Hillary herself supported this narrative in an interesting 1979 interview, uncovered by Buzzfeed, in which she addressed the topic of her marriage to Bill. “We have, for me, an excellent marriage. I’m not sure that it would suit other people . . . but I’m not sure that any marriage doesn’t have their own particular kinds of strains, and each couple has to work out an accommodation for whatever reasons there may be. So we’ve worked out ours and we’re very happy and I just hope that other people can work out their strains as well as we have.”2
So there you have it. The Clintons are just another normal couple, working out “strains.” But as anyone with a brain has probably figured out already, these are all clever misstatements of the issue. In fact, they are part of the progressive Democratic cover-up for Hillary. Don’t be surprised to see Hillary on the same page; Hillary has always been the original author of the script for that cover-up.
This chapter is not about what the Clintons do in bed, but about what Bill does to other women and how Hillary enables Bill’s predatory and abusive behavior, while her feminist and media accomplices cheer her on. The real story is one of horrible abuses of power and even more horrible cover-ups: Hillary’s cover-up for Bill, and the progressive cover-up for Hillary’s role in covering up for Bill.
Ultimately this is not a chapter about sex, but rather the long Democratic tradition of using power to rape, abuse, and intimidate women and then—if the crimes are exposed—to blame the victims and destroy their lives and reputations. For a party that claims to be a party of justice and women’s rights, this pattern of abuse—now carried on jointly and collaboratively by the Clintons—is more than a cruel irony.
BERNIE’S RAPE FANTASIES
Consider, for example, the rape fantasies of Bernie Sanders. These have been grossly under-reported in the media, although they were initially revealed in the leftist magazine Mother Jones. The magazine found a 1972 essay that Sanders published in a Vermont newspaper.
Titled, “Man and Woman,” the essay begins with Sanders discoursing on his male take on the subject of rape. “A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.” Then Sanders turns to the female perspective on the same subject. “A woman enjoys intercourse with her man—as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously.”
Sanders then raises a broader issue, “Do you know why the newspapers with articles like ‘Girl 12 raped by 14 men’ sell so well? To what in us are they appealing?” Sanders concludes that “women adapt themselves to fill the needs of men, and men adapt themselves to fill the needs of women.”
Imagine the furor if a Republican presidential candidate had published anything like this! The underlying message conveyed by Sanders’s essay seems to be that Democrats are expected to be perverts. As with Clinton, we are not talking about fantasies involving sex but rather about fantasies involving rape.
Now in some puerile sense Sanders in this article is taking a stance against male and female sex roles. But rather than discuss those roles, he makes his point through the medium of rape fantasies. While Sanders attributes the fantasy to a prototypical man and woman, it seems obvious that he is writing about his own fantasies—what he thinks about women, and what he thinks women think about men.
Rape isn’t just about sex; it is also about control and dominance. Sanders’s rape fantasies involve far more than having women at his imaginative disposal. They also involve controlling and subjugating those women. Symbolically, this is represented in the idea of tying them up, getting them down on their knees, and of course by the coercion implied in the rape itself. For Sanders, as for Bill Clinton, there is a certain progressive pleasure in having the power to dominate other people.
In an obvious attempt to protect Sanders, Mother Jones ran a cutline below his essay, saying nothing about the subject of rape fantasies and simply noting, “This 1972 Sanders essay, published in an alternative newspaper, reflected his affinity for Sigmund Freud.”3 In the same vein, mainstream progressive publications have given cursory notice to Sanders’s rape imaginings or simply ignored them altogether.
The Sanders campaign dismissed the essay as a “dumb attempt at dark satire” that “in no way reflects his views or record on women.” Yet there was nothing satirical about Sanders’s essay. And undoubtedly the article did reflect, at the very least, Sanders’s view of women at the time that he wrote it.
The question Sanders evades is not whether he supports or advocates rape—he obviously doesn’t—but whether the underlying mindset of control and subjugation that produced his article is the same mindset that he has today.
Vice President Joe Biden, we learn, has a habit of swimming nude in his pool. By itself there is nothing wrong with this, except that Biden apparently has female Secret Service agents assigned to him. They have complained about feeling uncomfortable. Biden doesn’t care. What his wife thinks about his practice has never been reported.4
Biden may have gotten the idea for nude bathing from Lyndon Johnson, who was known to sit nude by the White House pool and dictate letters to his female secretaries. Johnson would also have women brought into the White House and have sex with them while his wife slept in the next room. He also did this on Air Force One, locking himself and his paramours in his stateroom, while Lady Bird was on board.
One of Johnson’s secret service agents recalls that Johnson would show his penis to reporters, even female reporters. His motive, the agent reports, was that “he was proud of his organ.” Historian Robert Dallek writes about LBJ “urinating in the sink,” “inviting people into his bathroom,” and even boasting that he had had more women than JFK.5
John F. Kennedy—from whom LBJ inherited the presidency—was, according to the various biographies about him, a compulsive womanizer. Kennedy’s female conquests included prominent socialites, airline stewardesses, secretaries, and strippers. What we glean from these accounts is that JFK didn’t have “relationships.” He had no interest in the women themselves; rather, his goal was quantity, not quality.
