When Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, and Kathleen Willey went public with their sexual assault and harassment allegations against Bill Clinton, #metoo was not a thing. “The victim must be believed” had not yet entered the lexicon.
Instead, these three courageous women have endured decades of attacks by Democrats, the media, and the Clintons. Only now, as the Clintons fall down the rabbit hole of irrelevancy, do their stories suddenly matter.
What Democrats don’t want to admit is that by protecting a serial sexual reprobate in the 1990s, they enabled 20 years of sexual harassment on countless innocent women by predatory men of every political stripe.
When the Lewinsky scandal surfaced in 1998, Democrats circled the wagons. The chorus was heard from sea to shining sex addiction rehab clinic: “it’s just sex!” With those three words, Democrats aided in the destructions of the moral fabric of the presidency, and provided cover for sexual harassment in every corner of American society until the Harvey Weinstein allegations.
Think about how different America might have been, if instead, citizens of every stripe demanded Clinton’s resignation. If people insisted that their president be held to a higher moral standard. If people didn’t say, “JFK did it,” but instead said, “This is unacceptable.” I know, I know – I’m talking to the same people who lionized Ted Kennedy after he drove Mary Jo Kopechne into a tidal channel and let her drown.
I’m just asking, “what if?”
Perhaps then, Paula Jones and Juanita Broadrrick and Kathleen Willey would have been believed. Perhaps they would have been championed for their bravery. Perhaps America would have demanded more from men in power. Perhaps women would not have been scared into silence for the next 20 years. Perhaps perpetrators would think twice about the ramifications of their actions. Perhaps that would have forestalled the repulsive and unacceptable stories that are only now coming to light.
Nope. Instead, those three little words sent a message to every creep lurking behind every desk with a “lock door” button within reach: it is open season on women.
This is part-and-parcel of how the Left operates. They are completely incapable of seeing unintended consequences of every word they speak, and every policy they endorse. The Left does not merely engage in knee-jerk responses. That’s being too kind. A response comes from the higher functions of the brain. The Left merely reacts with undeveloped herd mentality to every stimulus.
The result is sadly apparent. By rushing to the defense of Clinton’s indefensible behavior, Democrats locked in their support for the Clintons no matter what. The fact that Clinton got away with what he had done up until the Lewinsky scandal, and that Democrats gave him a pass, only served to embolden him. By refusing to condemn her husband’s behavior, and instead choosing to cravenly seek power, Hillary Clinton sold out every woman in America.
Yet deep inside every human, even Democrats, lurks a conscience that must be dealt with. The well-adjusted let Jiminy Cricket lead them to do the right thing. The mental illness of Leftism, however, crushes the little green fellow and instead internalizes the unforgivable. They become the most vociferous defenders of women’s rights. It is particularly odd given that the War on Women originated with Democratic opposition to the 19th Amendment.
“Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported” was tweeted by none other than Hillary Clinton. If it weren’t so profoundly enraging to sexual assault victims, one might think it was some kind of meta-prank.
Just to reiterate: this is not to say that sexual harassment is a partisan issue. It isn’t. It’s a cultural one. It just happened to be a culture fostered by the Left, which should hang its collective head in shame for enabling 20 years of terror.