Bounced from Jose

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[I believe that this message and Kurt's bounced because it was posted while
the archives index was being built. I will look into this problem on Monday
when Panix is open for business.]

Michael,

    Where do you get the idea that Clinton committed rape?
    You say Ken Starr's case was bogus -- but what Clinton did wasn't
"right."
    What was it that you think was wrong with what Clinton did? Poor
technique with the cigar? Lack of reciprocity? Not bringing Hillary in for a
threesome?
    Or are you one of those, "it's not the sex, it's the lying" folks?

    *    *    *

    As for impeachment: I do not think Clinton should have been impeached
for bombing Iraq or Yugoslavia or kidnapping Elián. It would not change
anything. The solution to those kinds of problems isn't to impeach Clinton
but to carry out a revolution against capitalist rule. In the meantime,
however,I don't think it'd make the slightest difference if you had Bore or
Gush in there instead of Clinton. And Just as I wouldn't have voted for Bush
or Gore over Clinton in an election (or vice-versa), I wouldn't vote to
replace Clinton with Gore in the House or Senate, which is what impeachment
amounts to.
    I can perfectly well understand why the bourgeoisie might want to
replace an especially hated or discredited president; makes it hard to
govern. But really, that's THEIR problem. Whether Bush or Gore, Gore or
Clinton, Nixon or Agnew or Rockefeller or Ford or Humphrey, really I could
care less.

    I was, however, decidedly against this specific impeachment of Clinton;
if I had been in the house or senate, I would have voted WITH the Democrats
AGAINST the articles in the House and AGAINST  conviction in the Senate. I
think taking a line like "let's impeach him for his *real* crimes," would
have been an adaptation to the pressure of bourgeois public opinion (the
press, the pundits, the politicians, not, of course, the public, whose
*real* opinion was against the puritanical witch-hunt from day one) and a
capitulation to the right wing offensive against the right of all people and
especially working people to privacy and to have consensual sexual relations
without let or hindrance from the feds.
    'That's because I'm for the right to privacy. Cops and courts and
politicians have NO RIGHT to *ask* about such matters, never mind sit in
judgment on them.

*   *   *

    I for the life of me don't understand what rape, (or assault and
battery, infanticide, genocide, armed robbery, the death penalty)  have to
do with the matter. Getting a blow job is one thing. Raping someone is
another. Rape isn't an act of sex; it's an act of violence.

José


Louis Proyect
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