Glancing at the title of an Andrew Sullivan post – “One Last Word” – linked at Memeorandum Saturday night, I knew it had to be about Sarah Palin’s Tea Party Nation keynote speech.
My guess was that he’d gotten busy yesterday, summoning his personal Palin demons and holding a tea party of his own with them. Considering the infernal depths of his Palin obsession, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was his 10th post of the day on her. Nor would I have been surprised if it had been even more foully offensive, deluded, and craven than the most recent previous piece of his I happened to see excerpted, one in which he went on as usual about things he doesn’t understand and that only he and said demons take seriously regarding Palin and her infant son Trig.
I confess, however, that the title made me hope, just a little, that Sullivan had finally done the right thing: Take an extended, indefinite leave of absence, possibly involving intensive psychotherapy and spiritual counseling – leaving “One Last Word” as his farewell – but, no, as expected, the post turned out to be about Palin. Oddly enough, however, it was something that a Palin supporter might actually enjoy – assuming an ability to read between the lines of Sullivan’s obscene melodrama and paranoid bigotry.
Promising to assess Palin as a potential presidential candidate, Sullivan first stretches for familiar “conservatives = Nazis” tropes of the sort that the invocation of “Godwin’s Law” was once meant to banish from web conversation, among other things equating Palin’s criticism of Obama as commander-in-chief with the Hitlerian “stab in the back” attack on the post-World War I German left: Hitler accusing the German left of treason and losing the Great War = raising questions about Obama Administration detainee treatment policy. Put simply: In the Sulliverse, any criticism of the great and wonderful Ø’s war leadership = Nazism.
Sullivan then turns to the good stuff: an at least somewhat grounded analysis of Palin as potential presidential candidate:
…there is a huge constituency out there (rightly) outraged by Washington corruption and she now has the critical mantle of the rogue outsider; she can channel Christianism and fuse it with the slogans of phony “fiscal conservatism”; she will blame every lost job on Obama; and she will accuse him of betraying the troops and befriending America’s enemies. Behind her are the Cheneyites.
Above all, she is capable of generating a personality cult – much, much more so than Obama, because she can harness Christianism to her divine destiny. The power of this kind of appeal – of a charismatic, beautiful woman, an icon of the pro-life cause, persecuted by the evil elites, demonized by libruls, and commanding the biggest military on earth – should not in my view be under-estimated.
Know fear.
It might almost be worth translating the above paragraphs into sane, but I suspect that anyone who has read this far can play that game at home. Conservatives, and sufficiently numerous members of the American electorate for conservatives to win elections, have become rather adept at exegesis of this type. This ain’t complicated. These aren’t the historico-political allegories embedded in The Lord of the Rings or Revelation, and conservatives can fall back on nearly 50 years of practice, since “libruls” have been reflexively painting conservatives as “extremists,” and shouting “The end is near!” at least since the anti-Goldwater campaign of 1964 – when a single famous line of Goldwater’s, and the liberals’ own epochal political success, helped to fuse the terms “conservative” and “extremist” together in the liberal mind and Democrat playbook.
Sullivan’s fear-mongering, literal fear-mongering, itself seems a bit frightening in the larger context of politicized Palin hatred – it only takes a Sullivan with a gun to make this psychosis real - but too little he says in general makes enough sense for anything he says in particular to be taken very seriously. For the same reason, it may be too much to attribute balanced judgment to Sullivan regarding Palin’s political potential. Still, I think he’s right that Palinism has immense potential. But anyone can see that now.
We’re left to pray, perhaps to our “Christianist” God – why not? – that Sullivan and his followers keep to themselves with their pathetic emotionalism. It would be a shame if they hurt anyone, even themselves. Otherwise, people so wounded in spirit and intellect have little to offer and are not themselves much to be afraid of.
They don’t count for much, but their collective fear does smell a bit like victory for the taking…
* * *
One last note: “One Last Word” wasn’t a last word, at all, naturally. Today, Sullivan is “talking to the hand,” along with a circle of like-minded bloggers (if “minded” can ever be the right word with these people) about notes that Palin may have inked into her palm for the Q&A session at Tea Party Nation last night. I hope that the nutroots continue to push this absurdly and indicatively trivial line of attack, since it makes Palin look like just what she is – refreshingly human and informal, determined to get the job done – and incidentally reminds everyone about which leading politician (if “leading” can be used in this context) is truly reliant on external devices to express himself, word by wearisome word.
