In which I actually side with Hillary Clinton

First, I would like to be very clear about where I stand on certain issues.

I do not like discussing politics.  This is not because I find political theory boring, but because I become incredibly frustrated with politicians and voters who seem to think their only job in life is to beat the Other Side, whoever that happens to be.  That being said, I am not prepared nor would I be willing even if I were prepared to engage in any sort of political debate.  There are places for such discussions.  This blog is not one of them.

I am, for all intents and purposes, a conservative in most areas.  I do not subscribe to or align myself with any one political group because I find it pointless.  I will vote for who I think will be the best leader in light of my personally held values no matter what ticket they are running on.  As a conservative, I am quite tired of fellow conservatives being unfair, rude and libelous to liberal candidates and political officials.

I am not completely familiar with the Benghazi case, though I do know the basic facts.  Recently, I noticed an increasing number of posts on various social media outlets referencing Hillary Clinton’s now-infamous statement of “What difference does it make…?” regarding the Benghazi assault. I am fairly used to hyper conservatives blowing things way out of proportion (to the point of sounding like paranoid schizophrenics at times…but that’s a discussion for another day), so I decided to research a bit for the context of this statement.

The results of my (approximately) thirty seconds of Internet research didn’t surprise me, but they did irritate me.

Okay, let’s get this straight: Clinton was questioned about why information regarding the nature of the attacks was withheld from and/or misrepresented to the public for a few days.  Her stance was that the entire situation was complicated, they had four people dead and others injured, her department could not interfere with the FBI investigation, and  the information being received about this attack was fluid because it was an ongoing investigation.  I have no idea if any of that is true, but it is my understanding of her stance on the matter at the time of this interview.  At one point in the interrogation (because, let’s face it, whoever that senator was who asked her questions needed to calm himself down) of Clinton, she slipped into present tense when explaining a past-tense situation.  She was explaining the complexities of the situations relating to the case that had to be dealt with immediately following the assault and at that point uttered the aforementioned phrase.

And she has been slammed for it repeatedly ever since with no context given to the statement whatsoever.

What this senator did was essentially like someone demanding to know why Americans weren’t informed of the Boston Marathon bombers’ exact motives in the middle of the manhunt.  People are dead and injured.  There are bombers on the loose. At that point, what difference does it make what their motives were or are or will be? Help the injured, catch the guilty, and deal with motives at the appropriate time.

Clinton’s response was understandable considering the situation.

Now, I have no idea if Clinton or her staff acted in the right during the attack and the aftermath.  But, the statement she made has been ripped out of context and manipulated by hyper conservatives to make it sound as if Clinton didn’t care about the people who died or about the situation overall.  That is not what she was expressing, and anyone who would actually take six minutes to watch the C-SPAN clip I linked to above can see that.

I’m just so sick of people on either side of the aisle blowing political statements out of proportion and taking things out of context.  If someone does something truly scandalous or heartless, fine, shine some light on it if it’s relevant to American politics; but taking statements like this one, which in context is perfectly legitimate, and using them to paint a horrible picture of a political candidate only makes the accusing party look as if they are unable to determine intention based on context.

I may be wrong about something, and if I am, I’ll take the corrections.  But, from what I can tell, the only mistake Clinton made in this exchange was using a present-tense sentence when she was referring to a past incident.  The backlash surrounding a grammatical error is absurd and, quite frankly, is the type of thing that embarrasses me as a conservative voter.