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JOHN DERBYSHIRE: Trump’s Verdict, Clinton’s Narcissism, And The Ruling Class’s “Wound That Will Not Heal”

By John Derbyshire

05/31/2024

[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusivelyon VDARE.com]

Earlier: Trump And VDARE.com: Victims Of Third-World Justice

So a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on all thirty-four charges of having falsified business records in 2017 with the intent to cover up another crime. What was that other crime? I don’t know. Does anybody?

What came to my mind on hearing the verdict was an old legal story from 19th-century Ireland when, to quote a history of the time, “violence and sectarian tensions abounded” and “the jury system came under considerable strain.” Juries often sympathized with the accused.

In one of these cases a judge is said to have dismissed a prisoner with the words “You have been acquitted by a Limerick jury, and you may now leave the dock without any other stain upon your character!”

Thursday’s verdict was of the opposite kind. We can fairly say to Trump: “You, Sir, having been doggedly outspoken against the ideology of our Ruling Class and having defeated one of its champions, you have been pronounced guilty by a Manhattan jury, and you may now leave the dock without any stain whatsoever on your character.”

Trump’s real crime, the one for which our Ruling Class will never forgive him, was defeating their candidate, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 Presidential election. That was the wound that will not heal.

There are already other criminal charges against Trump elsewhere.

That’s fifty-four charges to add to the 34 Trump was found guilty of on Thursday. So not yet a hundred counts in total, but you can be sure we’ll get there. The Trump-hunters will never quit.

There are plenty of other jurisdictions where the D.A. and his prosecutors are plump from feeding at George Soros’ trough and the jury pool is reliably Woke. The wound will never heal, the hunt will never end.

I wasn’t surprised by the result and I doubt it will much affect what will happen in November’s Presidential election. What will happen, in my opinion, is that the Ruling Class will rig the vote counts just as they did in 2020, and the Democratic Party’s candidate will win.

The only election result I’ll take at all seriously is one where voters, other than serving military, had to show up and identify themselves at a properly supervised location on a specific day.

A franchise that I’d take seriously would be one limited to married tax-paying citizens with children. That’s in the realm of pure imagination, though…

Having mentioned Mrs. Clinton just there, I got to wondering how she’s doing.

You know how it is with geezers: we like to keep track of each other. That’s partly for actuarial purposes, but there’s also a fascination to it: seeing our schoolyard playmates, or guys and gals that might have been our playmates, at the other end of life.

We remember, or we can imagine, what they were like in the schoolyard. It’s surprising how similar they can be seven and a half decades on.

Hillary’s two years younger than me; Donald Trump’s one year younger than me; Biden, two and a half years older. The clock’s ticking on all of us.

So… how’s the lady doing?

Well, she’s keeping herself busy. Late February, for example, she gave an interview for a forthcoming book, title: The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America. Amazon gives the publication date as June 4th, next Tuesday.

The authors of this book are two New York Times reporters, Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer. In last Saturday’s edition of the newspaper they retailed some of the interview Hillary gave them for the book [Hillary Clinton Has Some Tough Words for Democrats, and for Women, May 25, 2024].

Democrats shouldn’t have been so complacent in 2016 about the threat that Trump posed to abortion rights, says the presidential nominee who chose not to campaign in Wisconsin. https://t.co/bKRALR2VhX

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) May 28, 2024

The Roe in the book’s title is the one in Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that abortion is a constitutional right. The ruling was struck down by the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson ruling that returned abortion regulation to the individual states.

So it’s all about abortion. Clinton blames her own party for the Dobbs decision:

We didn’t take it seriously, and we didn’t understand the threat. Most Democrats, most Americans, did not realize we are in an existential struggle for the future of this country. We could have done more to fight.

