Hillary's Psychic Reality
During the Democratic debate in Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton gave the following gloss on her Bosnia fairytale: "I can tell you that I may be a lot of things but I'm not dumb... On a couple of occasions in the last weeks, I just said some things that weren't in keeping with what I knew to be the case ...on a few occasions I was not as accurate as I have been in the past... So I will either try to get more sleep...or have somebody who is there as a reminder to me. "
Huh?
Ordinarily, saying things that aren't in keeping with what one knows to be the case is called "lying". And what's dumb got to do with it? No one ever accused Hillary of being dumb. And dumb couldn't explain her Bosnia remarks anyhow.
Yet bizarrely enough, the press didn't seem to notice or comment on the utter absurdity of her remarks. Either they were accepted as some kind of apology or they were relegated to the ever-expanding swamp of campaign "gaffes" and "silliness."
In any case, the Bosnia story has now been overshadowed -- most recently by the lunatic performances of Reverend Wright. But whether or not Reverend Wright is a nut-job is not remotely the same order of question as whether snipers were shooting at Hillary Clinton. Everyone senses this, even if they can't articulate it.
It is truly unsettling to watch someone lie so effortlessly and with such seeming sincerity. To recap: Hillary, sporting a big festive shamrock scarf, looked straight at the audience and in a remarkably relaxed way recalled an incident where she had landed in Bosnia under sniper fire. She described a situation so dangerous that the greeting ceremony at the airport had to be canceled and claimed that she'd run to her vehicle with her head down in order to make a quick getaway. She even had an accompanying hand gesture conveying her dramatic dash for dear life.
There were no obvious tells that Hillary was bluffing. She chuckled a little as she described her narrow escape -- a curious affect given the gravity of the situation, but people do react in different ways to trauma. Overall, it was a pretty smooth performance. If there were any pangs of conscience they were not visible.
As political lies go, it was an outlier. Hillary didn't impulsively lie because she was caught off-guard. She didn't lie because the truth would be damaging to her political career or painful to her family. She didn't lie to win over a political base. She didn't lie to distance herself from an event that suggested some improper conduct or an unsavory person that could tarnish her reputation. She didn't lie because she was promoting behavior in the public sphere that she was not abiding by in her personal life. She didn't lie to cover up a mistake that had been made.
Hillary's lie was different. She lied with no need to do so. And she made the story up out of whole cloth. It wasn't as if one bullet was fired at her and she exaggerated the incident. There was no sniper fire - never, ever. It was the sort of lie a child might tell playing make-believe. In an article in Huffington Post, Nora Ephron confessed that she'd "lost hours trying to figure out why" Hillary told such "a big lie".
But let's say she was motivated by political gain. Some have suggested the story was meant to embellish her foreign policy experience. But dodging sniper fire doesn't really speak to foreign policy expertise; it speaks more to issues of character like bravery and patriotism. Maybe it was supposed to suggest that Hillary could be a better match for John McCain because she too had put herself in harms' way for her country.
Of course, as a political calculation, this would have been crazy. Considering the probability of getting caught, the risks of telling this lie far outweighed any conceivable political gain. As New York Times columnist Frank Rich pointed out her story had "been publicly debunked by journalists and eyewitnesses" for months. "Why would so smart a candidate play political Russian roulette with virtually all the bullet chambers loaded?"
Wouldn't it have entered her mind that if she was found out it would be seen as an insult to anyone who'd seen real action? One GOP ad with grainy footage of McCain limping home from Vietnam contrasted with Hillary's cheerful tale of coming under sniper fire in Bosnia, and the race would be over.
Hillary may have gambled that her audience wanted to believe her. Or she may have figured the story was so tall that the public would never dream she'd made it up. Whatever her thought process, Hillary appeared unfazed by the possibility of detection. Guilt, fear of humiliation, or any other negative repercussions did not appear to inhibit her. Apparently, there was no little voice in her head, helping her to distinguish between right and wrong. Christopher Hitchens concluded that Hillary may be "someone who lies without conscience or reflection".
When Hillary's lie was exposed, she attempted to diminish it. She said she "misspoke" because of sleep deprivation. Then she said she "misspoke" because, after all, she spouts "millions of words a day". But Hillary couldn't have "misspoke" She'd repeated the story on several occasions. Perhaps she was saying that she continually "misspoke". But if she continually "misspoke", surely Chelsea, who had accompanied her to Bosnia, would have pointed this out. (Psst, Mom, nobody was shooting at us).
Maybe there was nothing Hillary could say, but a little remorse would have been nice. Instead she seemed irritated: "So I made a mistake. That happens. It proves I'm human which you know for some people is a revelation". In other words, we were to blame for holding her to too high a standard of truth.
