They have guilty consciences, they’re afraid – and fear and guilty consciences have a good savor in the nostrils of the gods. Yes, the gods take pleasure in such poor souls. Would you oust them from the favor of the gods? What, moreover, could you give them in exchange? Good digestions, the gray monotony of provincial life, and the boredom – ah, the soul-destroying boredom – of long days of mild content.
— from “The Flies,” by Jean-Paul Sartre
No one inside the Clinton machine saw it coming. They were whacked from behind, while sitting at the bar, casually ordering cocktails to celebrate their predestined triumph, as clueless of their fate as Luca Brasi in The Godfather.
A half-million computer simulations generated by Robby Mook assured them that their victory was foretold, a sure thing. They had the press. They had Wall Street and Silicon Valley. They had the Council on Foreign Relations, Colin Powell and Henry Kissinger. They had women. They had blacks, Hispanics and Asians. They owned the East Coast, the West Coast and the Great Lakes. Even those flinty Cuban exiles would help them take Florida this time.
You can almost hear the smug snickering oozing through the Podesta emails. Fuck every place else. We don’t need them. Those Jurassic States with their deplorable constituents–their Sunday schools and pick-ups, their deer hunts and bingo parlors–deserved what they were going to get (which, of course, wasn’t going to be much different than…