I received a reply to a comment requesting me to repost it as a blog. My response was to a comment advocating voting for Hillary Clinton, then pressuring her to the left. I think my comment was posted late enough in the discussion that many who might have been interested, positively or negatively, did not have the opportunity to read it. Additionally, what seem to be increasing sightings of Bernie, with the encouragement of his surrogates, people I greatly respect, waving the Democratic platform in victory with the enthusiasm of Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich, is leaving an increasingly bitter taste in my mouth. For these reasons I decided to act on the kind suggestion and post my very first blog.

The comment to which I replied accepted, briefly, the full set of reservations about Hillary Clinton expressed here. (I don't know the rules about a blog responding to a comment, so I kept the references vague.) The commenter defined our job as progressives as to keep pushing her left. The commenter believes this pressure can be generated most effectively by first voting for her in November. I don’t see how casting a vote for HRC increases my ability to pressure her to the left. I don’t see how my vote, even though I disagree with her profoundly, can be separated from the votes of people who agree with her enthusiastically. It seems to me that proof of the existence of a sizable block of voters on the left unwilling to support her would give her a great deal more to think about. She may need those votes in 2020 running against a genuine Republican candidate. The least productive course it seems to me is reaffirming her belief that I have nowhere else to go.

In addition to referring to Hillary Clinton as “the banner choice,” the commenter closed with the statement:

Her one saving grace is although she is a hawk who will keep us engaged in wars around the word at least she will not blow it up, there is that!

The statement struck me as remarkably callous. (In response I make a number of references to the commenter's apparent limited concern for casualties that may or may not make sense in a stand alone blog.) We’re talking about a toddler permanently maimed in Gaza by the explosion that left her an orphan. We’re talking about the 500,000 Iraqi children who died as a result of US sanctions that Madeleine Albright called an acceptable price. (If anyone wondered about Ambassador Albright’s familiarity with the ordering of accommodations in hell, look no further.) This is ugly, heart-wrenching stuff people. The casualness with which Hillary Clinton contemplates the use of lethal force on a large scale terrifies me. Her failure to consider the cost in human terms horrifies me. As a result I posted the comment below, slightly edited to stand on its own.

Even if I agreed with your assessment that Hillary Clinton will limit her destruction to brown and yellow skinned people, I would be considerably less sanguine than you are. In fact I don't agree with you.

Hillary Clinton has already declared war on Syria and delivered an ultimatum to Iran; announced her standard for compliance is "distrust and verify;" and loudly proclaimed her intention to use force if Iran fails to measure up. (As far as I can tell Netanyahu has the final call on whether they've measured up.) So much for the people "not like us."

Clinton has also announced plans for a "no fly zone" in Syrian airspace that would order, with no justification in international law, the Russians to stop flying over a country with which they have been had a series of agreements including an agreement establishing a naval base going back into the period where they were the Soviet Union. Clinton’s surrogates indicate she plans to increase lethal aid to the Ukrainian government. Maybe escalation will be limited to a civil war in which thousands of ethnic Ukrainians and thousands of ethnically Russian Ukrainians die. But can you count on it? Are you willing to bet the survival of the planet on it?

The US, significantly as a result of Hillary Clinton's activities as Secretary of State, is pushing Putin in a way that the United States has never pushed a Russian president. The origins of the tension are clear enough. Gorbachev made a huge concession to George H. W. Bush. The Soviets withdrew forces from former Warsaw Pact members. In return the US pledged the eastern boundary of NATO would move from the inter German border to the eastern border of a united Germany and no further.

The Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary were admitted to NATO in 1999. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia were added in 2004. The total was rounded out with Albania and Croatia in 2009. The extent to which Georgia has moved down the path to NATO membership is a subject for debate.

Russia is signaling "no further" in every manner possible short of war. They are engaging in dangerous military maneuvers near US forces, particularly those in and near the Baltic Republics. By their nature these maneuvers increase the risk of accident. The US fits these confrontations into its theme of the horrible dictator Putin.

Donald Trump wears his mental problems on his sleeve. Hillary Clinton's are a bit more subtle. You have to discern them in such things as her reaction to the capture of a head of state who was subsequently beaten, sodomized with a bayonet, and murdered. "We came. We saw. He died." When Hillary Clinton becomes president lots of people are going to die. More of them may be Caucasian than you think.