by Candice Malcolm
Toronto Sun
July 29, 2016
American politics can be extremely black and white. You’re either a Democrat or a Republican, you either believe in the constitutional right to bear arms, or not, and this November, you can either vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
In the polarized world of American politics, criticizing Clinton gets translated into an endorsement for Trump. I’m always surprised when my skepticism towards Clinton is met with the response, “so, you’d prefer Trump?”
No, I would prefer neither. I’d prefer that the leader of the free world not be a corrupt, self-centered fraudster. But the problem is that this description just as easily applies to Clinton as it does to Trump.
Clinton’s flaws were on full display during the Democratic National Convention, where she was formally nominated as the Democrat’s candidate for President. Before the convention even began, the party was rocked by scandal when WikiLeaks released thousands of emails hacked from the accounts of high level Democrat operatives. The content was deplorable.
All those people who hate politics – either because they think politicians are corrupt or that the whole system is rigged – were vindicated by the DNC leaks. Among the countless backroom revelations, we learned that the political brass was scheming about ways to discredit Bernie Sanders in order to help Clinton secure the nomination.
That seems to be how the Clintons operate. Bill and Hillary have long used the establishment to bully their opponents, enrich themselves and gain power.
It’s hard to get excited about a woman who calls herself a feminist, but who covered up her husband’s sexual misdeeds and attacked the character of the women who complained about Bill Clinton’s aggressive sexual harassment.
It’s hard to trust a person who violated State Department’s rules by storing secret government information on an unsecure computer system at her own house, a person whose handling of sensitive documents was called “extremely careless" by the FBI.
It’s hard to believe in a person whose poor judgment led to the death of four American officials during a terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya in 2012, and who misled the public about the nature and motive of this attack. As Secretary of State, Clinton helped engineer the Libya invasion, which destabilized the whole region, and was personally responsible for the security of American diplomats.
Hillary Clinton has a pattern of hiding facts, using poor judgment and misleading voters.
When the Clintons left the White House in 2000, Hillary claimed they were “broke,” and yet, today they somehow have a net worth of somewhere between $110 and $160 million.
Their wealth comes from high speaking fees and there have been allegations that they've benefitted from their private charity, the Clinton Foundation, which receives ethically questionable donations from foreign governments, including serial human rights abusers such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Hillary Clinton is an accomplished person. Unfortunately, amidst her many accomplishments, she has continually demonstrated her poor judgment and morally questionable behaviour.
Sadly, Trump is no better. But those are the two choices: Trump or Clinton.
I’m not an American, so thankfully, I won’t have to choose between two people who seem unfit for public office. If I had to, I’d reject the black and white options and cast my ballot for a third party candidate, Gary Johnson – of the Libertarian Party.
Johnson won’t win. But a protest vote is better than endorsing either one of these deeply flawed candidates.
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