Hillary the Nietzschean

Everyone's mocked Hillary for her "mis-speaking." Only Bryan Appleyard, however, has come close to diagnosing the underlying illness. Her narcissism, he says, has caused her to elevate the survival and propagation of her self-image above all other values, such as a respect for reality.
In this sense, Hillary is a good Nietzschean. So-called "truth", he said, is just "a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms -- in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically" in the service of the pursuit of power.
To him, the founding fact about the world is not external reality but rather our own wills: 

Nothing is “given” as real other than our world of desires and passions and...we cannot access from above or below any “reality” other than the direct reality of our drives...Seen from inside, the world defined and described according to its “intelligible character” would be simply “will to power” and nothing else. (Beyond Good and Evil.)

The important thing here, though, is that Hillary is not unique. Prioritizing the will to power over the truth is a defining feature of managerialism. Managers presume that the world can be bent according to their will. And, time being a tricky thing, it's a small step from thinking the future is wholly malleable to thinking the past and present are as well - as Stalin knew in his notorious doctoring of Russian history. Hillary's "mis-speaking" is in the same category as New Labour's smearing of David Kelly and bosses' presentation of company accounts not as objective measures of corporate performance but as vindications of their own success. All subordinate "truth" to ego.
Now, I'm not suggesting Hillary, or bosses generally, do this consciously. I suspect instead that Hillary has lived so long within the purely imaginary world of the decision-maker that she has long forgotten the distinction between her own will and reality.
But the distinction does exist, if only because "reality" is the product of others' wills as well as her own. So perhaps Hillary's tragedy is not merely her Nietzschean narcissism, but also her solipsism.

Comments

[dearieme]

Wasn't there a big-bucks Democrat backer who said recently that he was appalled at how readily and expertly both Clintons lied? On what evidence do you assume that it is not conscious lying? Ditto for "bosses"?

[kinglear]

I'm sure we all colour the truth a little from time to time ( changing the punch line on something that has happened to you to make it funnier? Forgetting something then giving an excuse with a smidgeon of truth in it?)Where I think Hillary and Bill differ is in the same way as Tony Blair did. He genuinely believed he had seen Jackie Milburn playing football.Hillary believed she was under sniper fire. It's only a short hop to Blair's 5 times a night and Bill's "I did not have sex with that woman". Come again? Oh, perhaps a small misspeak there....

[Scratch]

Funnily enough some crank in the Guardian today claimed Obama was a Neitzchean too...but in a good way.

Maybe they should sack the nomination process off and have it out with broadswords on some Bavarian crag.

[amerkin]

So, what's she supposed to do, Mr. Smarty Pants, "Stay home, bake cookies, and have TEEEEEAAAAAAS?"

[chris]

Dearieme - a conscious liar would know that it's stupid to lie about an event that the world's cameras caught on film. I can't believe Hillary is that daft.

[Philip Hunt]

"Managers presume that the world can be bent according to their will."

I used to work for someone like this. He apparently genuinely thought that if he said enough times, with enough emphasis, "the project *will* be completed on time", then somehow it would magically happen.

[dearieme]

"I can't believe Hillary is that daft." There we differ.

[Will Davies]

Al Gore would be another obvious example. This time eight years ago, we were all marvelling at his bizarre claims - remember how he "invented the internet"?

Maybe it's smarter to stick to the Republican strategy, and repeat the same lie over and over again, but about your enemy, rather than this riskier option of chucking together stories about oneself on the hoof.

[DBX]

Or how Gore was misquoted? He never said he invented anything. The press made it up, purely and simply. And Gore's failure was not to shoot back when journos, Republicans and other low-lifes made stuff up about him -- on this and on many other issues.

On the other hand, there's no doubt that it is better politics to stick to making stuff up about your opponents (a "claim") as opposed to about yourself (a "fib").

At least Hillary completely deserves whatever blowback she's getting from this. Dreadful person.

[Homphobic Horse]

Countenancing this pernicious Nietzschean vitalism puts you on the road to destruction.