That she would lie so egregiously says a lot about Hilary, but it also exposes just how much she depended on the absence of challenge; how completely she could trust that no one in the crowd would cry out, "The Empress has no clothes!" How broad the reach of this passive crowd of commentators? Wrap your mind around, not the Fox, but the NPR talking head who proclaimed Clinton had won the right to a "progressive mantle."
Finally, feminism requires some words on Hilary's courting of women's votes. Consider her signature one-two punch, evasion+ opportunism, in how she described her difference from Barack Obama. "I'm a woman," she "joked" and followed up with sycophantic strokes for the democratic establishment. Do we need to point out this was a question designed to identify her political policies and positions? Imagine the white males coming back with, "I'm white... that's how I differ from Obama".
Hilary Clinton's campaign is going all out to exploit the very just desire for female leadership, and counting on inanities surrounding 'identity politics'. Suffice it to underline that gender, like any other attribute-- race, religion, sexual orientation-- only matters if it has political relevance, otherwise, as pertains to Hilary, it is limited to the XX she shares with Margaret Thatcher, Condoleezza Rice, or Carly Fiorina.
If Hilary Clinton offers significant benefit to women, then she needs to address women and explain her support for war that always victimizes the most vulnerable, women and children; for her Wall Street backers and her support of policies that serve them while hurting women and children most, here and across the world; she needs to explain why she changes her opposition to liberal causes ,e.g. gay marriage , or to enlarging corporate power (TPP), only after it threatens her political ambitions, not to mention the numerous scandals that pepper her record and suggest a character much prone to the seductions of private gain at the cost of public welfare, a price that weighs most heavily on women and children.
The so-called Democratic Debate was staged, literally and figuratively, to buoy up Hilary Clinton's tanking popularity, and to bolster the faltering axiom of her inevitability. But the implications of the power and methods of the corporate media illustrated in this event go far beyond this campaign. The media moguls have seized power over perhaps the important institutions of this society, controlling the communication channels into peoples' minds. Their control and influence is pervasive-- not just FOX, but CNN, and MSMBC, the newspapers, and NPR, etc... A smorgasbord that serves to create the illusion of a free press. The impact is insidious and pernicious.
Democracy depends upon an informed electorate, and, minimally, on respect for verifiable fact and critical thought. A democratic society cultivates and vigorously protects an intellectual climate that distinguishes fact from opinion and fosters the skills of assessment and evaluation. Specific to political realities, facts need context, and comprehension of present events requires the framework of the past and history.
It is not to be! As illustrated by this event, and every day in the "news", the oligarchs exploit the monumental power of mass media to deny the public the facts and the intellectual tools to meaningfully exercise their democratic responsibilities.
At a most elemental level, a democratic society relies upon the integrity of words. If Hilary Clinton passes as a "progressive" who "won" a "debate," and who deserves the Presidency because she is a woman, then democracy lost big time, and no one should be surprised that Donald Trump is a serious Presidential candidate with much popular currency.
As Aristotle said, of all forms of government, none but none, is worse than Oligarchy.
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