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СпутникиРНSpaceXРоскосмосNASAAbsolutely! I think it's the kind of long-game thing people these days should actually learn from, because it's important.So first, let me say this: I am aware Clinton is a sleazebag. We don't know what he was doing in the Epstein files (Epstein wasn't just a human trafficker--he was involved in all kinds of shady shit), but we do know that at a bare minimum he abused his power and exercised undue influence with Monica Lewinsky, and the reason we know that is because he was under investigation for shady financial dealings and Ken Starr wanted to throw an entire library's worth of books at him.(It is worth noting that said shady financial dealings actually involved a lot of people around him. As far as we can tell, he and Hillary made some blisteringly poor financial decisions, but there's no evidence they actually knowingly committed any criminal acts in this regard.)With that said: he was a fucking amazing politician. Presidential scholars tend to put him in the top ten, and I agree; if I were asked to rank the presidents personally and I were to do so based only on his presidential actions (as opposed to his frankly appalling personal life), and with the understanding that I don't think it's fair to rank Washington at all because in so very many ways he was completely unlike any other president we've ever had (you can't compare him to a lot of later presidents because nobody had ever done the thing he was doing and also the fact that he was the first means in many ways he's near-mythic), I'd put Clinton in the top five. Look at his actual presidential achievements--he's the only U.S. President in history to have left office with a surplus in the budget!!--and you'll see why I put him there.So let's talk DADT, DOMA, queer rights, the AIDS crisis, and Grandmaster William Clinton.Clinton inherited the presidency after twelve years of Republican presidency. He came into an office where TPTB had mostly ignored HIV/AIDS and when it did come up it was usually in a horrible and judgmental light, and those of us old enough to have talked to queer elders who managed to survive this time period can tell you AIDS did in fact kill most of a queer generation and that it was Reagan's and Bush Sr's refusal to address it (at all for Reagan, meaningfully for Bush Sr) that made it so deadly and widespread. You know that Golden Girls episode everyone loves to talk about, the one where Rose has to get tested for AIDS? Aired less than three years before Clinton took the presidency. The Republicans being then almost as horrible as they are now, they hammered on "immoral homosexuality" and how HIV/AIDS was clearly G-d's punishment and How Dare Those Degenerates Want To Live. And into this came the following:Let's Define Marriage As Heterosexual In The Constitution And Add A Constitutional Amendment About Queer People Being Barred From The Military.(Please note that trans rights were not on the radar of basically anyone except trans people at this point, and that trans issues and identities themselves looked very different than they do today. When I'm using "queer" in this post, it's because to a Republican in 1992 a gay man, a cross-dresser, a trans person, and a single woman with short hair and a career were all the same thing, and that thing was Faggot. They said "homosexuals," but I assure you, they did not mean "cisgender gay men.")Enter the Grandmaster.At the time DADT was passed, you couldn't enter the military if you were queer. Just full stop. They would straight up ask you and if you lied and got caught it was a court-martial and possible imprisonment for you, along with a dishonorable discharge. When you consider that the vast majority of people who join the US military do so for financial stability and that a dishonorable discharge means loss of access to healthcare, education, and a steady paycheck, it's very clear this was a hell of a lot more than some mean words on a piece of paper. Republicans wanted to enshrine this in the Constitution.Clinton and his people did some massaging. But what, they argued, if The Current Everything with the breakup of the USSR and Balkanization and Yet Another Shitshow In The Middle East led to armed conflict? Was this really the time to be instigating witch hunts in the ranks? What if we just...didn't ask? I mean, clearly no sane person would openly announce their orientation if they knew discharge was awaiting. So they could just...marry the job, so to speak. Oh, of course they're mentally not all there. Of course we need to be sure we're not condoning that...degeneracy. But if they can control themselves, well, we need the manpower, don't we?This was blatantly unconstitutional. It's sex-based discrimination.But that was the point.Nobody wanted to take the part of queer people at the time. We were seen as disease-ridden hedonistic child-abusing animal-fucking communists who hated America and deserved to die. (That's not me being hyperbolic, by the way. Look up a guy named Rick Santorum.)Even those who sympathized with us often had to temper their support out of fear of losing their jobs, kids, homes (and yes--that is a very real thing that very really did happen to our allies, which is why, yes, the A does stand for three things and Ally is one of them, because there was a time when being an ally was just as dangerous as being