When it became apparent that people weren't willing to dismiss Hillary's Bosnia "misstatement" so quickly, she attempted to make light of it. Appearing on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, she joked: "I was so worried I wasn't going to make it [here]. I was pinned down by sniper fire at a Burbank airport." She referred to the Bosnia flap as "a mismatch of words and actions", and since, after all, she'd got it right in her book, she'd "obviously had a lapse".
The Hillary camp must have realized the story wasn't completely dead, because Bill Clinton brought it up again. In a bizarrely misguided attempt to minimize its impact he revived the story in a version of his own : "There was a lot of fulminating because Hillary one time late at night when she was exhausted misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995... You woulda thought, you know that she'd robbed a bank the way they carried on about this. And some of them when they're 60, they'll forget something when they're tired at 11:00 at night too".
Of course, it wasn't one time. It wasn't late at night. She wasn't exhausted because she said it three different times. And she didn't apologize immediately (or even close to immediately). It also begged the question: If Hillary could be gaga at 11:00 pm, what would she be like when the phone rings at 3:00 am?
When President Clinton's story backfired, Hillary's campaign tried to paint Bill as the storyteller and his wife as the authority. At a rally in Indiana, Bill said: "Hillary called me and said, 'You don't remember this. You weren't there, let me handle it'''. Now let me get this straight: Hillary was there, so Hillary ought to know, except it turned out that Hillary didn't know, so Bill makes up a story to explain the story that Hillary made up even though she was there.
There are two possibilities: Hillary may be a pathological liar. Or, more persuasive to me, Hillary believed what she was saying and her description of her Bosnia trip was a true representation of her psychic reality and not external reality. In her internal world, Hillary may feel as though she's always being shot at by sniper fire and that she's heroically managed to stay alive.
This theory makes sense of Hillary's recklessness. It didn't feel reckless to Hillary to repeat this lie over and over again, and she paid no heed to those who contradicted her, because in her mind, she was telling the truth. Only when confronted with undeniable evidence of external reality -- actual footage from her Bosnia trip - did she admit (possibly to herself as well as the public) that her version of events was not true.
It also explains Hillary's reaction when exposed. She was angry because she was forced to abandon her psychic reality for external reality. For her, this was tantamount to giving up the truth in exchange for mere facts. When she said "It proves I'm human which you know for some people is a revelation", she may well have been reminding herself.
While most of her explanations have made no sense, when Hillary told Leno that she'd had "a lapse", she was right on. She'd had an actual lapse in mental functioning. Fantasy took over from reality. Reporters and pundits were already starting to question whether Hillary believed her own story. Hitchens wondered whether "she was subject to an illusory past". Melinda Henneberger, writing in Slate, said, she could only conclude that Hillary must have believed the lie because she could not imagine any other reason why "any presidential candidate would knowingly cook up such a doozy of a drama about dodging a sniper's bullets in Bosnia -- given that she was accompanied on this trip by a planeload of reporters". Henneberger concluded that this was more disturbing than if she had lied and "ought to be a deal breaker".
This may explain why Hillary's explanation in the Pennsylvania debate was so bizarre: "I can tell you that I may be a lot of things but I'm not dumb." She wanted to shift her problem into the domain of IQ rather than raising a question about her psychic functioning. If people began to question her grasp of reality, she'd be history.
The sensed of a shared reality is fundamental to the functioning of the world. In the same way that delusions and hallucinations are so disturbing, or that contradicting a child's perceptions is so traumatic, so Hillary's story constituted a jarring attack on our sense of common reality.
In the course of Hillary's campaign, a number of features have repeatedly emerged that are also elements of her Bosnia tale. 1) Hillary is both hero and victim; 2) facts are of no consequence; 3) And there are no witnesses or observers to the facts. This last point is always startling. For example, Hillary's explanation of her vote on the war made Nora Ephron wonder if Hillary thought we "weren't alive at the time."
On the tarmac in Bosnia, Hillary is the victim for being shot at and the hero for braving a war zone. And she's apparently having a negative hallucination that nobody else was there. The irony, of course, is that when the Bosnia story was discovered, it reinforced Hillary's psychic reality: Once again she felt she was being sniped at (this time by journalists). And that she had to heroically fight on and escape this near-death experience. Which it now seems she has.
For those who think Hillary won't go all the way to the convention in Denver, think again. Hillary sees herself as the victim in this primary campaign -- blaming the press, or the Democratic rules of proportional representation, or the caucus system, or whatever else she comes up with between now and August. She considers herself a heroic fighter for the good of the country; she ignores all the merely factual evidence that she is losing by every measure; and she imagines that nobody is there to notice.
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Hillary had "a lapse" all right - a lapse in intellectual honesty. She's decided that her supporters are a bunch of dim bulbs who can't tell the difference between lies and truth, who will fall for every pandering move she makes. This is surely the worst form of elitism.
