Although it hardly comes as a shock that Hillary Clinton has announced her candidacy for president, I still find myself stunned and a little bemused at the idea. The left would have me believe that my feelings are the result of unconscious, deeply rooted bias. They’ll make sure I know that I have to put my latent, genetically encoded racism aside for a season and embrace my inner chauvinist so that the former Secretary of State will have a vein of victimhood to tap whenever her policies, experience, or competence are questioned. Unless she chooses [mc_name name=’Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’J000032′ ] to be her running mate, in which case I have my entire arsenal of genetically encoded bigotry to flow forth like a wellspring for their use.

The feeling I got when I read the Big Announcement was very similar to the way I felt when President Obama won a second term. I wasn’t really angry at the President. One cannot fault the scorpion for acting according to its nature. I still roundly despise the man and his policies, but he didn’t elect himself. That’s the crux of it, really. The President didn’t elect himself. There were enough people in the United States who witnessed the President’s many lies, his multiple acts of constitutional sabotage, his heretofore unseen depths of rank incompetence and indifference which left in its terrible wake a struggling economy and a world on fire, and decided that he deserved another chance. It was almost surreal to experience such blatant disregard for reality, and I watched with a sense of dumbfounded despair. That was the day I no longer recognized my country as the one in which I grew up.

That’s the way a Hillary Clinton candidacy makes e feel the truth about Hillary Clinton is that she’s been lying, subverting due process, enriching herself through political power, and covering it up since I was a baby. The trail of Clinton scandals is long enough to practically see from the International Space Station, so I won’t enumerate them here. A person like this has no business seeking elected office of any kind, and yet, like a persistent cough, the country can’t seem to be rid of her. Despite the overwhelming evidence of her frightening lack of integrity, despite the disasters that inevitably ensue from her involvement in actual governance, people still line up to paint rosy pictures of her. Here’s one from Slate’s Jamelle Bouie. In his article “The Indispensable Hillary Clinton”, he writes:

It’s fitting that Hillary Clinton stands as the natural successor to President Obama. Savvy and politically ambitious, she leveraged her time as first lady to win a Senate seat, run a path-breaking presidential campaign, and serve four years as secretary of state in the Obama White House.

That such a description of Hillary Clinton even exists speaks volumes about the state of our country. In a way, Mr. Bouie’s description is apt; Hillary Clinton is the natural successor to President Obama. She’s a shameless, false, self-serving, empty pantsuit. She, like the current President, will look deep into the camera and lie without so much as a nervous blink. And, as President Obama before her, she’ll have Jamelle Bouie and a small army of eager scribes on sabbatical from the Ministry of Truth churning out reams of rubbish  in her defense.  The people who managed to transcend their own congenital racial animus and cast a vote for Obama will push past the latent sexism pressed into them by the Patriarchy and give identity politics another try. Third time’s a charm, and all that.

Apparently, there isn’t enough Ny-Quil in the world to make Hillary go away completely. I only hope that the disease which causes this particular cough isn’t terminal. If the country elects the Natural Successor to President Obama, I’d say the prognosis is grim indeed.