To the editor:

If nothing else, this presidential election has provided perfect clarity on just how stupid they think we are in Washington DC. There is no better example than the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. Hillary's been tacking left since Bernie announced his candidacy but the stuff she's saying lately rivals some of Sarah Palin's Greatest Hits. It should shock a lot of people into understanding they've been just as stupid as the people they've been calling stupid.

Every word out of Hillary Clinton's mouth seems to work against her at this point. For anyone with a shred of memory, intelligence or ability to perceive irony, listening to this New Democrat triangulator bellowing about her progressive cred is beyond laughable. Last year she was proudly proclaiming herself a centrist. Her campaign's apparent strategy to boost low poll numbers on honesty is by telling increasingly wild and obvious whoppers.

The most casual study of Hillary Clinton's career shows that Wall Street has been her faithful benefactor every step of the way. Insinuating that the people who've paid her political way since the start (in the State of NY, oddly enough) and contributed millions to put her in the White House, twice, are worried about what she'll do when she gets there isn't a joke, it's an insult to our intelligence. As is her self-proclaimed foreign policy expertise that is in reality a record of culpability in the spread of failed states and world-wide, neo-con provocations as secretary of state. The quality of her judgment proves the exact opposite of what she claims and the strength of her convictions obviously changes on the fly to suit the occasion. One's truth is another's low, artful smear.

As usual the real story is the one the press is studiously ignoring. The Republican vaudeville show makes what passes for journalism these days easy beans; a powder house full of people competing to see who can light the most matches writes itself. The story they are delivering on the Democrat side is much different. The only way they can play it is by the officially sanctioned, “conservative vs. liberal" DC script. Unfortunately for them, they are reporting live from a house of cards that's come crashing down. The corporate press are figuratively turning in daily reports on the emperor's wonderful new suit of clothes while an increasingly loud, off camera voice is shouting, "Hey, dummies! He's naked!" In a Brooklyn accent.

Bernie Sanders has torn up the script and is speaking to the American people like adults instead of dim-witted children . He's saying that money in politics, the fragile boom and bust economy, the millions of off-shored jobs, our crumbling public commons and the bitter divisiveness poisoning America aren't separate subjects, they are the end result of decades of bi-partisan corruption and deceit. He's saying together, We the People can demand it ends. The only other alternatives are either childish fantasies of America going back to some perfect, lily white "Leave it to Beaver" world that never actually existed or the status quo's solemn assurance that what we have right now is the best we can realistically expect and that it's a pipe dream to think change can happen simply because the American people want it to.

The whole wretched deception relies on us being as stupid as they tell us we are. Historically, that's usually the last bit of self deception the status quo enjoys prior to a revolution.

Joe Sexton

Westport