These affairs continued while JKF was president. JFK reportedly had sex in the White House with Marilyn Monroe and also with Judith Campbell Exner, a socialite known for her connections with mobster Sam Giancana. JFK’s wife Jackie reportedly knew about her husband’s affairs but was powerless to do anything about them.
Reporters covering the White House, who liked JFK and were sympathetic to his politics, knew about his promiscuity but refused to write about it. I find it telling that there was so much recent hoopla about Trump’s references to his manhood while JFK and Johnson’s far more vulgar behavior a generation ago inspired no media coverage at all.
A DEMOCRATIC TRADITION
The manipulation, exploitation, and abuse of women is a long Democratic tradition, now camouflaged and enhanced by the women’s rights banner behind which progressive Democrats triumphantly march. Feminism not only condones—but provides ideological cover—for Democratic exploitation of women.
The Clintons are the best example of this. The sex abuse jointly carried out by the Clintons has been accepted and even endorsed by contemporary feminists and feminist organizations. We should try and understand why purported champions of women’s rights would embrace a serial sex abuser and a woman who routinely blames her husband’s female victims.
These are not mere ironies or even double standards. The behavior of the Clintons would be ironic if Democrats had historically behaved differently. We could reasonably speak of double standards if the Democrats actually had a different set of standards. The Democrats, however, have long licensed the systematic abuse of women.
Male predation is not something that stands by itself; it is an institution of enslavement that has historically served the Democratic Party. Women have historically been part of the reward of Democratic institutions of exploitation and subjugation. By using and abusing women, Democrats showed—and enjoyed—their power and authority. Let us see how this form of exploitation pa
id off for powerful men.
We have seen in earlier chapters how the Democratic Party was the party of slavery and the party of white supremacy. Both slavery and white supremacy established a hierarchy in which women of color were vulnerable, indeed virtually defenseless, against the depredations of the men who had power over them.
Under slavery and segregation, powerful white men took advantage of powerless black women, stealing from them not only their labor but also their bodies, their dignity. In many cases, the wives of those men had to endure these indignities. They too lacked power, in that there was little they could do to stop their marauding husbands.
In this chapter, we will see that Bill Clinton is in this marauding tradition. He is a horny Democrat who seems to regard his libido as his guiding star, and women as his target. He has used his political positions—as attorney general, as governor, and as president—to hit on, grope, fondle, coerce, and even allegedly rape women who fell within the orbit of his power. He is the Bill Cosby of the Democratic Party.
When his abuses are exposed, he lies repeatedly, effortlessly, even pathologically, seemingly confident that within the culture of the Democratic Party he will never be held to account. While serial lying seems to be a trademark of both Clintons, Bill’s defenders say his lies are of minimal significance because they are “only about sex.”
Once again the assumption seems to be that Bill is merely engaging in consensual romantic interludes, whereas the reality is that Bill—if his accusers can be believed—is a sex offender. Are criminal sex offenders acceptable to Democrats when their lies revolve around their sex crimes?
Historically, the answer is yes. Bill has many predecessors from plantation owners to white supremacists who did exactly as he did. Then, as now, their fellow Democrats laughed off their offenses. The Democratic Party protected them then, as it protects Bill Clinton today. Since Bill Cosby got no similar protection when his comparable offenses were exposed, we may reasonably conclude that Clinton, like his historical predecessors, is a beneficiary of white privilege.
IN A CLASS OF HER OWN
If Clinton is a familiar type, however—if he is one of a depressingly common genus among Democrats—the same cannot be said of his wife. She is a bizarre specimen. Traditionally white women suffered while their Democratic husbands had their way with vulnerable black women.
Hillary has from time to time struck the longsuffering pose, allowing her supporters to insist that she is in the tradition of female victims. In her book Living History, Hillary pretends to be shocked, shocked when Bill told her about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. “I could hardly breathe. Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at him. I couldn’t believe he would do anything to endanger our marriage and family.”6
Here’s how she wants us to react. Poor Hillary! Let’s all feel sorry for her!
But in reality Hillary had long known of her husband’s women. She had been briefed on the subject by political aides when Bill was governor of Arkansas. She knew about Gennifer Flowers from the 1992 campaign. Months before the Lewinsky affair was exposed, Hillary had been preparing Bill for his grand jury testimony in the Paula Jones case. So Hillary’s reaction to the Lewinsky revelation is, quite literally, unbelievable.
Far from being a victim, Hillary is the enabler of her husband’s depredations. She covers up for Bill while at the same time going after the women he abuses. She blames the victims while posing as a champion of women’s rights. Part of what makes Hillary’s marital relationship with Bill so incomprehensible is that never before in American history have we seen this phenomenon: the wife as sexual facilitator and prosecutor. Hillary seems to be in a class of her own.
Keeping Bill and Hillary in mind, let’s examine the impact on husbands and wives when masters had their way with slave women on the plantation. Earlier I mentioned Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with the slave woman Sally Hemings. Hemings herself was the daughter of a slave woman named Elizabeth and Jefferson’s father-in-law John Wayles. Wayles had several other children with Elizabeth.
