The Bill Clinton Years.
Since it’s an election year, I think it’s appropriate to look back at Bill Clinton, his totally dysfunctional wife, the 1990s version of Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren (who most definitely passed for Cherokee during the Clinton years.), and let us not forget America’s favorite Howler Monkey, Segregation Joe Biden, who was Clinton’s drug czar, and Reagan’s boy in the Democratic Party before that. And as we go through memory lane, ask yourself why these incredible buffoons are still inflicting themselves on us? When are we going to have enough?
Any attempt to describe the disaster that was Bill Clinton would look like “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Since this is an autobiography, I can only report how it affected me personally. That limits it to a volume the size of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” Nobody could slog through that much muck. I’m keeping it down to the highlights. From NAFTA to Lewinsky, the hits just kept on coming! So, if I miss one of your favorite Clinton memories, drop me a line or mention it in the comments. I’ll be sure to add it to future revisions or even do a blog post if there’s enough material.
Bill Clinton taught me a fundamental lesson. Never trust a Democrat. And that was after Nixon taught me to never trust a Republican. I was a member of the Green Party back then because I was unsatisfied with both corporate parties and totally disenchanted with the DSA. But this was the early days of the Greens when they added their support to the Democrats. And I voted Democrat out of solidarity with the Greens. In reality, the Democrats were just the neo-liberal faction of the Reagan camp. And nobody was more of a neo-liberal than William Jefferson Clinton.
Back in the 1990s, there was some sort of liberal glamour surrounding the Democrats. They certainly didn’t earn it. Under Reagan, the Democrats purged themselves of all their liberals. Reagan had made being centrist cool again, and Clinton had the support of a party that believed in Trickle Down Economics as fervently as their Republican neighbors. They resented social programs as badly as the Republicans. In fact, the only thing that separated the Republicans from the Democrats was their irrational hatred of each other, which has grown to insane levels today.
Clinton promised not to sign NAFTA. He signed NAFTA. And today, we have young men hanging out on street corners because all the manufacturing has been sent overseas. He ran on the promise of universal health. What a joke! He sent Hillary on a “fact-finding” junket to Paris. Then said, “Sorry, universal health isn’t happening.” Then, he commenced handing Medicaid over to the HMOs, making Medicaid more expensive to the taxpayer and providing fewer services for the patients.
Clinton waged a very deceptive campaign. And I wasn’t the only one who got caught up in it. I was living in Hillbilly Heaven during the 1992 election. Many of my neighbors were disabled on welfare or disabled and working a minimum wage job without medical benefits. If Clinton had followed through on his healthcare promise, my neighbors would have rallied against the Twenty-Second Amendment, so Clinton could have had a fifth term. And I would have been one of them. Instead, we now have an entire class of people more suspicious of the Democrats than they are of the Republicans. We can thank Bill Clinton for that.
We voted for Clinton because Reaganomics was killing us. Then, Bill Fucking Clinton gave us more Reaganomics. Homelessness peaked during the Clinton Administration. And it wasn’t just Clinton. Democratic Mayor Jerry Brown eliminated Oakland, CA. Rent control and a day never went by when I wasn’t watching another eviction. But they were just Black people, so the white racist media didn’t care. And neither did the Democrats. The fear of homelessness is what I remember most clearly about the Clinton administration. Every day was terror.
Please note that anybody who dares to claim there was a treasury surplus when Clinton left office will be publicly shamed and subjected to a stern accounting lecture. That so-called surplus was in inflated internet stocks. It was entirely paper profits with nothing to back them. And they lost all value when the stock market crashed. There was never an actual treasury surplus. It was all deceptive accounting. I think Trump learned how to overvalue things from Clinton.
What amazes me more than anything else is the Democrats think poor people are so stupid we’d forget all about this. People died due to the Welfare reform. Folks aren’t going to forget that. I cannot believe the narcissism of a political party that thinks poor people would vote for them because we’d be afraid of the Republicans. And I can’t believe the ego of those who are shocked when we’re not. We have already lived through the Democrats lying and promising us they would change. All it takes is an evening with the Congressional Record to see both parties vote as a block. But unfortunately, neither the left nor the right will put in the effort.
They say hindsight is 20/20. I keep reminding myself of that to keep from being furious at myself for voting for Clinton. But if I let myself be angry about Slick Willy, I should also be angrier at myself for falling for Jerry Brown’s campaign in 1976, or for that matter, voting for Carter. It was Carter, not Reagan, who first started slashing welfare and education budgets. He laid off the entire federal Department of Vocational Rehabilitation in 1978. He was also the one who flooded social services with Southern Baptists and other Born Again Christians, so they were comfortably in place when Ronald Reagan took over.
Reagan begat Bush the Elder, and Bush the Elder begat Slick Willie. And it was all the same steady process of dismantling the New Deal and restoring militarization to 1950 levels. Democrats and Republicans are working on a con that’s still in process today. They do a Punch and Judy show for the cameras, and then they work for Wall Street when they think we’re not looking. It shouldn’t have surprised anybody when Clinton shredded the social safety net. Both parties had been working towards it since Carter. But as I said before, hindsight is 20/20. And quite often, hope blinds us worse than heroin.
Beyond Welfare Reform and the NAFTA betrayal, the one thing Clinton can never be forgiven for is helping to inflict Donald Trump on an unsuspecting world.
That loud, glitzy failure made himself a national figure by exploiting his friendship with the President of the United States. In return, Trump shared his real estate contacts with the Clintons. And the Clintons loved themselves some real estate. Remember Whitewater?
I suspect Trump got away with so much for so long due to his financial support of Senator Hillary Clinton. And New York was selected as her district because that was where Trump was headquartered. I don’t believe Trump and Hillary Clinton were serious when they dissed each other during the 2016 campaign. They were just mugging for the crowd.
See what I mean about Clinton? He’s just as big a crook as his buddy Trump. I’ve written thirteen hundred words so far and haven’t scratched the surface. From Whitewater to Monica Lewinsky, barely a month went by without some sort of outrage. Clinton and the Democrats trashed our refugee programs, eliminated most of the legal ways to enter the United States, and generally, out did Reagan in destroying the economy.
I could go on for another hundred thousand words and still have more to say. So, we have to take this one slow. One bite at a time. And if you follow me long enough, you’ll understand just why poor people vote for Trump. The Democrats released the Kraken on us with Clinton. After that, we laugh at the Democrats threatening us with Trump.
The Traumatic 90s 