Brilliant, revelatory, and blistering.
Thanks, Ellen, for the go-to take on this pivotal story.
John Eskow
Hillary is a very accomplished liar. One of the best I have ever seen. However, I disagree with the author's theory. l think hillary lies because she can and she understands that a majority of Americans have extremely short attention spans. For this reason it is politically expedient for her to lie because even though a large percentage of public is following the campaign closely, she is betting that not many are following close enough to keep track of the lies.
She lies in other ways as well. She complains that the media mistreats her then makes fun of Obama when he commented regarding the ABC debate debacle. She is extremely negative but complains he is being too negative, She raises up John McCain, then admonishes Obama when he does the same. I think her estimation of the voting public is so low that she honestly believes we won't notice the inconsistencies. When she is called out on her inconsistencies she brushes it off. She is betting that if she says something with enough conviction then the public will 'just believe'. Almost like when a parent says 'because I said so'. In other words don't think, don't analyze, just do as I say.
Another thing, have you noticed that when she is asked a question she does not have a ready answer for she cackles to buy time? Then she lies.
She thinks she smarter than most of the electorate. What could be more elitist than that?
What about the bug eyes? Sometimes she looks like the "runaway bride" from a couple of years ago. Scary.
Well, she clearly is smarter than most of the electorate. So is Barack Obama. 50 percent of the American people have a below normal IQ, and that is an unavoidable fact.
It's not her intelligence that's being questioned here. It's her sanity.
and she also does the "Well, you know..." head bobble.
She knows her core base of voters. To them, she can do no wrong, they forgive any gaffe and want her to run the country. "But it's Hillary. She's been there. She knows what to do."
But, "That Obama guy. He wants us to work with him? He wants to collect the best ideas from the best people to solve problems? He wants to change Washington?"
"No way."
Hillary can fix everything all by herself.
OBAMA 08
Ellen.
Come clean with your own psychic reality. You have a dysfunctional hatred for Hillary and lie about her.
Case in point, "sniper fire" is a single shot. Not a barrage with tracers etc. So you argue she lied because she wasn't riddled in a hail of bullets.
Your argument is void of facts, and rests on personal prejudice.
Get real.
Obama 08
Ahhhh!
The "any criticism is hatred" argument.
I haven't seen that used in... hours.
Is that the best you got?
Pitiful, just like she is....
:-|
Was there even a single shot?
I'm pretty sure that there was not.
So, whizkid, you're out of luck
but your rebuttal truly sucked
Nice post Ellen.
With all those words though, you could have slipped in somewhere how a PAC and lobbyist funded, war and bankruptcy bills voting DLC'er has convinved herself she's progressive.
The progressive claim alone shows delusion.
I just finished reading your 3 articles and even though the idea of John McCain saying "my friends" a lot as evidence of a psychic split is kinda lol, and your writing style is a bit verbose tbh, I thought they were really interesting. Of course like you say, analysis of a person at a distance, especially through a media filter, is impossible, but it's fun.
Thank you for a fascinating and illuminating article. You've distilled the disparate and confounding aspects of Hillary's behavior into a compelling narrative. Her denial runs as deep as the current occupant of the White House. Perhaps that's why she's now co-opting his rhetoric.
This type of lying by Hillary Clinton is not the same as knowingly lying about an extramartial affair.
(1) Bill Clinton knew he was lying.
(2) He judged the weight of the lie against the consequences of the truth. (Hillary, the shame of Chelsea knowing and her humiliation of the world knowing, nobody's business and, finally, the subsequent tawdry chapter no future historian can avoid writing.
(3) He really believed a B.J. was not sex nor adultry, not unlike a generation much younger than himself.
The very reason that Hillary Clinton did not have to lie to cover up a truth, but lied for no reason whatsoever, is far far more alarming. It appears to me that she really didn't think she was lying, and so defended her account until the video tape smashed once and for all the fantasy. Her mind must have rocked at the powerful contradiction to what she truely remembered. Time itself must have momentarily stilled as she felt the "Twilight Zone" tug on her sanity.
This Bosnia matter more than hints at a delusional personality, one that makes the person a legend only in their own mind. Dangerous reactions can erupt when one's personal reality is forced to face actual reality. Psychiatric help must be available else a cataclysmic mental breakdown ensue.
Hillbots will attack! Danger Will Robinson! For those who cannot live without Hillary in their lives, remember she gets to go back to the senate when this is all over. You can write her nice letters and emails. You can donate to her PAC. In short, you can smooth her damaged ego.
After the way Hillary has conducted herself during this campaign, I am not so sure that her Senate seat will still be there for her. I have heard from so many people that NYers have had it with her and don't want to let her back into the State.