Furthermore, you can’t bring up this event without bringing up those three main points, on all of which Palin, the Tea Party, and conservatives have much more popular positions than the HuffPo and ThinkProgress and Daily Dish left. It’s free publicity for the Palin program every virtual second it’s discussed and re-transmitted.
If the pseudo-scandal becomes widely enough known, we may someday see crowds of everyday Americans inking such useful reminders – “energy,” “taxes,” “lift America’s spirits” – into their hands, and proudly waving them at Palin rallies, or photographing and t-shirting them. The first example I’ve seen of such spin-offs was linked at HotAir by commenter Emperor Norton, and is shown at the top of this post.
Like Sullivan’s frightwig of a commentary, what this micro-controversy says to me is that she’s got them in the palm of her hand, she’s crushing them, and there’s not much they seem able to do about it. They can’t help it. The more they struggle, the worse it is for them. You almost have to wonder if they like it that way…
Comments 68
No sense of drama, that Sullyvan guy’s got.
http://www.frumpgazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Sarah.jpg
I will live, I will die for the people of America.
February 7th, 2010 at 11:54 am
G: Too soon, too soon. She died too soon.
C: About an hour too soon.
February 7th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
I could do without out the morbidity, too, frankly. But you and I don’t have people like Andrew Sullivan calling us Nazis and urging dread upon their readerships.
February 7th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
Well, I used to have people calling me anti-Semite pretty regularly until contentions died.
And I still regularly get called a Nazi… elsewhere.
When you let someone as f’ed-up as Sullivan get you to write a post like this one, CK, it’s time for a beer and a ballgame.
You got a rooting interest in today’s game?
February 7th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Hmmmm… nah… no rooting interest… may the best team win… let the game unfold like a work of art, according to its own internal laws of development… and the right and wrong of it emerge spontaneously from the clash of character, mind, body, spirit… or something.
February 7th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
You know on the one hand, Sullivan’s ‘Scanners’ moment, is amusing, on the other, they have tried to burn down her church with people in it, and hung her in efffigy in West Hollywood, so it’s a little disquieting
February 7th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
who’s tried to burn down a church?
no one knows anything about it as far as I can tell or even if it has anything to do with her.
February 7th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
@ fuster:
dude, search for Wasila church palin fire or some such and the news story that you somehow missed will come up. I’d do it for you, but I need to mop the tiles ahead of people arriving for the big SB blowout & barbq
February 7th, 2010 at 12:53 pm
will do.
here’s something handy.
http://www.bible-codes.org/hand-riddles-1.htm
February 7th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Drosnin was once a sane reporter, but I think he lost it while writing about Howard Hughes, and it shows
February 7th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
I stopped reading Sullivan’s blog years ago, after his hasty retreat from a fleeting understanding of the threats to our way of life in a post 9/11 world. He scampered back to the safety of his pre 9/11 libral pwogwessive rubbish, recognizing that he has one and only one issue he cares about, the issue of gay marriage.
I gather Mister Peanut likes reading his blog, and I wonder if his gays in the military decision was a crumb for Andrew, the one issue twit.
February 7th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
I never saw that church fire story. Pretty nasty. A followup a year later mentions that accelerent was poured around the church including at the exits. And there were some people inside at the time. There are also stories about a couple of other suspicious fires in the town, so it could be a local nut; but even if that’s the case the smart money has to be on someone set off by the controversy during the campaign.
February 7th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
And I found a site whose conspiracy theory commenters make Andrew Sullivan look like an eminently sane and balanced person.
Something about Palin really binds and twists the scrotal sacs of a whole class of folks.
http://breepalin.blogspot.com/2010/01/reminder-about-wasilla-bible-church.html
February 7th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
@ Sully:
see that picture of her with the bone in her nose?
February 7th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
I can’t spend a lot of time right now because Puppy Bowl VIII is at a crucial stage on Animal Planet. If you haven’t seen it you should. It’s perhaps the most clever marketing gimmick ever conceived.
February 7th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
That’s just a rich creamy nougat of stupidity, named after a character in Desperate Housewives
February 7th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Whittaker Chambers,Malcom Muggeridge,CS Lewis,GK Chesterton,James Burnham,Von Mises,Von Hayek,Leo Strauss,and Sarah Palin? The next level of Conservative Intellectual Development?
