Well, folks, it’s officially hit the shelves: Hillary Clinton’s latest book, which may as well just be dubbed “The Comprehensive Guide to Not Taking Responsibility for Anything, Ever”. The memoir, entitled What Happened, was released by publisher Simon & Schuster on Tuesday.

Back in August I wrote a brief review of the excerpt Clinton’s publisher had shared, in which I was less than impressed. But now that the memoir has been released in its entirety, I figured I’d give it a chance. Maybe it would surprise me and not be chock-full of whining and blame-shifting. Maybe Hillary would say something somewhat intelligent for once. Maybe she’d finally accept responsibility for her catastrophic failure of a presidential run.

Hey- a guy can dream, right?

So I sat down and mentally prepared myself to read What Happened. At first, I thought that to make the whole thing a bit less agonizing, I could make a game out of it and take a swig of vodka every time Hillary lied. I quickly realized this was a terrible idea, since I’d probably need my stomach pumped before the introduction was over.

The book with Clinton describing her feelings of regret over the way she handled her presidential run: “In this book, I write about moments from the campaign that I wish I could go back and do over”. She repeatedly promises to “let down [her] guard” in the following chapters and give readers the raw truth. Even while attempting to sound candid and honest, Clinton’s trademark insincerity emanates from the pages like noxious fumes from a dumpster fire.

She laments her poor campaign decisions, saying “If the Russians could hack my subconscious, they’d find a long list”. Is she trying to show us that she’s developed a sense of humor? Are we all just pretending this woman didn’t revert to a Ralph Lauren-clad lump of bitterness after the election, and that she’s suddenly cultivated the humility to laugh at herself now?

This is embarrassing. Let’s move on.

Clinton says that the presidential loss was on her and is something that she’ll “live with for the rest of [her] life”, yet proceeds to blame the media, James Comey, sexism, Russia, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and even the electoral system itself for thwarting her presidential dreams.

She then gets personal, describing her state of mind during the campaign and sharing some of her inner thoughts—a passage that’s disturbing, to say the least. Clinton, in her own words, was “tempted to make voodoo dolls of certain members of the press and Congress and stick them full of pins”. What a shame the American populace had the good sense not to elect someone so openly sadistic!

This book is yet another example of Hillary Clinton trying too hard to seem relatable and sincere (and failing, might I add)– her contrived vulnerability coming across as forced and phony. Her whole performance of this “I’m just like you!” role has always struck me as completely transparent, artificial, and strange.  It’s as if she’s an alien who’s been tasked with mimicking human behavior, but just can’t manage to figure it out.

As she spends the next segment rattling off the forces allegedly at blame for her election loss, I noticed something curious – Clinton, in her laundry list of villains, never once names anyone she actually should be pointing fingers at. She doesn’t go after John Podesta for his personal email leak. She doesn’t blame Debbie Wasserman Schultz for the chaos that erupted in the Democratic Party. She doesn’t talk about how she should have spent less time behind closed doors with her millionaire corporate donors and more time reaching out to people in states like Michigan and Wisconsin. She evades the truth, as usual.

As I neared the end, I found myself questioning the book’s purpose- why did Clinton write this? Who asked for this? Who exactly is the audience for this waste of paper? Clinton doesn’t reveal anything particularly fascinating, nor does she offer any new insight on the political process in America.  Everybody already knows why her campaign tanked, so what was the point of writing this book? In the author’s note, Clinton seems to articulate a statement of purpose, saying that “the lessons we draw from 2016 would help determine whether we can heal our democracy and protect it in the future”.

…okay. So, again, I ask you this, Hillary: who the hell is this book even for?

By the book’s conclusion, it was clear that Clinton had more or less penned the memoir not for her liberal followers, friends in Congress, legions of rabid supporters in blue states, or her political enemies, but rather for herself. That’s right: once again, Hillary Clinton manages to be completely self-serving under the guise of edifying others. (Can this woman ever change?)

Clinton wrote What Happened to comfort herself over her crushing loss and attempt to convince the rest of the country that she is somehow at peace with it all. Saying that she’s learned from her mistakes and that the election loss was her fault is nothing more than a sad attempt to give herself some sense of closure and control over the entire situation.

This is what it’s like to be inside the mind of an entitled bureaucrat desperately scrambling for political relevance.

Hillary Clinton is trying to capitalize on the worst campaign in American history. She is trying to profit off of her failure. She is manipulating the American public into thinking that she actually learned something from her trainwreck of a campaign, so that she may eventually use this newfound “wisdom” to make her way back into the national spotlight.

It’s time for all this to stop. America, let’s put the Clinton legacy to rest.

As I finished the last page of What Happened and closed the book, I felt a sense of relief wash over me. “At last!” I thought, “It’s over…it’s really over.”

Let’s hope we can finally say the same about Hillary Clinton’s political career.

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