Lady Macbeth 2016

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, by John Singer Sargent, 1889

Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty!
(Macbeth, Act 1, scene 5)

Among all literary characters, Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth is one of the most ruthless, power-hungry monsters ever created. She is characterized as a woman almost ashamed of her own femininity, as one who is willing to set aside her conscience in exchange for power. But she is also willing to ride her husband's coattails to get at that power, and in fact, she is ready to exploit her husband for the same purpose.

In the quote above, we see Lady Macbeth invoke the devil himself, asking him to remove the inconvenience of her own nature so that she can act on pure ego and lust for power. Lady Macbeth takes things so far that she is no longer who she was, no longer a wife, no longer happy, no longer content or at peace with herself or with her husband.

Fast forward to modern politics, where things have changed for women. No longer must a woman ride her husbands coattails to get power--she can simply run for office. In the 20th and 21st century, in fact, we have seen many successful women in politics, by their own merits. These women include Condoleeza Rice, Nikki Haley, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Angela Merkel, and many others. In cases like Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Barbara Boxer, the roles are a bit reversed, with their husbands benefitting financially from their wives' careers.

As we gear up for the 2016 presidential election, both political parties are looking ahead  for their new candidates of choice. So far (as of this writing), only two men have declared for the Republican party nomination, and no one for the Democrat party, but of course, that will soon change. For weeks now, everyone on both sides of the political spectrum have speculated about when, not if, Hillary Clinton will declare her candidacy for President of the United States. As recently as last week, actor Robert de Niro told the Daily Beast that Hillary had "earned the right to be president, and the head of the country at this point." He went on to say that as a woman, Hillary is what we need right now."

Does anyone have a "right" to be president? Don't we still have a democracy around here? If Hillary has a right, don't I?

De Niro with Hillary Clinton in 2013

Anyway, love her or hate her, what strikes me as interesting is that so many, de Niro included, somehow have the idea that she has earned this "right" to be president, based on her longtime involvement in the political world. But how did this involvement start? To what office was she elected? Well, of course she was a Senator from New York, but that's about it. And how did a Clinton win a Senate seat in a Blue State dominated by people who had voted for her husband for two terms? Gee, do I really have to ask?

Now, let's not get it twisted or anything. I know there are some individuals out there who said Hillary killed people as she clawed her way to power, but I'm not going down that road. Those details don't accomplish anything and when you think about it, aren't even needed to lay out her years of deep corruption. As a protege of Saul Alinsky, Hillary learned long ago how to play the political game. What makes this interesting is that, when Alinsky himself encouraged the young Hillary Rodham to work with him as an activist and agitator (by her own merits, that is), she chose a more conventional way: law school, then marriage, but marriage with a goal. In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times , Bill Clinton admitted that:

We were married a very long time when she was always, in effect, deferring to my political career...I told her when she got elected to the Senate from New York that she’d given me 26 years, and so I intended to give her 26 years.

In the play, the success of Lady Macbeth's rise to power as queen of Scotland rests entirely on Macbeth's ability to murder King Duncan, despite being too "full o' th' milk of human kindness." Thus, Lady Macbeth has to push her husband into murder by challenging his manhood and his loyalty to her. He laments that she should "bring forth men-children only; for thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males" (Act 1, scene 7). In other words, Macbeth sees just how far his wife has gone to separate herself from any notion or feeling of compassion, yet we also see her false face toward Duncan, knowing all too well what her husband is about to do to him. She advises Macbeth to

To beguile the time, look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't. 

Again, I'm not accusing Hillary of murder plots or anything like that, but then again, this is a woman who has gone to great lengths to manipulate her public image in order to win sympathy or to try to keep scandal as minimal as possible. Just to keep current, we'll avoid all the Whitewater stuff and stay within this last century, starting with her Bosnian Sniper story. This is the one where, during her 2008 presidential campaign, she claimed that she landed in Bosnia "under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead, we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." The reality showed otherwise. Of course.

OK, so that was a little lie to make her look brave. After all, wouldn't it be cool to know that the first woman President could withstand being under enemy fire and live to tell the tale? She then retracted the statement with the standard political excuse that she "misspoke." Right.

More recent events, however, are far more serious, and they point directly to Hillary's character as a woman who will step on anyone to get ahead. She may not have pointed a gun and blown away Ambassador Chris Stevens and the other Americans who were horrendously murdered in Ben Ghazi, yet her callous disregard for their lives and those of others is plainly aware, particularly in her now infamous statement before Congress: "what difference does it make?" Knowing she had put forth a lie about the cause of the attack, and in an attempt to cover up her failure to act when aid was begged for, she created a firestorm of controversy as the truth started to come out; to top it off, the State Department pressured survivors to stay quiet and not to answer Congressional investigators' questions.

