Conspiring to criticize the Clintons

It’s unethical to question ethics, supporters say

Hillary Clinton’s camp, which famously claimed that a “vast, right-wing conspiracy” tried to destroy her and her husband, now claims that criticisms against them are nothing more than “absurd conspiracy theories.”

On the face of it, the conspiracy is different this time around. Nearly two decades ago, the Clintons were mocked for fearing that a powerful cabal of Republicans was secretly attacking the president; last week, the Clintons mocked the fear that they secretly abused her position as secretary of state by, among other things, not disclosing donations from powerful foreign individuals and businesses to the Clinton Foundation.

Still, the Clinton camp’s incongruous claims about conspiracies seem divorced even more by logic than by circumstance — so inconsistent, so deeply irreconcilable, each so mutually and stubbornly opposed to the basic disposition of the other toward the very existence of conspiracies, that when the same group voices both claims, you half-wonder if, in hearing them, you have been put at increased risk of suffering an aneurysm. The first claim suggests that powerful, shadowy figures are pulling the strings from behind the curtain. The second claim suggests that it’s paranoid to fear shadows, strings and curtains. Unless they put air quotes around it, the type of people who use the word “conspiracy” aren’t usually the same who immediately follow it up with the word “theory.”

But the Clintons defy easy typologies. Remarkably, their sincere fear of a mass conspiracy against them reinforces their sardonic dismissal of conspiracy theories about them: a conspiracy is afoot to portray us as conspirators, they warn. This symbiotic belief and disbelief in lurking puppetmasters rests on a simple premise, one supposedly so self-evident that it usually goes unspoken: the Clintons, brave defenders of the little guy, aren’t as powerful as the bad guys. So maybe the Clintons don’t defy easy typologies so much as they have shoehorned themselves into a type that they don’t easily fit.

While conspirators against the Clintons circulate conspiracy theories about the Clintons and the Clintons circulate conspiracy theories about the conspiracy theories, the rest of us may wonder: under what conditions is it reasonable to raise concerns about powerful individuals, corporations and organizations, and to criticize the extent of their power?

Ideally, it would be considered unreasonable not to raise such concerns. But where powerful figures are also polarizing figures, their power becomes as precious to some as it is threatening to others. To supporters, the only reasonable justification for criticism of their preferred group’s power is often flagrant rule-breaking, usually of the criminal kind. All other criticisms are “hit jobs.”

But ethical concerns aren’t moot simply because a public figure may not have been caught committing bribery, fraud or the reckless destruction of a perfectly nice blue dress. On an intellectual level, that’s obvious enough to enough people. The problem isn’t that we’re too stupid to understand that public ethics don’t begin and end with egregious law or rulebreaking. The problem is that we’re often too afraid of the wrong thing to care. We fear that the people we trust aren’t powerful enough to protect our interests, rather than fear that they may abuse their power and render themselves unworthy of our trust. When this fear dominates, we may think it unethical to blow the whistle on their unethical behaviour. What’s more, we may think it crazy.

So crazy that, to some liberals in the United States and elsewhere, the Clintons actually sound sane when they behave as though they have no obligation to address a perceived conflict of interest that involves broken promises to the current president, undisclosed funds and Russia, or to address the fact that this perceived conflict of interest took place while the person aspiring to be president was courageously resisting the dark machinations of public email servers. Clinton’s campaign has released a breezy memo dismissing all concerns about the issue as “attacks,” and promised that she will “continue to focus on how to help everyday Americans get ahead and stay ahead.”

You’d have to be nuts to criticize her for that.