ETHOS

By Eric Augenbraun

Check out this Good Morning America interview with Hillary Clinton from Tuesday:

Clinton’s hard line on Iran shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone at this point, but I do find this nonsense about an attack on Israel rather disconcerting – meant only to stir up people’s fears and provide a pretext for actually beginning to have a discussion about OBLITERATING an entire country (for the record, Iran, contrary to popular belief, does not possess nuclear weapons; Israel does). As an aside, Obama too has made his intentions clear for Iran, and they don’t stray too far from Clinton’s path. I do think, though, that sometimes Clinton’s position as a female candidate competing against men for an office that has been held by nobody but men forces her to perform certain rituals of masculinity – hence, the tough talk about murdering 71 million people on a whim.

But obliterate is a REALLY strong word and I can only assume that a Clinton presidency will look something like this

Coming soon to geography textbooks everywhere, February 2009 (Shoutout to Isaiah Greene on the photoshop)

As a proponent of leaving Earth’s topographical features the way they are, especially if it means saving tens of millions of people in the process, I will not be able to give Clinton my vote in November (should she be so lucky as to steal win the nomination).

On a more serious note, I find Clinton’s way of framing her response downright hypocritical at best, utterly racist at worst, and pure, unfiltered, sophistry in any case. Clinton speaks of the Iranian people as if they are some monolithic group of savages all marching in stride with whatever the hell Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says or thinks. By this same logic, the American people are all in favor of the war and just as culpable as the small group of people in our country who voted for it. While it is true that we could probably do some good by “looking very carefully at our society,” as Clinton would say, it would certainly not be appropriate for normal American people to be punished because our government (Clinton included) decided to go off to Iraq and murder people. Hell, the American people are already punished by having to go fight and die in the first place.

Finally, I am utterly horrified by Hillary Clinton’s complete lack of regard for humanity; that she would think it acceptable to sit in a room and casually discuss the fate of MILLIONS of HUMAN BEINGS as if they were little more than ants. Aside from the whole imperialism thing, hearing her comments makes it much easier to understand how this government can so cooly perpetrate slaughter around the world – when you don’t acknowledge the humanity in others, murder becomes just a war game.