Sarah Palin: The Face of Ugly Americanism
I know, I know: Sarah Palin is receiving rosy plaudits for her speech last night. She is being heralded as the savior of the GOP, someone with enough moxie to sustain the party's unholy alliance between the oil plutocrats and the oily preachocrats.
Many pundits in reviewing her polished performance claim to see an unflappable and gung-ho winner on stage. My honest-to-goodness visceral reaction was quite otherwise. What I saw on that stage was the personification of small-minded smugness, an utter lack of humility, a kind of self-righteous entitlement based on little more than puffed-up narrowness. She struck me not as plucky but, rather, as stunningly immodest--to the point of arrogance. Some people are arrogant and maybe deserve to be. They know it, and flaunt it, while everyone else thinks they are jerks. But there's another kind of arrogance, perhaps harder to spot at first, an arrogance that apparently doesn't even recognize itself as such, a sanctified, self-satisfied presumptuousness that flows from sheer naïveté about oneself and the world and manifests itself in giddy ambition.
Hey, I'm all for hockey teams, motherhood, snowmobiling, and small-town virtues. I grew up with such charms [indulgent personal digression here along those lines: Forty some years ago, whenever my family visited my grandparents' farm in Ossian, Iowa, that "event" would always make the front page of the Ossian Bee, right next to a story about someone's canned tomatoes going bad, which was positioned right next to the Ossian Bee's front-page obituaries column. Or, one time, among many, when we visited my father's parents' farm in Coggon, Iowa, we asked, fishing poles in hand, a local young boy for directions to a Bait and Tackle shop, and he gave us elaborate directions, about turning at this corner, and then at that stump, and then winding around some bend in the road, and looping back at the half-mile marker--directions that were almost comically complicated for such a small place. And then he ended his on-the-scene peroration: "But I don't think it's open today." As for snowmobiling, my daredevil cousins used to run snowmobiles on the (hopefully) frozen Cedar River, jumping over cracks and breaks in the ice if they encountered such. Heck, as for credentials, I still have my NRA shooting awards from Cub Scout summer camp.] Such small-town charms and virtues notwithstanding, I also recognize--especially when it's beaming right at me from my Chinese-manufactured television screen--small-town thinking when I see and hear it. What the world--what this country--doesn't need more of right now is Sarah Palin's defiant brand of self-assured provincialism.
Palin and McCain want the United States to consume more and more of the planet's energy resources--in the names of God, country, and industry. Palin believes that the Iraq War was God's will, even though she admits that she hasn't been paying close attention to that war (oh my Lord!). She believes that drilling in Alaska's natural splendor is blessed with Providential Approval. She promotes policies based on her unshakable belief that she herself has a direct pipeline (no pun intended) to the Almighty's intentions. What hubris! How dare she hijack and besmirch true belief for the sake of her particular economic predilections.
She mocks community organizing in Southside Chicago--but has she ever set foot in Chicago? She has no idea what it means to organize on the south side of Chicago--nor, I imagine, does her slickly sarcastic speechwriter. How many African-Americans lived in Wasilla during her tenure as mayor? She hasn't traveled through this great country of ours. She doesn't know its people, doesn't know its amazing and oftentimes vexing diversity. She hasn't traveled anywhere in the world, except one place. She presents herself as an all-American gal, but does she genuinely understand--beyond her own PTA-to-Juneau story--our country's rich and varied and complex history? She recently confessed that she doesn't even understand what the Vice President of the United States does, and her admirers heartily approve of her perversely willful ignorance.
Yes, she can bring a bunch of white people to their feet chanting USA, USA, USA. Good for her. But true leadership in these difficult times will require actual knowledge, not just personality. This world of ours, the past hundred years, has too frequently witnessed the dangers--nay, the evils--of compensatory nativism. Citizens in our own country should have learned one of the major lessons of these last eight years, namely that conviction should not serve as a trump card over competence. To me, Sarah Palin's grin looks like the grin of someone who doesn't feel she needs to think twice before pulling the trigger.
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No Class - Trailer trash .... Republicans resorting to gimmicks as usual. This unqualified white woman just gives a speech and gets her shoe into the Vice Presidency of the United States. Maybe there are enough people who can identify with her and cannot think beyond that.
The Presidential election has become a Reality Show run by our Tabloid Media.
Any serious issues are just totally ignored. So what if a large mass of ice sheet - the size of Manhattan has just broken off the Arctic. So what if the world is melting away - do we hear a word about it from any of our tabloid Press.
America - we deserve what we get.
Love the post. Palin is exhibiting the same disturbing lack of self reflection we have endured for 8 years with Bush. She seems like a sociopath to me.
