The Queen of Hearts Rages On

One of the most interesting kinds of historical events are those in which a feared dictator or tyrant is deposed or overthrown in a coup. I'm not talking about assassination here, or "decapitation" -- e.g. by a foreign government, like the way we dealt with Diem and Allende and Saddam, and tried to do with Castro. No, this is where internal pressures build up to such a pitch that people are willing to put their lives on the line in order to get rid of the person at the top, figuring that if they succeed, all will be well, and if they fail, well, it was worth the effort. It does not involve direct violence -- at least not at first. It may simply be a matter of putting the person out on the street, or sending them into exile, or to jail. And in many cases it's a very perilous business. There is the matter of timing -- of convincing the right people at the right time to cooperate, or at least not interfere. There is also the matter of "P.R.", i.e. convincing the citizenry that the time has come for a change. The consequences of failure are grave -- in fact, they might be _the_ grave. Two examples from the communist world are the fall of Beria after the death of Stalin, and the fall of Chiang Ching after the death of Mao. It could have very well gone the other way; but fortunately it didn't. Western democracies don't usually have as many cases of this sort, or on such a dramatic level. But sometimes there are exceptions. Like right now with the Democrats. There is apparently a movement afoot to somehow, by some means, push the Clintons off the throne of power in the Democratic party, because it's felt that they've become a liability and an anchor, and a threat to the future of the party. To which my first question is, hey guys, this has been true since the start of the Bill Clinton administration -- why are you just now waking up to the fact? But never mind all that. It suddenly seems that Hillary is some large, tentacle-laden sea creature, pulling the Democrat boat into the deep, with all on board, like in those old engravings of encounters with sea monsters. And this may very well be the case, and the few semi-clear thinkers in the Democratic Party who see it deserve some credit, I guess. But they have a problem. The Clintons are co-owners of the party. They were given the keys way back in the early 1990s and have never given them up. Bill Clinton is worshipped as a deity by the Democrats; he is held on high, bowed to and adored like the Olympian Zeus, despite all the damage he has done to the party over the years. Hillary, on the other hand, is not so much worshipped as feared. These rumblings and murmurings about her way-too-old campaign have to be kept sotto voce, because who knows, she might wind up winning after all, and then it will be payback time for anyone who ever breathed a word of doubt. This is what they're all afraid of. She is known for grudge holding and having a zeal for vengeance, and for being totally ruthless, no matter the race, creed, color, or party affiliation of her victim. So people have to whisper, and creep about, and continue to defer, because, in a word, she scares the crap out of them. Now, of course, one could argue that their dilemma is richly deserved, since the Clintons are, after all, the two-headed beast that the Democrats created in the first place. And this is all perfectly true. Like the monster, or robot, or automaton, that some scientist created to make the world a better place, once it turns on you regrets set in, but then it's too late. And in Hillary's case, as I've said before, the party insiders know something Obama clearly does not, which is that the Clintons have more tricks up their sleeve, which will only be brandished at the convention. To the casual observer, Hillary's "upset" victory will seem bizarre and mysterious, but to those who understand how party politics really work it will be no surprise at all.