Hillary Clinton and tomato-inspired drivel

Maybe all it takes is a few tomatoes, rotten or otherwise, to get Hillary Clinton rattled out of her mind.  She was rattled enough to come out with some prize gaffes about democracy, desire, will, and about US foreign policy.

It was Clinton’s first visit to Egypt since the election of President Mohamed Mursi (reported as ‘Islamist President’, note, and we never hear any European leader getting a tag ‘Christianist’).  Protestors threw tomatoes and shoes at her motorcade.  No one was injured and that’s a good thing, especially since the stuff that the USA has been tossing around the world were far more potent that tomatoes.   

No one knows who the protestors were. What is known is that people outsider Clinton’s hotel had been chanting anti-Islamist slogans and accusing the USA of ‘backing the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power’.


Clinton has to say something: ‘I want to be clear that the United States is not in the business, in Egypt, of choosing winners and losers, even if we could, which of course we cannot’.  What rubbish!  The history of the United States of America is nothing if not the BUSINESS OF CHOOSING WINNERS AND LOSERS BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY! 


Here are some key phrases which, if tagged with ‘USA’, would yield enough material to keep you tickled for years: Assassinations and attempted assassinations of heads of states, military coups, overthrow of democratically elected governments, support of terrorists, support of armed groups, training of armed combatants.  Or, simply, you could look for ‘USA and Regime Change’, USA and Cuba (Grenada, Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Argentina, Congo, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Arab Spring…the list goes on).


I’m still grinning at that.  But there’s more to come. 


Clinton has to do a little Democracy Dance with a Secular Twist to keep the aggrieved and apprehensive Christians in Egypt at bay. This is what she tapped out:


"When we talk about supporting democracy, we mean real democracy.  To us real democracy means that every citizen has the right to live, work and worship as they choose, whether they are man or woman, Christian or Muslim. Real democracy means that no group or faction or leader can impose their will, their ideology, their religion (and) their desires on anyone else."

Wow!  I should say ‘WOW’, bold and in the 72-pt font equivalent to capture the utter bewilderment that reading this provoked in me.  It reminded me of an Amarasiri Peiris song ‘Snehaye Nagarayai’ (The City of Love’).  Well, ‘snehaya’ is somewhere between affection and love, and I can’t find the English equivalent.  The song goes like this: ‘Snehaye nagarayai sitha mage, maavathak ho novo raagaye’ (My mind is the Sneha City and in it there is not one single avenue of lust).  The female singer responds, ‘Vandanaave gihin enna aasai matath koi dese ethda me mok pure?’ (I would like to make a pilgrimage to this wonderful place but pray, tell me, where on earth is this city of bliss?).

An ideal type, folks, is a great platform from which you can preach (even if you don’t practice it). We’ve heard that word ‘democracy’ roll out of lying tongues so many times that the word sounds hollow and vulgar. 


Clinton is making an impassioned or tomato-inspired plea for secularism.  Will cannot be imposed. Ideology cannot be imposed. Religion cannot be imposed.  Desires cannot be imposed.  According to Hillary.  Here are some snippets, tidbits to munch on until the next tomato strike, perhaps.

WILL

When last did the USA NOT impose or tried to impose its will? The expansion of the United States was about imposition of will, with guns mind you.  In fact, the establishment of that country was about imposing will, i.e. the will to steal land and other resources, the will to subjugate native populations, the will to kill and the will to destroy traditions and coerce people to convert to ‘Christianity’.  If that’s too far back, take the Patriotic Act.  Take the protection of those responsible for the financial meltdown and the violence against protesting victims.  Take the treatment of African Americans and Hispanics.  That’s ‘will’, and let’s not even get to the whole business of helping tyrants into power, removing them when they refused to play ball and replacing them with more pliant tyrants.  That’s also ‘will’.

IDEOLOGY

What Hillary’s ideology?  Well, it has many strands obviously, but principally it is constitutionally sanctioned theft, aka capitalism.  Have the goon class that has been running the USA from Year Dot done anything apart from thrusting this ideology down the throats of others, citizens as well as those living in other countries?  Hillary is old enough to know what her ideological fellow-travelers did to Communists and those suspecting of being Communists.  She would have heard of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. 

RELIGION

‘Religion’, the biggest, mother-of-all bullshit story ever, according to George Carlin, is not to be ‘imposed’, Hillary insists.  Then why on earth is there a line saying ‘In God We Trust’ on each ill-earned dollar bill put out by the US Treasury?  Why celebrate Christmas?  When is Hillary going to give the Queen of England a piece of her mind for doing absolutely eff-all with regard to priests from the Church of England reserved seats in the House of Lords?  When is she going to tell France to revise its holidays so that Christians and their preferred holy days are not stuffed down the throats of non-Christians?  When is she going to Switzerland and give them hell for the fundamentalist anti-minaret referendum?  And how about dress codes, especially for Muslims in Europe? 

DESIRE

The less said about ‘stuffing desire down the throat’ the better.

Forget all this.  What on earth is Hillary doing in Egypt if not lecturing people about what’s right and wrong, and in the process, putting her contradiction-foot in her contradicting-mouth?  Even advocating ‘democracy’ and Hillary-Democracy is itself a matter of ‘imposing will’.  The USA is not a democracy, doesn’t Hillary not know? 

The lady says the USA is not interested in winners and losers.  Great.  Now can you get the whatever out of the Middle East, Ma’am?  If you are not interested in winners and losers in Syria, say, why in god’s name are you telling Russia and China to agree with you on who should lose?  Why did you back a certain horse in Afghanistan? 

Come on Hillary, something is stinking and it is making the smell of rotten tomatoes seem like something that came out of a top class perfumery.