Wayles was pretty open about his dalliances. Consequently, the Hemingses of Monticello were treated differently than his other slaves. No member of the Hemings clan was asked to work in the field. Instead, the females worked as house servants, and the males worked as valets, cooks, and skilled craftsmen. This seems to have been Wayles’s “payment” for his gratification. His family seems to have known about this.
Uncomfortably, however, this family history suggests that Sally Hemings was actually related to Martha Jefferson. Jefferson bore multiple children with a slave woman who was actually half-sister to his wife. Martha Jefferson may have known about her father siring children with the slaves but there is no evidence that she knew about her husband’s relationship with Sally.7 In this respect, Martha Jefferson was definitely not an enabler.
The southern diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of South Carolina Senator James Chesnut, was also familiar with what went on at the plantation. Her husband was not one of the guilty parties, but apparently his father James Chesnut Sr. was. “The Colonel,” as he was called, apparently sired several light-skinned mulattoes and while everyone else pretended not to notice, his daughter-in-law certainly did.
Chesnut writes that this aspect of plantation life, more than anything else, made her hate slavery. “You say there are no more fallen women on a plantation than in London in proportion to numbers. But what do you say to this—to a magnate who runs a hideous black harem, with its consequences, under the same roof with his lovely white wife and his beautiful and accomplished daughters?
“He holds his head high and poses as a model of all human virtues to these poor women whom God and the laws have given him. From the heights of awful majesty he scolds and thunders at them as if he never did wrong in his life. Fancy such a man finding his daughter reading Don Juan. ‘You with that immoral book’ he would say, and then he would order her out of his sight.
“The wife and daughters in their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter. They profess to adore the father as the model of all saintly goodness.”
In an earlier chapter I quoted Democratic Senator James Hammond of South Carolina rhapsodizing the virtues of slavery. But Hammond seems to have left out some of slavery’s benefits, at least as far as he was concerned. Historian Drew Gilpin Faust notes that Hammond seems to have fathered children by two slave women on his plantation. In a letter to his white son Harry, Hammond confessed his probable paternity, asking Harry to care for these women and their offspring after his own death.
“In the last will I made,” he writes, “I left you Sally Johnson, the mother of Louisa, and all the children of both. Sally says Henderson is my child. It is possible, but I do not believe it. Yet act on her’s rather than my opinion. Louisa’s first child may be mine. Her second I believe is mine. Take care of her and her children who are both of your blood. Do not let Louisa or any of my children or possible children be the slaves of strangers.”8
So Hammond’s two slave concubines are mother and daughter. The daughter was reportedly twelve when Hammond first impregnated her. By the standards of Democrats, Hammond was a considerate fellow; while he didn’t want to free his concubines or his children, he did want to keep them enslaved “within the family.” I can see Bill Clinton, if he lived at the time, acting the same way and feeling mighty proud of himself for doing so.
Another valuable source on our topic is the abolitionist Republican Frederick Douglass. Douglass recalled during his slave days how masters often produced children with slave women. “This arrangement,” he wrote, “admits of the greatest license to brutal slaveholders and their profligate sons, brothers, relations and friends, and gives to the pleasure of sin the additional attraction of profit.”
Douglass added, “One might imagine that the children of such connections would fare better in the hands of their mas
ters than other slaves. The rule is quite the other way. A man who will enslave his own blood may not be safely relied on for magnanimity. Men do not love those who remind them of their sins and the mulatto child’s face is a standing accusation against him who is master and father to the child.
“What is still worse, perhaps, such a child is a constant offense to the wife. She hates its very presence. Women—white women I mean—are idols in the south, not wives, for the slave women are preferred in many instances; and if these idols but nod or lift a finger, woe to the poor victim: kicks, cuffs and stripes are sure to follow. Masters are frequently compelled to sell this class of their slaves out of deference to the feelings of their white wives.”
DEFILERS OF WOMEN
Several themes of consequence emerge from the Chesnut, Hammond, and Douglass accounts. We can see the Democratic slave master as a perfect hypocrite, posing as a champion of virtue while he debases the slave women. Here I am reminded of Bill Clinton, preening as a champion of equality and social justice while he defiles women who are within his power. Apparently the man has no shame, and neither did his Democratic forbears.
From Douglass’s description we also see how ruthless the plantation owner can be. He has no qualms about selling off his own children. Here I recall Bill pressuring Gennifer Flowers to get an abortion. These are Democrats, then as now, seeking to avoid accountability and get rid of the evidence of their misdeeds. The circumstances are different, but in terms of the character of these Democrats, not much seems to have changed.
The slave owner is trying to escape what his family will think. Chesnut writes about the plantation daughters whose innocence does not include actual innocence of what their father is up to. They know what’s going on, but they pretend not to notice. We cannot say that “ignorance is bliss” because this is feigned ignorance. Feigned ignorance is not bliss—it is actually collusion.
Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party Page 22
