not. As I’ve mentioned, we’ve all been quite content… to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry…”
Just say no to hypocrisy. For as Lincoln also said in one of his earliest speeches, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”