Please,she makes W look like a genius,maybe that’s her function?
February 7th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
@ Rex Caruthers:
You seem confused about the difference between a public intellectual and a political leader. Sarah Palin doesn’t seem to be, so I guess she has that, at least, on you.
February 7th, 2010 at 8:20 pm
she only publicly appears to be confused when she forgets the advice she gets to
keep it simple.
as long as she sticks to that, she comes off well.
February 7th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
No, none of those were political activists, as my understanding, they had a theoretical view of the world, Chambers was the most Spenglerian followed by Burnham, also most of them were on the left
February 7th, 2010 at 8:47 pm
I for one prefer private intellectuals. It used to be said that a lady or gentleman’s name only got into the newspaper twice: at birth and death. Doing more intellectualizing in private, away from the traffic, seems like one of the best prescriptions for a healthier human future.
Not that I’m not a big fan of the intellectuals listed by RCAR.
Anybody sad and blue over the Colts? Couldn’t work up a rooting interest in the Bowl today, but it was at least a pretty good game.
February 7th, 2010 at 9:54 pm
Thrice,m’dear.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/fashion/weddings/index.html
Sorry it got nailed down by an interception of a Manning pass.
Superb QB
February 7th, 2010 at 10:03 pm
After the onsides kick, I felt the Saints deserved to win, on the basis of the exemplary aggressiveness and originality of the coach. What a fine contrast to the conduct of Andy Reid a few years back, when he refused to take a risk, and simply let the game slip away from him (I don’t remember the details any more, just that he stopped trying to win).
I always favor the coach who chooses to let his team seize the victory rather than leave things up to a kick or traditional gamesmanship, especially when the latter involves letting the other team get the ball back. It was on a similar rationale that I flirted with the minority pro-Belichick position earlier this year when everyone was coming down on him for going for it on 4th and short rather than punt the ball to Manning. The Saints may have had more confidence in their defense than Belichick had in the Patriots at that time, but, even so, the game-deciding pic-six, conversely to the onsides kick, happened to validate the conventional wisdom about giving your defense a chance to prove Manning mortal, merely great, but fallible. Of course, there was nothing Belichickian at the time. The worst thing likely to happen to the Saints at that moment looked like overtime, even presuming that Manning had gotten the tying TD and that the Saints had failed to win the game on the ensuing possession.
That the gods smiled on Sean Peyton was proved when the Saints recovered, and again when the re-play granted them the two-point conversion later on. As I watched the game I also recalled, or it was recalled to me, that my initial reaction to learning that Manning had won league MVP again wasn’t so much at his having won it, but at the vote not having been even a little closer. As for the Super Bowl, it meant that Brees had the benefit of more to gain. For Manning, a victory would merely have been confirmation, not redemption. The same went for their respective organizations.
February 7th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Barry Goldwater,Jack Kemp,James Buckley,Ronald Reagan,Sarah Palin
February 8th, 2010 at 5:40 am
Compare her predecessors to her when they were 45 years old, please. I may still have a middle school essay I wrote complaining about the 55-year-old AuH20′s backing and filling during his presidential campaign. James Buckley’s public intellectual brother recounted how Goldwater was afraid to repudiate the Birchers. Reagan was doing tidbits for GE. &c. I’m not going to tell Sarah to settle down rhetorically either even though that line of hers sounded a little too Angela Lansbury (or at least Douglas MacArthur) for my taste – you take the creepy and blustery with the smart and sweet sometimes, and even Todd said she was “wired differently.” I have, however, commented elsewhere that she’d have a dubious career as a professional cheerleader, and ought to aspire to national office lest she risk becoming a right wing Norma Desmond. (There’s already at least one blogger out there who already refers to her as “Madame” in the manner of Erich von Stroheim’s Max von Mayerling, and he obviously LIKES her.) Her grandfather was a Hollywood photographer so there’s undoubtedly a hint of artifice and CB DeMille-style grandstanding in her homespinning, but so what? As for Mr. Beagle, I wonder if he thinks cats = dogs just because he probably lumps them together on a word association test. Imagining Sarah Palin as Evita Peron (or someone even kinkier) doesn’t mean she IS.
