Why Hillary Clinton’s coziness to Henry Kissinger is troubling

The Oval Office is the ultimate power symbol. This power bears a tremendous burden of responsibility. The interpretation of responsibility, in this context, would refer to an obligation of the President to address the desires and needs of the American people.

In regards to Henry Kissinger and Hillary Clinton, and their usage of power, they are responsible for the deaths of American soldiers and civilians from other nations.

Kissinger acted as Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor for the Nixon and Ford administrations. During this time he was accountable for a litany of atrocious foreign policy decisions, including the choice to prolong the war in Vietnam, and to illegally invade and bomb Cambodia and Laos.

His decisions led to genocides in Cambodia, East Timor and Bangladesh. He instigated civil wars in Africa resulting in millions of civilian casualties, supported coups to install dictators in Latin America that employed death squads, and perpetuates the idea of politicizing Islam to destabilize the Middle East.

Kissinger left a wake of destruction and bloodshed across the globe. This is why his admiration for Hillary Clinton (and their intimate relationship) is disturbing to say the least. While investigating the legacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton, many have started to question her personal usage of power and how her private benefactors may have influenced her Foreign Policy as Secretary of State, and domestic policy as a Senator.

The Clintons have very possibly been waging an aggressive campaign of neocolonialism and neoliberalism by utilizing the philanthropic Clinton Foundation and their respective political positions in tandem. This strategy has quite possibly opened the door to devastation in Latin America: a coup that resulted in death squads in Honduras, massacres in Colombia, a destabilizing coup in Paraguay.

The Clinton Foundation’s work in Haiti has done some good, but many are skeptical. This skepticism comes from projects like erecting a $45 million Marriott which will most likely not benefit the impoverished of Haiti. They also built a “600 acre garment factory” (also known as the Caracoal Industrial Park), upon usable farmland, with the goal of using Haitians as a labor force to produce textiles that will be exported to US based corporations. The Clinton Foundation’s impact appears to be a misguided neoliberal project linking philanthropy, capitalism and her position in the State Dept.

Despite being covered in several publications for years, the general public in the U.S. seems to be completely ignorant of this corruption and malicious track record. The general public also appears confused about Hillary’s seemingly imposing lead in the election due to the misleading numbers attributed to super delegates. These issues may seem distinct, but they are connected by a paper trail.

Hillary has done a fantastic job covering up the funding of her 2016 campaign, however looking back at her 2008 presidential campaign donors makes the picture a bit clearer. This list features big players like Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Time Warner and 21st Century Fox. Despite her donors appearing different in 2016, utilizing organizations like opensecrets we can break down her donations by industries. This reveals that in the 2016 election cycle Hillary has received $23,551,341 from bankers, nearly $19 million from law firms, almost $10 million from the media, and over $2 million from the pharmaceutical industry. This is not surprising to most. What is surprising is the connection between her campaign financing and the super delegate system.

As of today Hillary only leads by 274 pledged delegates, which means that the election is far from being over, and that the June primaries will truly decide who the Democratic nominee will be. Clinton is leading Sanders by 486 superdelegates. Superdelegates are sometimes elected officials or leaders within the democratic party, but many are not necessarily elected officials at all. In fact. a good portion of these superdelegates are actually former lobbyists for special interest groups. These lobbyist turned super delegates represent special interests that are quite frightening, and during the 2008 election cycle Obama was stonewalled by the DNC when trying to fix the problem. So which special interest super delegates are supporting Hillary?

Let’s take a look at her roster of supporters: Jeff Berman is a former lobbyist for Geo Group (the second largest player in the private prison industry, who also specialize in detention centers for immigrants), Bill Shaheen is a lobbyist for PainCare (a NH based pain clinic that proliferates opiates), Tonio Burgos and Emily Giske are both lobbyists for Pfizer among other corporations, Joanne Dowdell is a senior vice president of the parent company of Fox News, and lastly a trio of lobbyists (Jill Alper, Minyon Moore and Maria Codona) that have ties from Enron to 21st Century Fox. Each one of these lobbyists represent entities that Hillary has publicly disavowed.

The responsibility of an elected official is to represent your constituents. Hillary is a candidate that will give a speech in NH about solving the problems of the opiate epidemic while receiving the backing of a lobbyists for a large provider of opiates in NH. Hillary is a candidate that will tell you about going after wealth inequality while being financially and politically supported by the largest banks in America. Hillary says she cares about minorities while having a superdelegate supporter who represents the institutions building the prisons that statistically incarcerate minorities disproportionately.

Her campaign is a ruse to trick Americans: the entities that donate to her campaign are also present in the superdelegate system that is fooling Americans into thinking that the election has already been won. She’s already had her Watergates, and a litany of scandals, but remains the Democratic frontrunner nonetheless. From her abuses of power as Secretary of State, misleading neocolonial/neoliberal philanthropy, and the hypocritical nature of her campaign, it is quite easy to see why a bloodthirsty villain like Kissinger admires Hillary.