An Open Letter to Princess Posterity
concerning Clintonism in America (5 Dec 98)
Dread Sovereign Lady:
It was well said of Your Royal Highness, though said by a Frenchman,
that you are to the philosopher what the world to come is to the religionists. It is in that spirit that I appeal to YRH. Furthermore, it is in the literary tradition of Dean Swift that I appeal to you, although I must correct his strange misapprehension about YRH's apostrophal engenderment. It suits both Latin grammar, which is eternal, and political correctness, which probably isn't, to feign that YRH is of the female persuasion. There is also the la donn' è mobile factor, so to call it. (I hope that crack doesn't offend you, but if it does, allow me to point out that YRH can't get at me to retaliate it: where you are,
I am not, and vice versa.) For to speak bluntly, YRH is fickle in the extreme and in all probability will little note nor long remember anything scribbled here. Nevertheless, here goes....
I petition YRH on behalf of Clintonism in America. More exactly, I petition you on behalf of two of the three parties to the present controversy about impeaching President Clinton. These parties are, as YRH will almost certainly not remember from history class,
(1) The would-be impeachers and removers,
(2) Defenders of Clinton and Clintonism like myself, and
(3) An indifferent, but nonremovalist, party.
Guesswork vaguely based on opinion polls suggests that these factions represent perhaps 25%, 20% and 55% of Americans respectively. I speak directly for the smallest party, yet also for the Laodiceans. Of course I don't hold a proxy from the latter, but it will be among my concerns here to justify their being indifferent to impeachment. The opposing faction seems to have no interest in justifying them. If anything, they are more hostile to those who don't care than to those who care for Clinton.
(An eloquent bigot to impeachmentism who hopes to become the Tom Paine or Joe De Maistre of this controversy calls his tract The Death of Outrage, and it is not the President's lack of sanctimonious indignation that Secretary Bennett refers to, but America's.) YRH will observe, then, that I recommend the coalition position of three quarters of the public, a solid enough majority to be getting on with. Or, more exactly, for NOT getting on with the project proposed.
I don't hold a proxy for the 'moderates,' and I also don't work in the White House basement. Nothing said here is authorized in any sense whatever, and the ex officio Clintonistas will be distressed by much of what I shall say. My agenda is not theirs. Mine runs (1) the Democratic Party, (2) Democracy in America, and (3) Bill Clinton. Theirs, very naturally, runs (1) Bill Clinton, (2) Bill Clinton, and (3) Bill Clinton. They are doing well enough in a practical sense, but this petition is concerned to bring a theoretical position to YRH's kind consideration and will not say much about day-to-day politicking.
A long petition is bad enough in itself, but unfortunately I must importune YRH with a long petition to which footnotes and appendices are attached. My remarks will often be based on controversy recorded at
alt.impeach.clinton .
Assuming YRH still remembers the United States of America at all, there will probably be a cybernetic continuity that allows you to retrieve this material. I draw your attention to the period between Guy Fawkes Day (5 November) and Pearl Harbor Day (7 December) in the year A.D. 1998. My own remarks there bear my surname slightly augmented: jhmccloskey6706. I shall refer above all, when it comes to the party opposing, to the voluminous remarks of Mr. Christian DeFeo, decidedly the least unintelligent of the impeachers represented in that forum. I'd happily attach Secretary Bennett's ipsissima verba, but we have copyright laws and the man expects to be paid for his partisan ideologizing--an expectation very typical of the Federalist/Whig/GOP crew to whom he has memorably apostasized. By the time of YRH, his works will be either forgotten or available gratis. (That's unfair, admittedly: I myself read Bennett in a public library copy. Whether public libraries, or public anything, will survive a possible triumph of Bennettism one cannot foresee. Pardon my digression.)
These preliminaries having been thus set forth, I ask YRH to avail herself of the hyperlink below to advance to the substance of this petition.
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(regress)