queer).But Clinton had been around the block enough to see queer people as just...people.What we needed, what we did not have, what he could buy us by deliberately signing a shitty and unconstitutional law, was time.What DADT did was to prevent witch hunts and dogpiling. It was not perfect at this. It did not eliminate them. But it did make them significantly harder. And in the meantime, it let us build a reputation. So fifteen years later we had a whole slew of servicemembers who could say "I've served with distinction for a decade and a half. Why am I not allowed to bring my partner to official functions?"Because, well...that's different, isn't it? The average member of John Q. Public had already had time to get used to the idea of queer people existing. And this guy isn't a disease ridden hedonistic child-abusing etc. etc., he's a soldier. He has three separate merit awards, for fuck's sake. Respectability politics are bullshit, but they're time-tested bullshit, and Clinton knew we needed them because he'd come of age during the Civil Rights Movement. Him saying "they're people, Ron, isn't that enough?" wouldn't get us anywhere. Him saying he totally and completely of course understood the concern out one side of his mouth while signing a bill with more holes than a good piece of Swiss cheese? Oh, that would get us somewhere.It also gave us standing to actually go before the courts and say "so this is illegal, actually, and should be overturned." Previously that didn't exist. We needed to be able to point to something in case law that could be challenged. A lawyer could explain that part better than I can. But you can't say "this law is unconstitutional" if no law exists, and you can't say it's unconstitutional if it's part of the constitution.In short:Bill Clinton was handed a real-life trolley problem and he pulled the fucking lever, and because he did we had time to do actual coalition-building, develop positive visibility, turn the tide of public opinion, and create sympathetic cases that people would rally behind. In a world where he didn't pull that lever I think it's safe to say homosexuality itself might be rapidly careering toward being illegal in the US.He accepted a terrible stain on his legacy as the price he'd pay to protect the humanity of millions of people he'd never meet, because the only way to win that game was to make it a long one.So he played the long game. And that game was 5D chess. And because he put an opening gambit on the board, in 2015 we were able to checkmate.Exit the Grandmaster.
Absolutely! I think it’s the kind of long-game thing people these days should actually learn from, because it’s important.
So first, let me say this: I am aware Clinton is a sleazebag. We don’t know what he was doing in the Epstein files (Epstein wasn’t just a human trafficker–he was involved in all kinds of shady shit), but we do know that at a bare minimum he abused his power and exercised undue influence with Monica Lewinsky, and the reason we know that is because he was under investigation for shady financial dealings and Ken Starr wanted to throw an entire library’s worth of books at him.
(It is worth noting that said shady financial dealings actually involved a lot of people around him. As far as we can tell, he and Hillary made some blisteringly poor financial decisions, but there’s no evidence they actually knowingly committed any criminal acts in this regard.)
With that said: he was a fucking amazing politician. Presidential scholars tend to put him in the top ten, and I agree; if I were asked to rank the presidents personally and I were to do so based only on his presidential actions (as opposed to his frankly appalling personal life), and with the understanding that I don’t think it’s fair to rank Washington at all because in so very many ways he was completely unlike any other president we’ve ever had (you can’t compare him to a lot of later presidents because nobody had ever done the thing he was doing and also the fact that he was the first means in many ways he’s near-mythic), I’d put Clinton in the top five. Look at his actual presidential achievements–he’s the only U.S. President in history to have left office with a surplus in the budget!!–and you’ll see why I put him there.
So let’s talk DADT, DOMA, queer rights, the AIDS crisis, and Grandmaster William Clinton.
Clinton inherited the presidency after twelve years of Republican presidency. He came into an office where TPTB had mostly ignored HIV/AIDS and when it did come up it was usually in a horrible and judgmental light, and those of us old enough to have talked to queer elders who managed to survive this time period can tell you AIDS did in fact kill most of a queer generation and that it was Reagan’s and Bush Sr’s refusal to address it (at all for Reagan, meaningfully for Bush Sr) that made it so deadly and widespread. You know that Golden Girls episode everyone loves to talk about, the one where Rose has to get tested for AIDS? Aired less than three years before Clinton took the presidency.
The Republicans being then almost as horrible as they are now, they hammered on “immoral homosexuality” and how HIV/AIDS was clearly G-d’s punishment and How Dare Those Degenerates Want To Live. And into this came the following:
Let’s Define Marriage As Heterosexual In The Constitution And Add A Constitutional Amendment About Queer People Being Barred From The Military.
