Clinton-Lynch Tarmac Meeting / FBI "Interview" Timeline
Monday, June 27: Former
President Bill
Clinton meets privately with current Attorney General (AG) Loretta Lynch aboard
Lynch's plane on the tarmac of Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport for
half an hour. FBI personnel instruct onlookers: "No photos, no cameras, no
cell phones."
Tuesday, June 28:
During a press
conference at the Phoenix Police Academy, Lynch admits the meeting occurred
but claims that she and Clinton talked strictly about social matters (such as
golf and grandchildren) and did not broach any subject relevant to the ongoing email
investigation.
Wednesday, June 29 &
Thursday, June 30: The story of the meeting and its duration (broken
by Christopher Sign of ABC15 in Phoenix) gains national media attention.
Friday, July 1: Lynch
acknowledges
that it was a mistake for her to meet privately with Hillary Clinton's spouse,
since Ms. Clinton is under investigation by Lynch's Department of Justice. Lynch
also punts
the question of whether Ms. Clinton will be indicted to James Comey, the
current head of the FBI.
Saturday, July 2:
Corporate media outlets friendly to the Clinton campaign report that Ms.
Clinton spent the morning being "interviewed"
(not "questioned"—and certainly not "interrogated") by the
FBI concerning her use of a private email server.
Sunday, July 3: Clinton
campaign mouthpieces spend the day assuring the nation that a recommendation
for indictment from the FBI is unlikely.
Monday, July 4:
Citizens wonder whether James Comey's FBI will recommend an indictment of
Clinton or not, but they try not to wonder too hard (because cognitive
dissonance about America being subject to the rule of law is a real buzzkill on
a patriotic holiday).
It's predictable—if pointless—that the Beltway bubble is suddenly
abuzz with concern about the Lynch-Clinton tarmac meeting and its potential impact on the
indictment process. Realistically, however, the indictment itself is a side
issue the same way that all issues become side issues with the Clinton campaign—since
the only demand Clinton makes of her supporters is that they turn a blind eye
to anything she may have done wrong because the candidate from the alternative party is
unthinkable.
If there is no recommendation for indictment, that merely
indicates that the FBI is as subject to influence by special interests as any
other part of the American federal government, which should come as a surprise
to no one.
No one's mind about Clinton will be changed. Clinton
spokespeople will claim that Comey's refusal to recommend an indictment proves
her innocence. Clinton critics will claim that such a refusal merely
demonstrates Comey's complicity in her corruption.
If there is a recommendation for indictment, it's still true
that no one's mind will change concerning Clinton. Her supporters will contend
that with Donald Trump as the alternative, we have no choice but to elect her—even
if it means empowering her to pardon herself for any wrongdoing she may have
done and subsequently covered up. Her opponents will argue that the indictment
is even more evidence of Clinton's corruption, but since they're the only ones
concerned about that corruption, it won't necessarily prevent her from being
elected.
The question isn't whether we the people of the U.S. want
Clinton as president. The overwhelming majority of us don't.
The question is whether we can do anything about the
election considering that our corporate overlords have decided to install her.
I'm spending this Independence Day coming to terms with the possibility
that matters are out of the voters' hands at this point (some four months prior
to the election).
Clinton represents a grand corporate partnership. Her donors
in media and finance get the most attention, but the Clinton coalition is also
sponsored by the agricultural, military, energy, and pharmacological sectors.
Plainly, the purpose of trade agreements such as TPP, TiSA,
and TTIP is to force democracies around the world to be more responsive to the demands of
multinational corporations than to the vulnerabilities of their
citizens. And just as plainly, the purpose of a Hillary Clinton presidency is
to ensure that our government is as receptive as possible to the hostile
corporate takeover portended by such agreements.
The easiest way to force sovereign nations to privilege
corporate bylaws over their own constitutions is by putting the might of the
U.S. military on the side of the corporate bylaws. That's the world that
American citizens willing to look outside their own narrow range of interests
can see being built before their eyes on this Independence Day.
The U.S. military isn't executing the will or acting in the
interests of U.S. citizens. It does the bidding of American politicians who lie
to us about their motives, their allegiances, and their objectives as they wage war throughout the globe—to the point of having militias armed by our Pentagon battling other militias armed by our CIA in Syria.
America has become the world's Pinkerton Detective Agency: a
private security firm on a collective retainer from the most powerful
multinational corporations. The poor Americans who don't profit directly from
the corporate hierarchy of that arrangement must fend for themselves in one
coal town or another: buying groceries on credit from the company store,
watching the Pinkerton thugs bust up any attempts to organize unions, and greeting
each morning with the awareness that they are getting another day older and
deeper in debt.
American democracy was never perfect. There were always
questions about elections. Voters were always deliberately misled by political
campaigns and outright propaganda. I'm not trying to suggest that America was
pure and innocent for almost two and a half centuries before becoming the
world's nuclear-armed mall cop in 2016.
But 2016 is different, for it marks the year when the powers
behind the throne of our democracy decided that it was too much trouble even to
pay lip service to democracy. They're tired of tricking us into thinking that ____
is our enemy. They need to be able to declare war on _____ at a moment's notice—without
having to go through the onerous process of making the case (much less proving)
that _____ did anything wrong and/or that the public supports taking military
action against _____ for such a heinous (though unproven) act.
Whether Clinton is indicted or not, 2016 will be the year
when the corporate juggernaut made democracy irrelevant throughout the world.
Sure, the coup in Brazil matters. Sure, Islamist authoritarianism in Turkey
matters. Guatemala, Honduras, Libya, Syria, and the Ukraine all matter. But the
U.S. matters most—not because it's richer or has a longer history of democracy,
but because the emerging global corporate state can only hold humanity hostage
at gunpoint, and the U.S. is the only country with a big enough gun for the
job.
Since the Truman administration, American democracy has been a very ineffective
check on the expansion of the military-industrial complex. But at least the
potential to check that expansion was always there, even if it remained mostly
theoretical.
I don't believe such a check will remain (not even
theoretically) after 2016 (whether Clinton is indicted or not). Democracy may
have died long ago, but even the illusion of democracy will be put to death by
the end of the year. Corporations won't settle for being recognized as people.
They'll be eager to demonstrate that some people are more equal than others—and
with American democracy thoroughly exposed as the sham that it has been for a
very long time, there won't be anything left to stop them.
Twelve score years ago, our fathers brought forth, upon this
continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition
that "all men are created equal."
Whether Hillary Clinton is indicted or not, the
recommendation of the FBI (and her reaction to it) will demonstrate that American
citizens are no longer created equal—that those who function as tools of the
corporate agenda can always expect to be treated as if they are above the law .
. . because they are . . . because corporate interests have superseded human
interests at this point in our nation's development, which is why corporations
should spend this Fourth of July celebrating their independence from the constraints
of democracy.
