{"id":4499,"date":"2016-11-06T18:20:47","date_gmt":"2016-11-06T23:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/?p=4499"},"modified":"2016-11-07T15:04:55","modified_gmt":"2016-11-07T20:04:55","slug":"hillarys-emails-a-socratic-dialogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/hillarys-emails-a-socratic-dialogue\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillary\u2019s Emails: a Socratic Dialogue"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hillary_clinton_by_gage_skidmore_3\"<\/a>So now we know there was no news after all in the “new!” email find<\/a>. \u00a0 That whole James Comey letter thing\u00a0should never have happened<\/a>; there was never any chance it would have changed anything legally but it was certain to have enormous political impact.<\/p>\n

In fact, the whole “email scandal” has been largely an exercise in imagination from the beginning, stemming in large part from the press’ need to find something scandalous in Hillary’s behavior. \u00a0I appreciated this exploration of it the other day from Steven Waldman at The Washington Monthly:<\/p>\n

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Hillary\u2019s Emails: a Socratic Dialogue<\/a><\/h2>\n

An imaginary conversation between a Clever\u00a0Person and a Confused Person who has not been following the email controversy:<\/p>\n

Clever Person: They\u2019re saying these latest revelations are as bad as Watergate.<\/a><\/p>\n

Confused Person: Wow. I haven\u2019t been following the whole email thing. Could you explain w<\/em>hat Hillary Clinton did wrong?<\/em><\/p>\n

She put her email correspondence on a private server in her house<\/a>\u00a0instead of using the State Department\u2019s server.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s strange. Is that illegal?<\/em><\/p>\n

No. But it\u2019s horribly unwise because spies and foreigners could get hold of highly sensitive classified information that way.<\/p>\n

Yikes. Foreigners hacked into her server?<\/em><\/p>\n

Well there\u2019s no evidence yet that that happened. But it could have.<\/p>\n

Obviously it would have been safer if she\u2019d have it on the government servers.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Definitely. Well, probably. Maybe. A lot of government emails have been hacked too, because government is incompetent.<\/p>\n

But not the State Department, I bet.\u00a0\u00a0 They\u2019re buttoned up because they deal with top secret stuff.<\/em><\/p>\n

Actually the State Department was hacked, too<\/a><\/p>\n

So the State Department\u2019s email was hacked and Hillary\u2019s wasn\u2019t? Maybe the rest of the State Department should have used her server in Chappaqua?<\/em><\/p>\n

Har har. Very funny. You\u2019re totally missing the point. She put highly sensitive\u00a0information potentially at risk. She sent 30,000 emails. And the FBI found classified <\/em>emails in her personal servers!<\/p>\n

That\u2019s horrible! I didn\u2019t mean to joke. That really is very serious. She sent tens of thousands of classified emails on her personal email. Wow.<\/em><\/p>\n

Um,\u00a0no, she sent 30,000 emails in total, but obviously not all of them were classified.<\/p>\n

Still, she sent thousands of classified emails. That\u2019s really reckless. I get it now.<\/em><\/p>\n

Actually it looks like she knowingly sent three classified emails.<\/p>\n

Three?<\/em><\/p>\n

Yes, three.<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh. Still, even a few top secret emails could lead to our enemies getting weapons of mass destruction or discovering who our spies are.\u00a0\u00a0 Was anyone hurt as a result? What did the emails disclose?<\/em><\/p>\n

One email mentioned that Kofi Annan was stepping down as a special envoy.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/ins><\/ins><\/ins>Don\u2019t they issue, like, press releases about that kind of thing?<\/em><\/p>\n

Yes, but don\u2019t you see \u2013 it hadn\u2019t happened yet.\u00a0\u00a0 So it was secret. So our enemies could have found out before<\/em> the press release. If they had hacked it.\u00a0Anyway, you\u2019re not listening. The most important discovery is that she deleted <\/em>30,000 emails!<\/p>\n

Whoaaaa. You buried the lead. That sounds horrible. She deleted 30,000 state department emails?<\/em><\/p>\n

Well no. She deleted 30,000 personal<\/em> emails.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s not allowed to delete her personal emails?<\/em><\/p>\n

She is but the problem is that she<\/em> got to decide which personal emails to delete.\u00a0\u00a0 She should have instead had a work phone and a personal phone. And she could have kept them separate that way.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m confused. In that scenario, wouldn\u2019t she also have been the one deciding what emails to send on her personal phone and what to write on her work phone?<\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s not the point. The point is that by deleting these emails she could be covering up all sorts of crimes.<\/p>\n

Ohhh. So these emails related to other crimes she\u2019d committed. Wow. That does sound like a cover up. Not very transparent, I must say. Don\u2019t they always say it\u2019s the cover up that\u2019ll get you in the end, or something like that?\u00a0\u00a0 What were the crimes she was covering up?<\/em><\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know of any \u2014\u00a0yet<\/em>. But there might be some related to Benghazi, though no one is saying she committed any crime there. But she showed very bad judgment.<\/p>\n

So the personal emails she deleted might have been related to a crime she didn\u2019t commit.<\/em><\/p>\n

Exactly. \u00a0Anyway, everything we thought we knew about this is now kerplooey because it turns out new batches of emails have been discovered! And get this: they were found on the computer of that creepy sex addict ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner! That\u2019s why people are saying this is a huge scandal. Emails\u2026.servers\u2026sex scandals\u2026Crooked Hillary<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Holy cow. Hillary was helping Anthony Weiner to solicit underage girls?<\/em><\/p>\n

No of course not.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m not some kind of crazy conspiracy theorist.<\/p>\n

Right, sorry.\u00a0\u00a0 So these are new emails that she didn\u2019t turn over before.<\/em><\/p>\n

Actually, we don\u2019t know that. They may be duplicates of the emails they already looked at.<\/p>\n

Oh, I thought you said they were new.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

They\u2019re on a new computer<\/em> \u2013 on a computer that also contained pictures of Anthony Weiner\u2019s penis.<\/p>\n

So these are emails that may or may not be from Hillary that may or may not have been duplicates, may or may not have been classified and may or may not have been related to any other wrongdoing. But they\u2019re on the same computer as Anthony Weiner\u2019s dick picks.<\/em><\/p>\n

Exactly. Can\u2019t you now see why this is as big as Watergate<\/a>?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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UPDATE, 11\/7: And BTW:<\/p>\n

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this is a complete train wreck pic.twitter.com\/1lWN3FLWcS<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) November 7, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n