What it comes down to is that this is a woman who simply can't take responsibility for anything she does when it goes wrong. Even when Bill was being accused of all sorts of sexual indiscretions back in 1992, Hillary chalked it up to a "vast right-wing conspiracy" rather than tossing Bubba out on his ass, as any self-respecting woman would have done. But she had a plan, and that necessitated staying in that marriage, regardless of how much of a cheating jerk Bill continues to be. This is a quid pro quo relationship, for the sake of power. Bill got his turn so now, as de Niro points out, it's her turn, like kids lining up for the swings at the park. Just grab that brass ring, and if anyone gets hurt, go on and lie about it and then stall until there's little evidence left. That's been Hillary's M.O. for ages.

Next is the whole email/private server scandal, another cover-up. While it's great that attack dogs like Rep. Trey Gowdy are on the case, that doesn't stop Hillary from denial as usual, stonewalling for as long as it takes to wipe a server clean and then coming forward oh-so innocently saying "what's the big deal? What difference does it make?" So far, this has started to hurt her in the polls, and as of this writing, according the Christian Science Monitor, she has fallen behind her GOP counterparts in the presidential race. But it's early, and she is a skilled liar and manipulator, so we'll have to see whether she can worm her way out of this.

Finally, there's that itty bitty thing about taking money from foreign investors to fund her foundation WHILE SHE WAS SECRETARY OF STATE. These donors have ties to governments in places like Bahrain, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Norway, and others. This has called her ethics once again into serious question, and her professional judgment. Take for example the situation in Colombia. From The Hill:

The report in the International Business Times comes as Clinton readies an expected run for president. She’s been dogged by questions about whether foreign donations to her foundations could have influenced her official decisions.

The report centers on donations from Frank Giustra and the oil company that he founded, Pacific Rubiales. In a Wall Street Journal story from 2008, Giustra is described as a “friend and traveling companion” of former President Clinton who donated more than $130 million to Clinton’s philanthropies. He’s also a Clinton Foundation board member and has participated in projects and benefits for the foundation.

When workers at Pacific Rubiales decided to strike in 2011, the Columbian military reportedly used force to stop the strikes and compel them to return to work, IBT reports, citing the Washington office of Latin America, a human rights group. Those accusations of human rights violations were part of the criticism of the United States-Colombia Free Trade Promotion Agreement, which was passed by Congress later that year. Pacific Rubiales has repeatedly denied charges that it infringed on workers’ rights.

On the campaign trail in 2008, Hillary Clinton, along with then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, opposed the deal as a raw deal for workers, according to IBT. The pair changed their tune after the election and publicly supported the trade agreement. As secretary of State, Clinton’s State Department certified annually that Colombia was “meeting statutory criteria related to human rights.”

The deal had originally been negotiated by the administration of former President George W. Bush, and the Obama administration won changes on labor and environmental issues not included in the original deal.

Just months after Congress approved the agreement, IBT reported, Giustra helped raise $1 million for the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative, supported by Pacific Rubiales. 

Typical Clinton shady behavior. Of course, you could say that a lot of politicians would do this, but let's not forget that Hillary is in a unique position precisely because she is the wife of a popular former President. Bill's coattails are still in full function as she continues her climb upward, and now that he's into his 26 years of devotion to her career (now that he set the stage for her), he'll keep up his end of the bargain. As Macbeth famously said, after all, "I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er" (Act 3, scene 4). I realize this is a bit out of context, but I use this quote to illustrate that both Clintons, like the Macbeths, are so far into their plan that they can no longer undo what they've done to get ahead. All they can do is forge ahead and hope no one catches on to their fraud and lies and malice.

So I stand firm in my comparison of Hillary Clinton to Lady Macbeth, and I would posit that it's not such a rough comparison as one might think. There are so many other details to include in this study, but I wanted to show the most recent and most apparent so that as voters, all of us can think carefully. There will be a lot of propaganda thrown around, making men like Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, and Rand Paul look like inept freaks, so let's just remember Natan Sharansky's 3D Test for Anti Semitism: delegitimization, demonization, and double standard. Of course, I'm not accusing anyone of anti-semitism, so again, don't get it twisted. But Sharansky's 3D test is typical of how propaganda often works:

• make the opponent look like an idiot so he/she can't be taken seriously
• hold the opponent to an impossible double standard
• make the opponent look evil, so that what he/she stands for seems hateful and wrong

This is already happening as we see Scott Walker insulted for not finishing college, and for harping on Rand Paul for talking over a female reporter, and for making Ted Cruz look uninformed and dishonest. You can be sure that the second Hillary enters the fray, these kinds of attacks will only increase a hundredfold, because let's face it, she won't play nice and she certainly won't play fair. After all, the kingdom is at stake.