With true Clintonian narcissism, she lets herself off the hook:

Mrs. Clinton did not express regret for any inaction herself. Rather, she said her efforts to raise alarms during her 2016 campaign went unheeded and were dismissed as “alarmist” by voters, politicians and members of her own party. In that race, she had talked about the threats to abortion rights on the campaign trail and most memorably in the third presidential debate, vowing to protect Roe when Mr. Trump promised to appoint judges who would overturn it.

And of course, everything is “existential.” The Ruling Class loves that word. Here’s Hillary again, this time talking about the current election campaign:

This election is existential. I mean, if we don’t make the right decision in this election in our country, we may never have another actual election. I will put that out there because I believe it. And if we no longer have another actual election, we will be governed by a small minority of right-wing forces that are well organized and well funded and are getting exactly what they want in terms of turning the clock back on women.

Right. Opening the borders to twenty million illegal aliens isn’t “existential.” Discouraging military enlistment by loading up the armed services with DEI head-counters isn’t “existential.” Ending our fossil-fuel independence isn’t “existential.”

But letting the voters of the separate states make their own decisions about abortion regulation — that’s “existential.”

From there, the lady’s off and running, to ever greater heights of narcissism and hypocrisy. She accuses Trump’s Supreme Court nominees Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett of lying in their confirmation hearings:

They just flat-out lied. And Democrats did nothing in the Senate. If I’d still been in the Senate, and on the Judiciary Committee, I think, you know, I hope I would have tried to do more about what were just outright prevarications.

And back, back, to the wound that will not heal: her defeat in the 2016 election:

Mrs. Clinton said she saw her defeat in that election as inextricable from her gender. As she has in the past, she blamed the former F.B.I. director James Comey’s last-minute reopening of the investigation of her private email server for her immediate defeat. Mr. Comey had raised questions about her judgment and called her “extremely careless” but recommended no criminal charges. Other political strategists have faulted her message, strategy and various missteps by her campaign for her loss in 2016.

“But once he did that to me, the people, the voters who left me, were women. They left me because they just couldn’t take a risk on me, because as a woman, I’m supposed to be perfect.”

No, Hillary, you’re not supposed to be perfect. You are, though, supposed to be a person with some track record of real accomplishment, who cares about something other than her own precious self.

Still, I guess there’s been progress here. To judge from those extracts in the Times, at least she’s no longer blaming her defeat on Russia Russia Russia …

FOOTNOTE: We all remember when, in the 2016 election, she called half of Donald Trump’s supportersa basket of deplorables.”

Well, these Lefty broads — these midwit gynocrats — just can’t help themselves.

So here was New York State Governor Kathy Hochul commenting on a very successful rally that Donald Trump held May 23rd in the Bronx, which is heavily black and Hispanic.

Interviewed on CNN by Jake Tapper, my Governor extruded the following:

I’ll tell you what won’t make a difference at all, Jake, and that’s for Donald Trump to be the ringleader and invite all his clowns to a place like the Bronx.

Gov. Kathy Hochul slammed for calling Trump’s NY supporters ‘clowns,’ compared to Hillary’s infamous ‘basket of deplorable’s moment, by Vaughn Golden, NY Post, May 24, 2024

Said Dr Johnson to Boswell: “Sir, the insolence of wealth will creep out.” [Life Of Johnson, Volume III]

NY Gov. Kathy Hochul calls Trump supporters ‘clowns’ in ‘basket of deplorables’ moment https://t.co/okacj1sLMd pic.twitter.com/QOQ9rT0orV

— New York Post (@nypost) May 24, 2024

That was back when wealth was the great social divider.

What mostly divides us nowadays, snobs from slobs, is having correct opinions.

But, just as in Johnson’s day, the insolence of the snobs will creep out.

John Derbyshire writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him.) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II: ESSAYS 2013.

For years he’s been podcasting at Radio Derb, now available at VDARE.com for no charge. His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com.

Readers who wish to donate (tax deductible) funds specifically earmarked for John Derbyshire’s writings at VDARE.com can do so here.

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