On “Hilary”
Recently a four part documentary about Hillary Clinton was released on Hulu. I knew it would be inaccurate, sanitized, biased, and basically just neo-liberal propaganda, and that’s exactly what it is. The film presents Clinton as a tough, intelligent, and misunderstood woman who suffered at the hands of sexism. All of these things might be true but what is also ignored is that Clinton is a corrupt warmonger.
The series isn’t presented in chronological order. Instead you are presented with past clips, interview segments, anecdotes from colleagues and friends. The docuseries covers her younger years, her time as first lady, senator (briefly), her 08 run for president (also briefly presented), and of course her 2016 run (which dominates the run time). Of course her time as Secretary of State is mentioned briefly too.
The extent of the documentary’s coverage of her term as Secretary, is discussion of the memes (which were not widespread) of her texting Obama on a blackberry, her feud with Vladimir Putin, her high favorability ratings upon leaving the job, and the benghazi scandal. It didn’t mention how hard she fought to send even more American troops (20,000 to be exact) to Afghanistan in 2009 (https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20090611/1aclinton11_cv.art.htm). Or in 2010 when she encouraged (successfully) Barack Obama to violate the War Powers Resolution to engage in regime change military action in Libya (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/03/30/congress.libya.briefing/) (Which Obama later called one of his biggest mistakes as president). It also ignored the fact that her stint as Secretary had no real accomplishments, no peace deals, no progress on de-nuclearization, and no improvement of relations with countries the US is not overly friendly with.
The coverage of the general election is also noteworthy (though unsurprising) of course. It places a lot of blame for the election result on the media (which has some merit) but ignores specifics, especially specifics that present Clinton in a less than negative light. It presents the wikileaks as an injustice, it tells you about Podesta’s emails being hacked but doesn’t actually explain what these emails revealed. It doesn’t mention that DNC chair Donna Brazile admits Clinton “rigged the nomination process” (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/14/16640082/donna-brazile-warren-bernie-sanders-democratic-primary-rigged), or that Clinton had “control” over the DNCs finances and strategy for 2016.
What we do get is a sanitized, corporate, and military industrial complex approved overview of Clinton’s life, a pop history overview of a persons whose real legacy is murder and corruption. A person who has only made the world a worse place, not a better one.