Great article. Seems to me that Palin is the supreme act of cynicism by the RNC establishment. The
power movers have naught but contempt for the low-income, low-information, low-sophisication
super-right aspect of the party, but know they are essential to court until after the election. So they
play to a stereotype - the fear within this group not just that they are 'losing ground' in a world which
is more educated, more sophisticated, and has a higher standard of living/income, but that they are losing ground, heaven forbid, to a black person and one who has all of those things. Its blunt
but I believe its accurate. So Palin is the bone thrown to this group. Its just like the interviewee on
Stewart yesterday - she makes me believe anyone can be president. Or Riggle's takeoff - I love her
because she's just like me, or worse. Woman with a shrill voice, dress and hair by Walmart, spouting
off pithy sayings, bragging about her pit bull aggression, acting like "Annie Oakley on speed". Palin
is, in every sense, the 'lowest common denominator'. Presidents need not be intelligent or educated
or have any conciliation abilities. They just need to be able to shout like old Rush. Palin needs to be
treated as the bad joke that she is.
Fantastic! Spot on!
Obama-Biden '08!!
Yeah, they are all on her about foreign experience when she doesn't even have AMERICAN experience, Asians, Mexicans, Cubans, African Americans, slums, joblessness, etc..what does she know about these Americans, what do she know about high unemployment, social issues, etc. Pa-lin might be a lot of things, but being ready to lead America isn't one of them. Hiding her back in Alaska and training her for the next couple months won't do it either. People are falling in love with her when they should be concerned about her.
Amen! I have been perplexed by the media attention that her speech generated, especially as it was riddled with untruths. I can't believe the pass the media is giving her! She may be a breath of fresh air on the political scene, but her credentials and record should not get a pass for any reason. Especially because she is a mother and woman. That flies in the face of the equality that women fought and struggled for. Male or female, when you step in the political arena, make sure you have your gloves on.
I don't think they were giving her a pass. I think they were reporting on how her speech went over with the congregation. And they lapped it up. Me, couldn't figure out how anyone would take their infant into a crowd like that. Never mind the hour. The way they seem to be waving the baby and their teen daughter around reminds me of the ad naseum of listening to McCain go on and on about his war record. It appears to be the high light of his life and I'm concerned that it's only with a war that he will feel once more at home.
I think often of my husband, a flyer in Vietnam, remarking on how the soldier on the ground had such a different war than he did. He had so much regard for these men and believed flyers should all have to do a walk in their shoes to know the real horrors of war. These were the men he called heroes.
But there's not really any credentials or record to check out. I think the press did the only thing it could, there's just nothing else out there to report on.
I'll always have the question whenever I see her, if she were a male, would she have been picked?
I don't think so, but then again, it's not necessarily a bad thing. At least the Republicans are coming around to affirmative action, will finally admit that the last 8 years have been a disaster, and have something other then an old white man on the ticket. Change comes slowly, but maybe this is the start of something new! I'll take anything but the old republican party at this point.
Anyone count the number of times in her speech she used the word "fight" and the word "fighter"?
Hey, I'm up here in Canada observing what's going on with our good neighbours to the south. She scares me and everyone I know for the same reasons you mention...
This is an excellent article, and the comments in support of the article are also well put. Sarah IS smarmy, as are all of the right-wing troggs chanting "U.S.A." like bleating sheep. "Four legs good, two legs bad."
The problem presented to the left is that when they IDENTIFY this smug uber-nationalism of the right, the right tars thems as the "blame America first" crowd. What the left needs to do is to explain that avoiding the high-handed consequences of US hubris is not unpatriotic. It's Washington's call to "avoid entangling alliances.
It's amazing how an attactive, intelligent and successful governor can shake up a presidential race. This woman didn't become Governor of her state because of her husband's last name. She also hasn't been humiliated by her husband's numerous affairs. Arrogant? No, self confident and nobody's doormat. I can't wait for her debate with "Plugs" Biden.
Fantastic observations, this is precisely the kind of ill-informed, arrogant smugness that needs to be defeated.
Sarah Plain is a good American woman.
She is smart, tough and she has accomplished more in her 44 years than Obama and Joe Biden put together. The fact that she is reviled by those who write for this web site and those who post to it just proves she has hit a home run with the voters.
"...accomp
My brain just about exploded when I read this. Truly scary.
And, just what planet do you live on? Just because you repeat what you're told doesn't make it true or accurate. It just makes YOU appear stupid.
One problem with this analysis, many voters (both red and blue, but seemingly mostly red) do NOT evaluate their votes rationally or conscientiously. In fact, a frighteningly large number of voters enter the voting booth not yet having made up their minds! The most important thing is the symbolic image....a
Not one thought will be wasted by these voters on which candidate is best for their country, or even for the voter's own self interest.
Intil dems understand this, the White House will be a goal post that keeps moving away from them.
What you just described is the 'game plan' for the Republican Party. They want voters who pay NO attention to policy and just vote on the stupid 'narrative' issues they put out on purpose to keep people stupid.
I also was immediately reminded of the Ugly American after hearing Palin speak.
Personally, I think she will alienate Independents and women, and seal the fate of the Republican Party for this campaign cycle.
Thank you John! I'm going to print out your piece (taking my highlighter to the second paragraph) and taping it to my bathroom mirror, just to stay as angry and fired up as I am right now.
OB'IDEN'08!!!
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