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| Source: Pixabay/Maialisa CC0 Public Domain |
Hillary Clinton received the Democratic Party’s nomination for
President at the Democratic National Convention this week. Her nomination is an
historic event as she will be the first woman at the top of the ticket for either
of the two major political parties. Mrs Clinton showed dogged determination in
reaching this goal, stopping at nothing to ensure her rise to the top.
There is a long list of acts Mrs Clinton’s detractors provide
for why she should never have become the Democratic Party nominee and why she
should never be allowed to become President of the United States. First and
foremost, these detractors point to the list of the suspicious deaths of those
who stood in the way of Mrs Clinton’s ascendancy. Is it possible that these
convenient deaths are just a coincidence and that knowing bad things about Mr
or Mrs Clinton isn’t really a death sentence? Of course it is possible. But Mrs
Clinton’s detractors, without any direct evidence pointing to Mrs Clinton, will
insist coincidence doesn’t explain away the forty-plus deaths.
Do Mrs Clinton’s opponents have to go to that extreme to prove
the nominee lied and cheated her way to the top? More recent evidence exists.
Mrs Clinton clearly lied to the American people and the families of those who
died in Benghazi about what happened when Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was
killed. She lied again in her testimony
to Congress about the emails on her private server, as shown by the obvious
contradictions between that testimony and the answers she gave in her interview
with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI investigation found that many
of the things Mrs Clinton testified to before Congress, while under oath, were
lies.
Even more recently, on the eve of the Democratic National
Convention, it was learned that the Democratic National Committee had actively
conspired to sabotage Senator Bernie Sanders campaign, had worked to convince
left-leaning media outlets to favorably report on Mrs Clinton while ignoring or
bashing both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, among a very long list of other
questionable and perhaps illegal practices.
My biggest concern here is how do I explain to my students why
Mrs Clinton, who will most probably be the next President, would never have
been the nominee in the first place if she’d been held to account for her lying
and cheating. The current campaign will be in full swing when school begins in
late August, and the in-class news show we watch every day will be full of
campaign stories. Some of those stories may make mention of the many dirty
tricks attributed to Mrs Clinton during the primary campaign, and the charges
being levied against her by the Republicans in Congress. When my students ask
me about these things, as they inevitably will, do I respond honestly with the
facts, or do I prevaricate and blame all the accusations on politics as usual?
Much as her husband, during his term of office, made it okay in
America to lie, deny, and misdirect when found to be in the wrong, Mrs Clinton
has set an example that it is okay in America to lie and cheat your way to the
top, because if you lie often enough and convincingly enough, you can get away
with…just about anything. This is not the lesson I want my students to learn
from this Presidential Election.
As always, I remain,
The Exhausted Educator
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