William XV (pronounce "quinze")

Internautes,
What can we say about Mr. Clinton without legal expertise or the sort of historical perspective that may, hopefully, bring into visibility for future generations what is currently buried in plain sight? From many serious commentators' perspectives, that he had a bad record on civil liberties and in reality initiated many abusive foreign and economic policies that have been convenientially posted with electronic stick-it notes unto the pop-consciousness resume of his notorious successor. A charge with which I wholeheartedly agree, and given my age at the time of his administration and lack of legal research on the topic may scarce be expected to bolster with others. However, even a teenager notices things, and I feel competent to add to that teenager's perspective with an understanding gained after the fact.

Regardless of what Mr. Clinton actually did, his regime of ideas, that is his ideology, considered without slander to the term itself, should have raised a few more eye-brows than it did. It will be recalled that forces of Mr. Clinton's term in office propagated two major claims in the arena of collective mentality, or what Clinton advisor George Lakoff, in his recent book Whose freedom? blithely calls "deep frames." These are crude and need to be spoken of crudely. First, there is now (circa 1997) consensus in this country as the Soviet Union has fallen (sort of). What said consensus had to do with the price of transistor micro-chips in China or how it was related in anything but inverse fashion to the demise of the mid-evil empire is anybody's guess, but personally I'm not wasting my time: what Mr. Clinton's circle was actually responsible for had to do with their imagined ability to remain in power, and nature did the rest, for which it can scarce be held accountable. Second, that all the isms are wasms, now that we have connectivity, prosperity, and that it's, like, 1997 and stuff.

The trouble with both these ideas is that they are fundamentally antithetical to democracy. Democracy is not about consensus, by definition, and it deals in isms to guide non-experts to make a decision on a given issue. Mr. Clinton should not have gotten up in front of the country after the succulent incident that nearly destroyed his presidency and said that his hardest job was not being president of the United States, but a dad. He should have gotten up and negated the consensus illusion.

Firstly, it is highly unlikely that Mr. Clinton was responsible for his daughter's daily parenting. More importantly, sentimentality is the first step to fascism. Mr. Clinton was not, in all likelihood responsible for the idea. Blame circumstances and ignorance for that one. But it was his job as president of the United States to counter it and he did not lift a finger, though he surely knew what Louis XV is reputed to have said: "Apres moi, le deluge" After me, the flood.

What nature originates, we can only negate. Neuroscience now points out that don't have free will so much as we have a censoring capacity, or "free won't," so this may the time in history to give up grand ideas concerning originators of grand ideas, recognzize that it is the verification procedure that matters, and start blaming leaders for what they don't do. Clinton is my first target, for not saying a thing to stem the national political psyche's slide into ignorant bliss. Nature, including every person's generation of primary ideas, had moved in the great game, and Clinton thought his best move was no move.

But, Clinton can't have been as bright as reputed, or if so, had to have been monumentally ignorant. Did he honestly think that the consensus idea was going to help whoever happened to be in power at the time? A casual reading of history is enough to convince me that the crudest consolidator of more power in the hands of the powerful, call 'em faschists, reactionaries, or whatever other slander you prefer, always wins this game of blindfold chess in which the party that moves first cups its' hand on its mighty king while someone else steps up to the other side of the chessboard, finds the queen, and attacks with a foul mouth below the belt.



What a president says to the public is at least as important as what he actually does. In other words, ideology matters, for what he signeth is soon forgotten, but old man mentality, he just keeps rolling along, in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time.

"Goofball"