A Hillary Clinton Presidency Would Be An American Tragedy

The American people are generally goodhearted. Historically, most presidents have a honeymoon period when they are newly elected. The majority of our citizens want them to do well, at least for a while.

This cannot happen for Hillary Clinton. Over half the country, even many who will have voted for her, do not believe she is remotely honest. Almost as many believe criminal charges should have been brought against her for her email scandal. They are convinced, quite arguably, that were her name not Clinton, she would be in jail.

And this before what we have just now learned–how serious, even fatal to our (and humanity’s) best friends, her use of an easily hacked home-brew email server could be.

Hillary Clinton recklessly discussed, in emails hosted on her private server, an Iranian nuclear scientist who was executed by Iran for treason, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Sunday.

“I’m not going to comment on what he may or may not have done for the United States government, but in the emails that were on Hillary Clinton’s private server, there were conversations among her senior advisors about this gentleman,” he said on “Face the Nation.” Cotton was speaking about Shahram Amiri, who gave information to the U.S. about Iran’s nuclear program.

The senator said this lapse proves she is not capable of keeping the country safe.

To say the least, but there’s more.

Many do not think Clinton is even a moral human being. Any person who could lie to the parents of the dead over the fresh caskets of their sons, as Clinton has apparently done with the Benghazi victims–if you believe the testimony of the parents themselves as many of us do–has lost contact with basic human values.

So Hillary Clinton would be beginning her incumbency with an unprecedented level of distrust, even disgust, for an incoming president and it is hard to conceive how she could regain the public confidence necessary to govern. What could she say or do? Continue to lie, as she did yet again at her recent press conference and interview with Chris Wallace? Suddenly tell the truth after decades of dissembling? The result would be a psychic unraveling so extreme she would likely dissolve like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz.

No, she would undoubtedly do her best to ignore everything while a Damoclean sword in the form of  the +/- 33,000 emails, depending on what transpires between now and November, hung over her head. Who knows what’s in them? Hillary undoubtedly doesn’t like to think about it herself, but stress and endless prevarication have clearly taken a toll on her. Most 68-year old women I know can walk up the stairs by themselves.

According to FBI Director Comey, her lawyers don’t know what was in the emails either, even though they supposedly supervised their deletion. They only read the subject lines, they testified. To know the truth, it should be obvious, would have been inconvenient for them.

It’s also obvious from the mass releases so far from all sides that her server could have been permeated by who knows how many parties, state and non-state. This would lead to the inevitable.  Every even slightly controversial policy decision she makes as president would be open to question—and for good reason. Is someone blackmailing her?

And what about the Clinton Foundation? Suppose Putin — or someone else for whatever reason… destabilizing the United States perhaps — decides to reveal information definitively tying the Clintons to treasonous activities with foreign companies, potential “high crimes and misdemeanors” of the kind we are beginning to learn about in the uranium business. An impeachment trial would follow that dwarfs in implications any such trials before. Many would be swept up in it.

Is this a stretch? Not at all. More a likelihood. We’ve already seen enough of this in Clinton Cash, book and movie, to know how real it is. People aren’t going to stop looking for the truth if Hillary is elected, nor should they.

No, a Hillary Clinton presidency would be An American Tragedy waiting to happen—and not just a symbolic one like that described by Theodore Dreiser in his classic novel of that title, but one that engulfs the whole country and the world. In that worst-case scenario, our lives would never be the same.

Civil war is even a possibility. I never thought that until now, but when the rule of law has been broken, no telling what will happen.

For that reason, I desperately hope that Donald Trump will prevail, as unproven, erratic and self-destructive as he often is. I was truly disheartened the last couple of weeks. Like many, I haven’t come close to sleeping through the night. The man seemed incapable of reform.

But Friday evening there was a reprieve. Donald Trump the grown-up reappeared as he relented in his battles with people he should never have been fighting in the first place. For all our sakes, now more than ever, he should hold firm to this approach. No more dumb mistakes, if he can possibly manage it. Somebody has to prevent this American Tragedy.

As Trump himself has said, it’s not about him. It sure isn’t. Not in the slightest. It’s about us. Try to remember that, Donald, or our country is in trouble as never before.

Roger L. Simon is a prize-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media.  His book—I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already—is just published by Encounter.  You can read an excerpt here. You can see a brief interview about the book with the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal here. You can hear an interview about the book with Mark Levin here. You can order the book here.

(Artwork created using multiple AP and Shutterstock.com elements.)