Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Hillary's knees buckle

Hillary Clinton, who has been dogged by questions about her health (and, by extension, questions about her fitness to serve in the nation's highest office for four to eight years), suffered a collapse, of sorts, as she exited a 9/11 Ground Zero ceremony early because of what some journos are calling "a medical episode." Some online news outlets are using the euphemism "wobble" to describe what happened to Clinton as she tried to step into a waiting vehicle in her motorcade, but if you watch the video, what you actually see is that Clinton's knees are locked at the beginning (probably to prevent her from falling); she teeters, then when she tries to step forward, her legs buckle, and she loses all power to keep herself upright. She is, after that, essentially manhandled into the vehicle while her entourage does its best to form a tight cordon that will prevent curious folks from videoing her collapse.

All sorts of hypotheses are flying around as to what ails Mrs. Clinton, and it seems, at long last, that questions about her health can no longer be dismissed as the ravings of marginal conspiracy theorists. One of her doctors has been quoted as claiming Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia, which brought up more questions as to why she was allowed to have that staged on-the-street moment with the child. Conservative talking heads have been openly wondering whether Clinton is hiding Parkinson's disease; a recent article on how she balks at drinking water has caused some to insist that Parkinson's is likely: she could be experiencing "aspirational pneumonia," which is associated with Parkinson's and other conditions.

Personally, I do suspect something neurological, although I'd say the jury's very much out regarding whether it's definitively Parkinson's. My own reason for suspecting something neurological, though, comes from experience with my mother's brain cancer. As Mom's cancer progressed, it became more and more difficult to take her on walks in our local park. In the early stages, Mom walked along fairly strongly, needing help mainly with balance but not with strength. As the months went on, however, Mom's legs became weak, and there were a couple moments during which her legs would simply buckle, and we'd be there to catch her and heave upward to prevent her from hitting the ground or scraping her knees. Even for a woman as light as she was, Mom was surprisingly heavy when it was time to lift her back to her feet. Watching Clinton being manhandled into the black van reminded me of the times we manhandled Mom back into a wheelchair.

So I watched the video, and as much as I personally dislike Hillary Clinton, I felt sympathy for her the moment her knees buckled. Because I've been there. There are limits to my Schadenfreude. This doesn't change my opinion of Clinton, but if she is indeed contending with some progressively deteriorating neurological condition, I also can't ignore the fact that she's just a woman suffering the natural ravages of mortality. There will always be plenty of reasons to rip Hillary apart, but for me, this collapsing episode isn't one of them.



4 comments:

King Baeksu said...

Did you notice how when she collapsed in front of the "Scooby Van," none of the Secret Service agents or campaign staff around her reacted with anything resembling surprise or shock? This wasn't the first time this has happened, and they all clearly knew the drill.

It's also rather sad that not a single professional reporter or journalist was there to actually film what happened. How much do these people get paid, anyway? Certainly far more than you and me. Why can't they bloody well earn it?

If you check out the YouTube channel of "Millennial Millie," she spots an ambulance in Clinton's motorcade, as she is leaving her now infamous hacking speech in Cleveland, Ohio last week. You can see an emergency medical stretcher being wheeled away from the campaign tent as well.

But fear not, fellow Americans. The American Pravda is here to tell us that questioning Hillary's health is a deplorable indication of our society's "misogyny" and still-rampant "sexism." Indeed, simply by turning up at the September 11th Memorial Service despite not feeling so well, Hillary Clinton displayed remarkable fortitude and courage. You go, girl!

Translation: Nothing to see here, folks, move along. And men are still such pigs, aren't they? Jeez!

TheBigHenry said...

If HRC is suffering from a debilitating disease like Parkinson's she deserves the sympathy of any caring individual. But, if that is indeed what is happening to her, and she and her entourage of campaign managers are hiding the fact from the public, for fear that it might hurt her chances of winning the election, then that is a whole nother ball of wax, as it were.

The electorate is entitled to know what a candidate's physical capacity is to execute the duties of the office she is campaigning for. To falsify that capacity would be highly unethical, if not, in fact, criminal. But hey, has that stopped her before?

Kevin Kim said...

Scott and Henry,

Agreed as to the ethics of the situation. There's a lot of rumbling, right now, about how Hillary's reflexive secretiveness in this matter only highlights her secretiveness in most other matters. None of this increases her trustworthiness.

King Baeksu said...

Suspicious as fuck.

I think it's the Internet that's finally going to do in Krooked Killary. The video of her collapse was evidently shot by an ordinary 50-year-old Czech immigrant to the US, who uploaded it to Twitter shortly thereafter. It then went viral almost immediately and has now been viewed by tens of millions of people. Back in the 1990s, an incident like this could have been quickly suppressed by the controlled MSM, but those days are long gone. Now Internet sleuths like those in the above Twitter thread are busy at work tearing the "official story" to shreds. You must admit that their zeal to uncover the truth seems far more genuine and sincere than just about all the hacks at The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC and CNN.

As I have argued before, Trump is the candidate of the Internet, and this is a major reason why he will win. Krooked Killary is still stuck in the 1990s, and has yet to realize, it would seem, that the legacy establishment media are up against a very nimble and virtually unstoppable new competitor. The Presidential Campaign of 2016 is the first "Great Meme War" in American history. It will be studied for generations afterwards.