Organizing for America | Bruce H's Blog: Oops! Sorry I burned down your house.

Oops! Sorry I burned down your house.

By Bruce H - Feb 8th, 2008 at 11:57 am EST

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I mentioned in earlier posts that one way to control another person is to lie to them.

An example of this is the lie told to deflect blame or avoid punishment - for instance, do harm to another on purpose, and then misrepresent the whole thing as a big mistake, a tragic accident.

It is quite likely the most common defense of white-collar criminals. They lost the file, they didn't know those records were supposed to have been preserved, they transposed a number, they meant for the transfer to to into the client's account rather than their own. Meet Hillary.

One notices a pattern as this campaign goes on. The HRC camp "makes mistakes" which harm the competition, suppress voting, violate the rules, etc. Even when such a "mistake" is exposed, the harm has already been done, and the likelihood you could prove misfeasance against her or undo the damage is slight.

Hundreds of voters in Nevada were prevented from voting when her caucus chairs, acting on written instructions provided by her campaign, closed the doors a half hour early.

Hundreds more were prevented from signing in to caucus by being sent to the wrong precinct, or by being informed at the (Hillary operated) registration tables that "this table is for Clinton registration only."

Hundreds of (Obama only!) voters in New Hampshire lost opportunities to vote when Obama campaign GOTV monitors were run off from polling sites because their presence (at the site to determine who from their precinct had not yet arrived to that they could make calls, set up rides, what-have-you) was "illegal." Oh! NOT illegal? Sorry. My Bad. Oh, well. Polls are closed now. Sorry for the mistake.

Then there's the "blame the underling" ploy. Her surrogates and operatives forward libelous emails, make racially divisive remarks, tell bald-faced lies, etc. By sacking the "offending" party, the candidate washes her hand - after the harm is done. I'm reminded of a boss who once pulled me off a job and took me to work on another one. When his customer raised hell because the first job wasn't done, he repaired customer relations by blaming and firing me. How conveeeeeeenient! Further, I'm reminded of the "skunk in the jury box" principle. This is where one legal team exposes a jury to false or inflammatory and prejudicial data, and then the judge instructs the jury they are to "disregard" what they just saw or heard. "If you throw a skunk into the jury box, you can't instruct the jury not to smell it. And no amount of sanitizing instruction will clear the air."

HRC just can't seem to keep her skunks on a leash. But who could blame her? Accidents happen.

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