Liberals obsessed with Sarah Palin
October 21, 2008 – 11:21 pm by JohnMy hardcore-Democrat friends (read: my friends) are officially obsessed with Sarah Palin. Not in the stupid, absurd way in which Charles Murray or Rich Lowry are, but it is no less pathetic. They gave up talking about the issues three or four weeks ago—although they did watch the idiotic and substanceless debates like the good sheeple that they are—probably because it is obvious to all of them that the only evil people in the country write an (R) after their name and Barack Obama is the Savior of America. There’s nothing to discuss along those lines, I imagine. They all agree on who has the right solutions, though they couldn’t articulate what those solutions are particularly well, or come close to explaining how they are going to work. So they occupy themselves with denigrating Sarah Palin at every turn, referring to this interview or that SNL skit, deriding this or that mistake she made while ignoring five worse ones by Joe Biden—and I think half the girls I know are dressing up as Palin for Halloween. At least, they claim they are.
It is pathetic. I still love what Arthur Silber had to say about that type of person, in a powerful and passionate essay that can’t be done justice by quoting small snippets at a time.
…the nature of many of the attacks on Sarah Palin continues to shock and astound me. Bad enough that much of the hatred for Palin proceeds directly from the loathing of women as such that is one of the pillars supporting Western “civilization” and thought. Bad enough that a great deal of the contempt directed at Palin stems from a thoroughly odious sense of class superiority: “She’s awful, my dear. She’s just not like us. And you know, she’s really — oh, dear, can I say this? But I must! — she’s just trash.” (I see that Walsh is incapable of giving up this line of attack, and her writing about Palin should disgust any decent human being.) It is a measure of how deeply stupid our discourse is that so many people still fall back on the “experience” argument: poor silly Sarah doesn’t have enough of it, don’t you know. Such people never identify exactly what the nature of such “experience” is, given our system of murderously violent militarist corporatism.
It is certainly true that Palin doesn’t speak in the comfortable circumlocutions and deliberately evasive phrases so beloved by Washington pols, and by most writers and far too many bloggers. To me, that is an enormous plus: more than any of the other three major candidates, Palin still appears somewhat recognizable as an actual human being. But for a decadent, murderous Empire entering what is likely to be an especially violent phase (both abroad and at home) as the fabric of day-to-day life shreds and tears apart, actual human beings are a hindrance to be avoided. Now we depend on form without meaning, symbolism drained of all content, vacant gestures designed to assure us that our world is not descending into bloody insanity.
Just for the hell of it, let’s compare two passages from the vice presidential debate. Here is Palin:
Oh, yeah, it’s so obvious I’m a Washington outsider. And someone just not used to the way you guys operate. Because here you voted for the war and now you oppose the war. You’re one who says, as so many politicians do, I was for it before I was against it or vice- versa. Americans are craving that straight talk and just want to know, hey, if you voted for it, tell us why you voted for it and it was a war resolution.
And you had supported John McCain’s military strategies pretty adamantly until this race and you had opposed very adamantly Barack Obama’s military strategy, including cutting off funding for the troops that attempt all through the primary.
And I watched those debates, so I remember what those were all about.
But as for as Darfur, we can agree on that also, the supported of the no-fly zone, making sure that all options are on the table there also.
America is in a position to help. What I’ve done in my position to help, as the governor of a state that’s pretty rich in natural resources, we have a $40 billion investment fund, a savings fund called the Alaska Permanent Fund.
When I and others in the legislature found out we had some millions of dollars in Sudan, we called for divestment through legislation of those dollars to make sure we weren’t doing anything that would be seen as condoning the activities there in Darfur. That legislation hasn’t passed yet but it needs to because all of us, as individuals, and as humanitarians and as elected officials should do all we can to end those atrocities in that region of the world.
Palin offers some telling criticisms of Biden’s record in the first two paragraphs, and then provides details concerning her own views and her actions as Governor of Alaska regarding Darfur. I absolutely disagree with both Palin and Biden on Darfur insofar as military action by the U.S. is concerned, and I’ll return to that shortly.
Palin speaks comparatively plainly, using straightforward, everyday expressions. But her views are clear, and there is nothing notably “stupid” about what she says or how she says it — unless, that is, you have become so accustomed to Washington-speak that you have rendered yourself incapable of recognizing more normal human expression. Yet it is altogether remarkable how much time and concentration so many people devote to demonstrating how much smarter they are than Sarah Palin. Obviously, Palin is not any kind of “intellectual” (also an unqualifiedly admirable attribute in my view), and she is not an Einstein. So let me rephrase the point more colloquially: if you have to devote so much time and energy to proving you’re smarter than Sarah Palin, how pathetic are you? Here’s your answer: very pathetic. Most of those who repeatedly engage in this kind of Palin-bashing are nothing more than bullies. They’re the kind of people who, given half a chance, might torture small animals or pull the wings off flies. Our culture values bullying of this kind more highly than almost any other quality, and most people have learned the lesson very well.