That's right, it's another article about the possibly world-destroying consequences of a Hillary Clinton presidency. Buckle up.
Before I get started, though, can I just say how annoying it is that I have to keep writing about this thing? I'm no Trump supporter -- I'm a hippie for God's sake. My house smells like Nag Champa. On purpose! The Buddha statue in my garden is covered in glitter. Also on purpose! But hardly anyone's talking about what could easily be the greatest impending threat to all terrestrial life, so I'm the sort of person you get stuck with to write about it.
The folks who would normally be pointing at this thing that's staring us in the face are all asleep at the wheel. The Republicans still haven't quite realized that they've been replaced as the roid-raging war party on this political playground, and the liberals are all still desperately trying to pretend that there's nothing about their ghoul queen candidate that should cause anybody concern. It's absolutely stupid that people like me are the ones who get stuck defending the foreign policy of the anti-Black Lives Matter, anti-abortion billionaire demagogue.
But the fact remains that there is one candidate on the ballot who poses a significant risk for bringing about the single worst event that could possibly happen, and unfortunately, it ain't the orange guy.
Your mileage may vary, but in my neck of the woods, when you hear someone talking about not wanting a candidate to have "access to the nuclear codes," nine times out of 10 they're talking about Donald Trump. They'll bring up Trump's "temperament" as evidence that he'd push the button, conveniently ignoring the horror stories Hillary's own Secret Service members like Gary Byrne tell about her temper tantrums and irritability, as reported in Real Clear Politics. Apparently, being assigned to Hillary's detail was used as something of a punishment, the equivalent of being assigned latrine duty.They'll bring up how Trump once asked an unnamed advisor three times why nuclear weapons shouldn't be used if they're available, but that never actually happened. Or at least there's no valid reason to believe it did. As Snopes reports, it's a completely unsubstantiated rumor started by Joe Scarborough, who you'll remember as the guy whose show once got smacked in line by Debbie Wasserman Schultz for not kowtowing to the Democratic establishment hard enough. Like she was their boss. Scarborough, essentially an employee of the Democratic establishment, once said that he heard second- or third-hand from an unnamed source long after the fact that Trump said something along those lines to an unnamed advisor, and never substantiated his claim, which Trump denies. That's the same as nothing.
Another reason I don't subscribe to the "if we have them why can't we use them" rumor is that it runs completely counter to everything we know Trump has said on the record about nukes. As Time reports, he's stated an understanding that nuclear weapons and their proliferation are the "single biggest problem" facing the world and that their use should be an absolute last resort, and he's said multiple times that he'd be the last to use nuclear weapons. Like every sitting president since Truman, he's said that he "can't rule it out," but Hillary Clinton has never given us anything like Trump's reassurance, "I will be the last to use nuclear weapons."
Hillary, on the other hand, once publicly rebuked her then-opponent Barack Obama for saying he wouldn't use nuclear weapons on Osama bin Laden. Obama, whose blood-soaked administration John Pilger reports has increased spending on nuclear war more than any other administration in American history, was still sane enough to say that nukes are at least off the table when it comes to nabbing terrorists. Hillary Clinton was not, and she said it like she was proud of it.
Her resume is quite the bloodbath, already. If war is an option, she says yes. Just this year, she even enthusiastically endorsed women being drafted. She really really loves it -- if Bill Clinton was a policy wonk, Hillary is a war wonk. Her emails on Libya and Syria read like the nerdy enthusings of a kid tripping over his words strategizing a game of Dungeons & Dragons.
That dry, flat empty sound of her voice that we've become accustomed suddenly becomes alive with enthusiasm when she talks about war. War is her thing. You know how it's always been a bit weird that she doesn't really have a big vision for America? When Bernie spoke, he was sketching out clear landing place for our future, but Hillary's sketch has been noticeably absent the whole time -- in public forums anyway. In her private audiences, her big vision for America is war, war, and more war, and not because she has to, but because she wants to.
Past actions are the best indicator of future behavior. Hillary Clinton has an extensive history of pushing for disastrous military engagements over and over and over again throughout her entire political career. I don't know what it is about her that makes her opt for death and destruction over diplomacy and peace seemingly at every opportunity, but it's hard to read about her history with Iraq, Libya, Honduras, among others, without having a physical reaction.
Whatever her motivation, the evidence that she's itching for a war with Russia is overwhelming. In addition to the propaganda-seeding and red-baiting, she's been pushing for a no-fly zone in Syria since she was secretary of state, despite being aware that this will "kill a lot of Syrians." She's remained steadfast in this position ever since that time, a remarkable feat for someone who can't even maintain a stance on gay marriage from 2010 to 2013. And now Russia has planes in the air in Syria, which Hillary refused to say she wouldn't shoot down when asked in the last presidential debate. Combine that with the fact that she's openly said she wants military retaliations for the alleged Russian cyber attacks, and if you still don't believe we're going to war with Russia when she gets elected it's because you've got your head stuck somewhere the sun don't shine.
Are you scared of Trump because you don't know what he'll do? Then you should be far more scared of Clinton, because you may be certain that she'll do unthinkably horrific things. Trump might seem unpredictable in some ways, but Hillary is predictably bloodthirsty and destructive. The "devil you know" is consistently pushing toward your worst-case scenario. How is that better, exactly?
The world has never seen a full-scale war between two nuclear superpowers before. While it may have been easy for Americans to compartmentalize away from what's been happening while their government bombs villagers in tiny defenseless nations on the other side of the planet, they won't be able to do that when they become aware that this war will necessarily come with the very real possibility of looking outside to see a mushroom cloud appearing on the horizon. The further into war America gets with Russia, the more likely it becomes that someone, anyone, will either accidentally, deliberately, or as the result of unforeseen circumstances in the chaos of war, deploy one of the many, many nuclear warheads held on both sides of the conflict. And once one nuke gets deployed, so do the rest of them.
A 2014 study published in Earth's Future found that it will only take the detonation of 100 nuclear warheads to throw five teragrams of black soot into Earth's stratosphere and block out the sun for over a quarter century, temporarily destroying much of the ozone layer in the process. This alone, even without the added lethality factors of radiation and climate chaos, will be enough to starve every organism on our planet to death.
The United States of America has 6,970 nuclear warheads.
Russia has 7,300.
God help us all, as they say.
[Featured Image by Shutterstock]
