“Boring, normal times” for Hillary Clinton Were Miserable for Just About Everyone Else
In 2013, the number of worldwide refugees passed 50 million people, the highest since World War II. In 2019 that number rose to 70 million, up from 43 million in 2009. Two thirds of those refugees come from come five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar, and Somalia (the U.S. has either bombed or stationed troops in four of those countries and ‘explored’ military-to-military engagement with the other, Myanmar). In Syria, 10.9 million citizens had been displaced as of 2015, or over half the country’s population.
Meanwhile, on the home front, “the majority of Americans have experienced a lost 17 years of growth” with the median income for non-elderly households falling 2.7% from 2000–2017. And the percentage of public school students eligible for lunch subsidies hit 51% in 2013, up from 38% in 2000.
So for millions of people, the years leading up to the Trump presidency were chaotic, dangerous and traumatic, but Hillary Clinton pines for these days of boredom and normalcy:
“I would like us to return to a presidency where we don’t have to wake up every day worried,” Mrs. Clinton said, adding, “I’d like us to get back to sort of boring, normal times.”
This shows just how out of touch Clinton is with the experiences of normal people dealing with an unprecedented period of economic inequality and global instability. On each of those issues, she has even contributed negatively either directly or indirectly: the Obama administration started covertly arming Syrian rebels in 2012, while she was still Secretary of State, and her husband deregulated complex financial instruments like credit default swaps that led directly to the financial crisis of 2008.
So, no Hillary we don’t want to go back to a pre-2016 world. Maybe if you relinquished your hold on the political process some positive ideas could surface in a world that has been anything but normal for a long time.