Perhaps they have already put a for sale sigh up in front of Hillary's house.
Games have a nasty way of distorting both reality and ethics. Whether it's a video-gamer killing for eight hours a day, a rabid football fan sneaking some money to a player, or game-playing the presidency - once you sink into the game, winning is everything, and its own justification.
In keeping with your post, it's seems as if Clinton has an Avatar who lives in an enhanced world of drama, treasures, and gauntlets. Hillary's Avatar slashes and burns, never goes down to defeat, and uses any weapon in her quest for the treasure. These gameplayers, like the Bush-the-Warrior Avatar, is not what we need for a president. Hillary is playing a video game version of the race, and Obama is still in reality as a real person without an Avatar.
Brilliant!
agreed. One of the blogs I've read in a while. thank you
For me this article gives Hillary's "obliterate Iran" comment graver, deeper concern.
On the sniper fire story: Hillary appeared unfazed by the possibility of detection. Guilt, fear of humiliation, or any other negative repercussions did not appear to inhibit her. Apparently, there was no little voice in her head, helping her to distinguish between right and wrong. Christopher Hitchens concluded that Hillary may be "someone who lies without conscience or reflection".
(from www.huffin
“lies without consciencwe or reflection”
In that light, now consider this:
Iran has complained to the UN about Hillary's remark that in retaliation to an attack on Israel she would obliterate Iran. She isn”t even the Democratic party nominee and she is rattling sabers -- a strategy of belligerent non-communication with key world players.
Iran complains to UN over Clinton's attack threat
http://afp
This is a brilliant piece. No one before has managed to capture the depth of Hillary Clinton's pathology.
This is indeed an excellent piece.
Here's another essays from a different angle:
http://www
Remember also calling Putin "soul-less". A leader of another, powerful, country!
The words flow out of her mouth with glee because there is no accountability for her statements. I have to see Wright's face on every news website I visit, every day. I even heard him discussed, again, tonight, on NPR of all places, and no one pins this woman down and asks "Why did you lie when there was no need"? She can even joke about herself lying and people laugh with her.
Both HRC and Bill Clinton just throw all the words out in a big mess and no one sorts it out in the MSM. It is a game of cheap slogans and apparently a lot of people buy it.
I found this article very interesting and well written. Thank you.
For me this article creates even graver, deeper concern about Hillary's "obliterate Iran" comment .
On the sniper fire story: Hillary appeared unfazed by the possibility of detection. Guilt, fear of humiliation, or any other negative repercussions did not appear to inhibit her. Apparently, there was no little voice in her head, helping her to distinguish between right and wrong. Christopher Hitchens concluded that Hillary may be "someone who lies without conscience or reflection".
(from www.huffin
"lies without consciencwe or reflection"
In that light, now consider this:
Iran has complained to the UN about Hillary's remark that in retaliation to an attack on Israel she would obliterate Iran. She isn"t even the Democratic party nominee and she is rattling sabers -- a strategy of belligerent non-communication with key world players.
Iran complains to UN over Clinton's attack threat
http://afp
Well, I think this is just a version of "the size of the fish that got away" stories that many of us hear occasionally from people we don't see as morally corrupt, just prone to gross exaggeration.
Except.... These "fish tales" as you call them, were being used to justify Commander-In-Chief credentials. She lied just so she could feel good in retelling her tall tale, it was to make the impression on voters that she was truly "battle tested" and ready on "day one" like her slogan implies.
IIf for some reason video evidence had been supressed, and the truth kept secret, millions of Americans would hve been tricked into voting for a psuedo-"war hero".
I'm surprised at how easily you can dismiss that, as some harmless bedtime story.
There's no way that I would ever have interpreted her exaggerated story as her being a "war-hero". While I don't dismiss McCain's war-hero status, I don't expect it, or require it of either Democratic candidate.
Except this woman is running for the office of POTUS!
Hmmn - and no politician has ever lied or exaggerated?
You are burying your head in the sand on this one. She told a story. A good story. A story that never happened. In fact, a lie. Whatever the reason, it was a lie. Perhap she forgot that there was video and the truth would come out. No matter, it was a lie.
No, just as my support for Obama didn't change, even though I never for one moment believed that he, as an intelligent and perceptive person, didn't already know his pastor's views. Did I think that he lied, perhaps - but I understood the respect he had for Rev. Wright and his hope that the issue would fade.
These are both non-issues IMO that keep real matters from being debated and addressed. However, many elections are won and lost on "likeability" and people will have their own reason for choosing a candidate.
This interesting analysis of Hillary's fluid grasp on reality goes far to explain her ability to endure Bill's sexual escapades. Moreover, her disconnect from the real world makes her comes across as a female GW Bush (with a higher IQ). Do we need this in the White House?
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