Which Is More Dangerous Speech — Hillary Clinton’s or Donald Trump’s?
Whose “speech” is more dangerous, Donald Trump’s or Hillary Clinton’s?
The media’s gone out of their way to subject us to Chinese water torture-style treatment of the things The Donald has – and hasn’t – said. Listen to the talking heads for long enough and the notion of Donald Trump running around like a white version of Tupac, inspiring gangsta thugism everywhere he goes almost becomes believable. Heck, listen to three minutes of the networks no one watches – CNN, MSNBC, Link TV – and you’re likely to think Trump’s sprouted a bushy little mustache directly under his nostrils and that his supporters thrust up their right palm and shout “Heil, Donald” on a regular basis.
Then there’s Hillary. She’s been a bit mouthy lately too. Two of her recent statements ought to frighten every voting American down to their core:
“…because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business”.
And.
“Now, is Libya perfect? It isn’t. Libya was a different kind of calculation and we didn’t lose a single person…”.
Have you ever heard someone describe Hillary as an ice queen? A woman who doesn’t have only an empathy problem, but whose heart is so cold she lacks the ability to feel anything beyond her own raw ambition? If the above two statements aren’t smoking-gun proof then I don’t know what is.
Coal mining is a brutal job. A friend of mine’s done it and he joined the Army to get away from it’s rigors. Coal mines are dark. Cold. Dank. Dreary. Filthy places. Much of the time the distance from “floor” to “ceiling” in a mine is less than the height of a grown person so it’s necessary to stoop forward, crouch, or kneel constantly. Mine machinery is loud. Heavy. It vibrates and it’s difficult to work with in such confines. Work long enough in the mines and if it’s not your back and knees that give out then it’s your lungs that will start bothering you. Even with protective masks, over time enough grit is inhaled to guarantee a nasty, wheezy, cough later on in life. Kind of like permanent flu without fevers and chills. Assuming the mine itself doesn’t get you. Mining accidents – underground fires, flooding, structural collapse, et al – keep mining in the top 10 of America’s most dangerous jobs right up there with military service, police, and firefighter jobs.
For their work most coal miners make enough to enjoy a good, blue collar lifestyle. No, there aren’t Ferraris and limousines in employee parking lots at the mines. You won’t find a bunch of coal miners sipping fancy drinks at Davos and I’d venture none have been invited to the White House to eat $100 Kobe steaks with Barack, the press corps, and the donor class. You will find them working their rear ends off to keep a roof over their family’s head, food on the table, and clothes on backs. When the coal business is good things are pretty good in coal mining communities. When the price of coal drops, or when mines layoff workers or close all together, times get hard. Really hard.
In other words, Hillary Clinton just promised to bring hard times to all those coal mining families. Take the food off their tables, the clothes off their back, and make it harder for them to pay their mortgage or rent. If she has her way every foreclosure sign that pops up in coal country ought to have “Courtesy of Hillary Rodham Clinton – Democrat” stamped on it in bright pantsuit orange for all to see.
Sure, Hillary’s camp has tried to walk her comment back. “What had happened was” – her suck-ups always start out with that – Hillary’s going to make sure coal miners have “retirements” and “health care”. As for the latter, I thought that’s what Obamacare was for. As for the former, retirement is great when you’re Hillary’s age – but what’s a 26 year old coal miner with a spouse and kids supposed to do for 40+ years or so until he or she is that old?
That’s how Hillary views people she doesn’t know personally. “Let them eat cake”, is her attitude towards coal miners. How about those she does know personally?
Hillary says she “knew and admired” Ambassador John Christopher Stevens personally — they were so close she even exchanged emails with him. Oh wait, back in October 2015 Hillary admitted she lied about that aspect of their relationship; Stevens did not have her loosey-goosey private email address. And she did get the Ambassador’s name wrong the night he was murdered – she called him Chris Smith not Christopher Stevens. But anyway, she “knew and admired” what’s his name, oh, that’s right, Chris Stevens.
Most people who have experienced losing someone remember it for the rest of their lives. It need not be a direct relative or even a particularly close friend. For example, the high school I attended was a large one. About 1,200 students. One day four students decided to sneak out during lunch and were killed in a car accident on a newly built road running behind a shopping center less than two miles from the school campus, trying to make it back for their remaining classes that day. I didn’t know any of the four. I knew of them but didn’t know them. Chances are I had never even spoken with any one of the four. They died in the late 1980s. To this day I remember their loss, what the road they died on looked like (even though it’s changed since then to accommodate a housing development that used to be farm land), and the hurt I felt inside when the news of what had happened came across the school intercom that afternoon. (This was the pre-cell phone era in which everyone didn’t know everything in almost real-time the way we do today). The principal had to make the announcement once the parents were notified – many of us used the road as a short cut after school and had we done so that afternoon we would have rounded it’s curve and stumbled upon whatever was left of the accident scene.
That’s just one example. There are others. I have mine. You have yours. Things like that stick with you. At least they are supposed to if you’re human.
Hillary “knew and admired” Chris Stevens but doesn’t in any way feel his loss when she talks about Benghazi. “…we didn’t lose a single person”, she said, when in fact three others died with Stevens in Libya. It’s not as if their loss is peripheral in her mind to the events that unfolded in Benghazi. Hillary Clinton doesn’t care about their deaths. Simple as that. If she does care, why don’t their deaths trigger something inside when she talks about Benghazi? Every time “Libya” or “Benghazi” is mentioned, she ought to feel something. She doesn’t.
“Libya”. “Benghazi”. “Artichokes”. “Coal miners”. “Cardboard”. “Apple sauce”. All evoke the same numb response from her heart.
If Hillary can be so callous towards coal miners, and unfeeling about the loss of Ambassador Chris Stevens and members of his detail, what are her true feelings about the American people? Her campaign slogan is “Fighting for Us” – anyone voting for her would do well to ask who she means by “us”.
Image: Hillary Clinton via photopin (license)