Living in Sarah Palin's America

[seafan]

Living in Sarah Palin's America

By DAVID MICHAEL GREEN
September 20-21, 2008

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Sarah Palin and everything associated with her pick is truly the barometer of the country’s degradation. We are now talking about making someone the potential leader of the Free World who is even more ill-informed, even more rigidly dogmatic, and even more ideologically regressive than was the hapless George W. Bush of 2000. Only this time, we’re talking about doing so as we are still in the midst of eating eight years worth of the consequences of that same prior idiocy. We are folding in half Santayana’s famous adage about being condemned to repeat history, so that we are already screwing up again by the time we get to the second half of the sentence. To understand our current level of stupidity, one might imagine if, on the day after Pearl Harbor – as the smoke was still billowing over the wreckage and the bodies and oil still floating about the water’s surface – Americans all got together and said, “We need to make even more of our military forces vulnerable to surprise attack!”

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The second major data point on Palin is the exception that proves the media rule. The New York Times is actually doing its job for once in the last eight years – unlike, say, in Election 2000, the run-up to the Iraq war, or when the Downing Street Memos were released. They did some real journalism two weeks ago and exposed the fact that McCain had hardly done any vetting on Palin before picking her, and had hardly even met her. Now they’ve done some more homework, and exposed what sort of person she’s been as mayor and governor. The first problem, of course, is that the regressive right has spent decades sowing the myth of a liberal-biased media, with the Times leading the way. This is precisely the tool they will use to dismiss these damning reports, and of course, they’ve already begun as soon as the first story was published. The second problem is that this is an America where many people will believe that absurd line, despite the real tendecy of the mainstream media to be little more than corporate genuflectors. And the third problem is that most Americans don’t even seem to care that much about the content of these exposés, regardless of the source.

They should, though, for what the latest article reveals is that Palin is grossly incompetent, grossly inattentive to her responsibilities, rigidly dogmatic, deeply uninformed, and a committed practitioner of cronyism, secrecy and the politics of destroying ‘enemies’, including by using the instruments of government to do so. She’s a sort of dumbed-down Richard Nixon. Or, well... a female George W. Bush. These are just some of the highlights from the Times’ thorough review of the public record and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic Alaskans at the state and local levels:

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The Palin nod was a masterful display of Rovian-style cynical calculation, in all its full destructive glory. They figured, so far correctly, that they could get at least a triple, if not a home-run, out of a foul ball, as long as they gamed the system in that special way for which only amoral, sociopathic right-wing political operatives are so gifted.

First, they bring out Palin, who ignites a level of passion amongst the religious right shock troops that John McCain could never get anywhere near. A clean and robust single! But then they move the runner to second base by taking advantage of what they know will be the reaction to the pick by those outside the programmed posse. Since she’s “Sarah Who?” to the whole world (including, five minutes ago, to those regressives who now are utterly gaga about their new hero), they know there will investigations and allegations which will immediately arise in response to the choice. So they cleverly and cynically feign great umbrage at all of these because some of them were possibly over the top. Now she becomes this great victim of the liberal press, and independent women voters are supposed to flock to her in support of what they think is a kindred soul suffering the products of sexism, as they have during their lives. She’s meant to pick off Hillary Democrats. It’s a smash double.

Which is then advanced to a triple, when this so-called unfair treatment by the media can now be used as an excuse to keep her away from any situation in which she might be revealed as knowing nothing about the world, let alone where her corruption, cronyism or incompetence as governor or mayor might be called into question. And then, finally, if you can also position her so that any shots by Joe Biden in their 90-minute debate can be instantly deemed male bullying of a helpless woman victim (hey, what happened to Sarah Barracuda?), bang!, you’ve smacked the balled out of the park.

Amazing, eh? Think what you can do if you haven’t had a scruple since 1968 (and even then, it was only by accident)! Think what can be accomplished by (alleged) people who care only about winning! Think about how much you can pillage from American politics today if you don’t give a damn about the destructive costs your actions will have on the system tomorrow! You can take a foul ball and turn it into a home run. You can take a corrupt and vicious policy know-nothing and make her president of the United States and leader of the Free World.

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[No DUplicitous DUpe]

1. I have a strong feeling, that "Home Run" is going to be caught at the warning track..

...close, but and "Out" none the less.

K&R!