Palin Pathology: What's Wrong with Sarah and Her Fans?

[Leo 9]

Palin Pathology: What's Wrong with Sarah and Her Fans?

Diary Entry by Mark C. Eades




The revelation that McCain/Palin campaign volunteer Ashley Todd mutilated herself in an apparent race-baiting attempt to draw white voters away from Barack Obama again raises troubling questions about the McCain/Palin campaign and many of its most zealous supporters. By her own admission to Pittsburgh police, the 20-year-old Texan chose to submit a fictional report that she was attacked and robbed at an ATM the night of Oct. 22 by a tall black man who became enraged, beat her, and carved a "B" into her cheek after seeing a McCain-Palin bumper sticker on her car. Todd said the man told her that he was going to teach her a lesson for supporting McCain, and that now she was going to be a "Barack supporter." To support her claim she apparently blackened her own eye and carved a backward "B" on her own face in a mirror (see AP, KDKA, Huffington Post).

Unfortunately, I am not the least bit surprised by Ms. Todd's actions. I would never suggest that all McCain/Palin supporters are crazy, but a significant number particularly of Sarah Palin's most zealous supporters have exhibited behavior sufficiently extreme to suggest that some form of social pathology is indeed taking root in the grotesque traveling circus the McCain/Palin campaign has become. McCain/Palin rallies, and particularly Palin rallies, have turned into festivals of hate as attendees shout "Terrorist!" and "Kill Him!" at each mention of Obama's name and vent their rage at the media by attacking reporters. Numerous written accounts and video clips now circulating online attest to the rabidly hateful behavior of many supporters at McCain/Palin rallies, as well as to their insistence on believing that Obama is a secret Muslim, a terrorist, and perhaps even the Antichrist, even though such rumors have been denounced as lies by Republicans as well as Democrats. Presented with the facts of Obama's American roots and Christian faith, these zealots prefer to hide behind paranoid theories of an unholy, foreign Obama no rational person would take seriously.

Comparisons with Nazis and other historical extremes are all too often facile and gross overstatements of one's case, and are usually best avoided. It is worth noting, however, that the rise of the Nazis in Germany and other examples of extreme demagoguery from history such as the Cultural Revolution in China under Mao Zedong and the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia contained elements common to many such movements, if in less extreme forms. The Nazis, Mao's Red Guards, and the Khmer Rouge all made use of xenophobia and anti-cosmopolitanism, hatred of intellectuals, disdain for cities and the people who inhabit them, and other forms of divisive populism and "anti-elitism" to build working-class and peasant support and to fashion scapegoats at which popular anger might usefully be directed. Infamously in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, even possessing the soft hands of an educated urbanite was enough to get one executed; and at Chinese universities during the Cultural Revolution professors were thrown from their classroom windows to their deaths on the pavement below. Hitler's Nazis are known not only for the death camps they operated, but also for the persecution of artists and intellectuals as well as for festive book-burnings before cheering mobs of working-class Nazi supporters.

John McCain, Sarah Palin, and other Republicans today are cynically making use of these same forms of demagoguery in their attempt to frighten voters away from Barack Obama and the Democrats. Cultural buttons are pushed in ads and speeches inflaming fear and hatred of the "Other." Attendees at McCain/Palin rallies are told that they are the only "real Americans," and that liberals and other enemies are out to subvert their values and destroy their way of life. They are invited to spew hate at Democratic politicians and news reporters. They are whipped into a frenzy and then sent out to spread the McCain/Palin message of irrational fear and hatred among their fellow Americans. Just as these methods produced extreme results in Nazi Germany, Mao's China, and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, so they are producing extreme results today across Sarah Palin's America, if not so very extreme.

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http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=10352

[indepat]

1. It could be convincingly argued that most of the 'puke mantra/agenda is but a

singular virulent pathology. :P

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Folks, be vigilant

especially after the election. We've already seen here in Arkansas what unhinged nutcases can do to Democrats.

[Hestia]

5. What happened in Ark? I've heard nothing. I'm in PB.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. Head of Democratic Party murdered

some nutcase walked into headquarters and shot him. He was shot by cops later.

[awoke_in_2003]

3. "I would never suggest that all McCain/Palin supporters are crazy"

Well, if you won't, I will :)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. The ones who contribute to Internet forums clearly are

They may be illiterate and ill-informed, a few (very few) are erudite and use big words, but they all exhibit the characteristics of cult members. They don't need no stinkin' proof.

If one of their masters says it, it's true, and they have been taught over the years to automatically reject any information that doesn't come from one of the approved sources--Bush/Cheney news conferences, Fox News, radio talk show hosts, the fundamentalist press.

They trust what one of their fellow cultists says ("I know someone who had a friend who went to an ER in France and it was like the nineteenth century") over what reliable sources say. They sit around in bars and at water coolers reinforcing one another's prejudices.

If confronted with proof that one of their heroes is wrong, they accuse that person of "liberal bias," just as religious cultist will accuse someone who disagrees with them (even a person whose religious views are pretty close to but not identical to theirs) as "an agent of Satan."

[Psyop Samurai]

7. Excellent piece... k&r

[Mnemosyne]

8. Needs more KnR. A moran at the store last night decided to "educate" me.

"You need to know that Obama wants to kill all those little babies."

I was so surprised the first thing I thought of to say was, "Faux News?".

"No, I saw it on c-span."

"Oh, the RNC.", and started snickering, just couldn't help it.

"Huh?"

"Are you for the 'war'?"

"Yep."

"Are you for the death penalty?"

"Sure am."

"Then don't tell me about "killing those little "babies".

He muttered something while walking away.

I stood there stewing for a minute, then thought better of it and left. I watched my back driving home.

A friend had phrased it that way to someone recently, worked well for her.

I'm in rural NW PA. Rednecks galore, actually surrounded by them! :scared:

Good idea to remain aware of surroundings. :hi: