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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You've summed up nearly every sentiment I had as I listened to Palin's slurs. She and McCain are truly a scary pair of trigger happy zealots. Woe to US if they invade the White House.
Right on John, thank you .
I agree, she did not acquit herself nicely last night.
The Obama insults were snarky and smarmy, smacked of Dick Cheney twisted sneer and all...and she just LOVED being the hatchet woman.
"Give me a speech, any old speech and I'll have it memorized with gestures in 4 hours. I'll say anything you want me to say, I have no problems with deception. Act like a mean girl in 9th grade, no problem."
"I don't know a thing about Obama, except he's a black, never read his web site, don't care. I'm here to take over this race and show them what a real woman can do. I'm a pro. You won't hear me whining like Hillary."
Terrific post.
I wasn't able to put my finger on it and the post succinctly showed the most perverse and grotesque qualities of a proto-presidential politician: small town populism masquerading as elitist provincialism. Palin's American jingoism is in essence the bringing small town life, the American idealism myth, to a theatre near you.
Palin's ahh-shucks sectionalism; her pride of America drowning while she holds the lifesaver of religious credulity; and triangulations of a small town politician projected on a nation of Lost Tribes is chauvinism at its worse.
Jesus was a community organizer.
John Seery is a Political theory
There is "definitely" alot more to Palin that's been hidden from us-----& I don't mean good!! I don't care if it is the Enquirer or KO----but PLEASE FIND THE REAL PALIN FOR US BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!! We already know John Bush is dangerous-
The guest Stephen Colbert had on Thursday night's show (the guy that started the Palin blog recommending she be VP) - sorry I don't remember his name - He was responsible for getting the online community to take notice of Palin and urged them to organize a drive to get Palin the VP slot - and it worked! So, I guess you could say that Sarah Palin owes her VP position to the work of a ... community organizer!!
She reeks of hubris and ideology, as in W. Why don't they connect the dots, all those Republicans who are trying so hard to distance themselves from W. Well, Palin is W. re-incarna
Oh...one more tidbit (#3): Palin needed to hire a city manager to help her run her municipality. Generally, city managers (whether their position becomes of the municipality's landscape or are temporary positions) usually have an advanced degree - primarily, a Master's in Public Administration. Plus, the city managers tend to do the "heavy lifting", so to speak - overseeing, hiring, firing city employees and city departments, and creating the budget. He/she has to inform council of what he/she is doing, but the manager is, for the most part, the city's TRUE executive and the person with the actual executive experience. (City Council and the mayor are in fact the legislative branch.) However, if her municipality has the "strong mayor" form of government, she would have had direct authority over the manager and more independence, but the manager would still be in charge of overseeing the departments and budget. In short, Palin either (a) had a considerable amount of authority in a strong mayor form of government, but a good deal of the executive-type duties were shared with the city manager, or (b) she had mostly ceremonial authority under a council-manager form of government. (Her predecessor says it is a strong mayor government, but she doesn't "know when the city moved" to that form.)
You did it. Captured what we all were thinking, but couldn't come close to narrating the way you have done.
She did seem to be awfully arrogant to belittle Obama's achieivements since 19 million people he was vetted buy the American people and they voted for him and no one has voted for her, so she is belittling a major part of American electorate and their decisions.
Brilliant insights! Thank you for putting succinctly into words what I was feeling as well. As soon as her speech was over, I donated again to the Obama/Biden Campaign!
Clearly Governor Palin is not a good Vice President Candidate or any other public servant candidate. It has nothing to do with her being a woman, or a mom with a family but everything to do with her poor judgment, arrogance, extremist core values and value system, lack of experience and a troubling work history and track record.
Sarah Palin is exactly what America does not need: Another ill-equipped, unqualified, arrogant public servant who wants to negate everything American women have fought for all these years.
Most chilling are her extremist views. In her church video when she was preaching recently, she appears to think that she has divine guidance and divine right. We just had 8 failed years of divine guidance and divine right. ENOUGH!
To me, by defining herself as Pentecostal, Sarah Palin has defined herself as a religious extremist. In my view, Pentecostals are to Christianity what Islamists are to Islam.
She is dangerous for our country and for the world. Regardless of political persuasion, I prefer not to see extremists in positions of power.
I co-sign on everything you and many others making comments have already put forth. I tried to accept her as a worthy opponent, but listening to that speech made my ears bleed. I turn the channel whenever either of them (she or McCain) pop up.
I hope someone includes these tidbits of information when they're comparing her to Obama: (1) As president of Harvard Law Review, Obama was responsible for essentially running one of the most respected legal/academic journals in the WORLD. He was responsible for approving the works submitted by ACTUAL lawyers, law professors, Ph.D.s who study judicial politics, and students that have exceptional writing and reasoning skills. Some of the greatest legal minds have served on the Harvard Law Review or submitted publications, and the whole thing is run primarily by students. That's a pretty big deal, and stacks up well compared to someone being a "stay-at-home PTA mom".
(2) Obama's undergraduate degree is political science, with a concentration in international relations. That means he had SOME idea of what was going on in the rest of the world over 25 years ago (and he has since bolstered his knowledge of foreign affairs/in
Absolutely
I smell fear in this blog. I love it!!! I am one of the 82% (new poll this week) of Alaskans who support Sarah. There is a lot of misinformation in this article, even though it is written quite well....it
So??
John, if I was close to you...I would gave you a hug! Thank you for a great article!..
"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. "
Apparently she doesn't think twice:
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