(Please note that trans rights were not on the radar of basically anyone except trans people at this point, and that trans issues and identities themselves looked very different than they do today. When I’m using “queer” in this post, it’s because to a Republican in 1992 a gay man, a cross-dresser, a trans person, and a single woman with short hair and a career were all the same thing, and that thing was Faggot. They said “homosexuals,” but I assure you, they did not mean “cisgender gay men.”)
Enter the Grandmaster.
At the time DADT was passed, you couldn’t enter the military if you were queer. Just full stop. They would straight up ask you and if you lied and got caught it was a court-martial and possible imprisonment for you, along with a dishonorable discharge. When you consider that the vast majority of people who join the US military do so for financial stability and that a dishonorable discharge means loss of access to healthcare, education, and a steady paycheck, it’s very clear this was a hell of a lot more than some mean words on a piece of paper. Republicans wanted to enshrine this in the Constitution.
Clinton and his people did some massaging. But what, they argued, if The Current Everything with the breakup of the USSR and Balkanization and Yet Another Shitshow In The Middle East led to armed conflict? Was this really the time to be instigating witch hunts in the ranks? What if we just…didn’t ask? I mean, clearly no sane person would openly announce their orientation if they knew discharge was awaiting. So they could just…marry the job, so to speak. Oh, of course they’re mentally not all there. Of course we need to be sure we’re not condoning that…degeneracy. But if they can control themselves, well, we need the manpower, don’t we?
This was blatantly unconstitutional. It’s sex-based discrimination.
But that was the point.
Nobody wanted to take the part of queer people at the time. We were seen as disease-ridden hedonistic child-abusing animal-fucking communists who hated America and deserved to die. (That’s not me being hyperbolic, by the way. Look up a guy named Rick Santorum.)
Even those who sympathized with us often had to temper their support out of fear of losing their jobs, kids, homes (and yes–that is a very real thing that very really did happen to our allies, which is why, yes, the A does stand for three things and Ally is one of them, because there was a time when being an ally was just as dangerous as being queer).
But Clinton had been around the block enough to see queer people as just…people.
What we needed, what we did not have, what he could buy us by deliberately signing a shitty and unconstitutional law, was time.
What DADT did was to prevent witch hunts and dogpiling. It was not perfect at this. It did not eliminate them. But it did make them significantly harder. And in the meantime, it let us build a reputation. So fifteen years later we had a whole slew of servicemembers who could say “I’ve served with distinction for a decade and a half. Why am I not allowed to bring my partner to official functions?”
Because, well…that’s different, isn’t it? The average member of John Q. Public had already had time to get used to the idea of queer people existing. And this guy isn’t a disease ridden hedonistic child-abusing etc. etc., he’s a soldier. He has three separate merit awards, for fuck’s sake. Respectability politics are bullshit, but they’re time-tested bullshit, and Clinton knew we needed them because he’d come of age during the Civil Rights Movement. Him saying “they’re people, Ron, isn’t that enough?” wouldn’t get us anywhere. Him saying he totally and completely of course understood the concern out one side of his mouth while signing a bill with more holes than a good piece of Swiss cheese? Oh, that would get us somewhere.
It also gave us standing to actually go before the courts and say “so this is illegal, actually, and should be overturned.” Previously that didn’t exist. We needed to be able to point to something in case law that could be challenged. A lawyer could explain that part better than I can. But you can’t say “this law is unconstitutional” if no law exists, and you can’t say it’s unconstitutional if it’s part of the constitution.
In short:
Bill Clinton was handed a real-life trolley problem and he pulled the fucking lever, and because he did we had time to do actual coalition-building, develop positive visibility, turn the tide of public opinion, and create sympathetic cases that people would rally behind. In a world where he didn’t pull that lever I think it’s safe to say homosexuality itself might be rapidly careering toward being illegal in the US.
He accepted a terrible stain on his legacy as the price he’d pay to protect the humanity of millions of people he’d never meet, because the only way to win that game was to make it a long one.
So he played the long game. And that game was 5D chess. And because he put an opening gambit on the board, in 2015 we were able to checkmate.
Exit the Grandmaster.
| # | Наименование новости | Тональность | Информативность | Дата публикации |
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