February 8th, 2010 at 7:14 am
Well she is clearly leaning in that direction, the logic of her statements
would lead there. That is why she chose to ride the McCain effort, there’s that maverick streak in both of them, the only Kathleen Parker
got right in that column back in October 2008
February 8th, 2010 at 7:44 am
And this last offering:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/02/memorandum_from_totus_to_palin.html
February 8th, 2010 at 7:49 am
@ narciso:
Fantastic!
February 8th, 2010 at 7:55 am
I don’t even mind if she becomes CIC in 2012. In terms of Economics,she could not be less informed than BHO,but she is probably equally misinformed.
February 8th, 2010 at 8:20 am
She has a proven record of delivering paired down budgets, or knowing what a payroll is, or instituting a flexible tax regime in the state
February 8th, 2010 at 9:18 am
narciso wrote: She has a proven record of delivering paired down budgets, or knowing what a payroll is, or instituting a flexible tax regime in the state
That should allow her to manage a national economy in crisis,and the FED
February 8th, 2010 at 9:35 am
@ narciso:
She does indeed. She’s also been, with her husband, a business owner most of her adult life. I think she said it was an Econ course she got the D in, in college, so in terms of macroeconomic theory she could probably use a refresher.
But. How many here think she would choose to listen to the same economic advisers as Obama? I frankly don’t ever want to elect a president who thinks he or she has the golden key to “fixing” the economy. That individual would be a crank. Reagan chose and listened to good advisers, and informed his decisions with very basic principles rather than a mastery of minutiae more suitable to an OMB director or CBO analyst. I see nothing about Palin that suggests she would not do the same.
February 8th, 2010 at 9:41 am
@ CK MacLeod:
I doubt there are many in America who could have come away from that game not thinking the Saints deserved to win. I was in the happy position of not caring who won, until the final moments when I was thinking, The Saints really deserve this one. Hold on, gents.
Manning’s not really a “cardiac come-back” kind of QB though (or the Colts offense as a whole either), so it was pretty clear once the deficit opened to 14 that the Saints would carry the day this time. Congrats to ‘em.
February 8th, 2010 at 9:47 am
J.E. Dyer wrote:
In this connection, and in light of previous discussion here, it’s interesting to note that Palin came close to endorsing the Ryan Roadmap yesterday, while speaking glowingly of Ryan himself. I don’t know that she’s alone among R heavyweights on this score, but she may be. She’s also open enough to monetarist radicals to endorse Rand Paul despite severe difference with him over security policy, and the risk of being associated with Paulian nutjobbery.
The latter endorsement has already cost her something politically – hard to say how much – and turned the Kentucky race on the R side into what some are viewing as a proxy battle between her and Mitch McConnell. In the meantime, she’s taking flak from Tea Party purists for her the “neoconservative” views she expounded Saturday night. The political positioning is exactly where she wants to be – mainstream enough to fit within the party, radical enough to be of interest to the radicals – though not without its risks.
If anyone on the scene today has a chance of rallying a significant popular base in favor of a fundamental re-thinking of economic policy, I think it’s Sarah!, and I can’t at the moment come up with a close second. A Palinist administration would likely focus on tight palm-full of very simple “common sense” things, leaving “management” of the Fed and other policies to selected managers.
February 8th, 2010 at 10:31 am
I think she’ll be more proactive then Reagan, her explanation of tax policy in Alaska in GR seems to indicate that. I used to be less skeptical of the Fed, until after both of Greenspan’s two sets of
interest rate hikes 1999-00, and 2004-2006. which popped first the tech and then subprime bubble
February 8th, 2010 at 10:43 am
If anyone on the scene today has a chance of rallying a significant popular base in favor of a fundamental re-thinking of economic policy, I think it’s Sarah!, and I can’t at the moment come up with a close second. A Palinist administration would likely focus on tight palm-full of very simple “common sense” things, leaving “management” of the Fed and other policies to selected managers
Can’t argue. For more context,I suggest reading “The Spell” by Hermann Broch.
February 8th, 2010 at 10:58 am
well…you guys are ignoring the fact that she’s got to survive a nationally televised debate with (quelle horreure!) follow-on questions to actually become president.
She’s going to have to grow arms like Shiva to have enough hands for that.
lawl.
February 8th, 2010 at 11:00 am
She held her own again that “foreign policy genius”, who doesn’t understand why we spend more on Afghanistan then Pakistan, Biden
and Gwen Ifill, who was clearly in a conflict of interest.
February 8th, 2010 at 11:04 am
@ strangelet:
and you’re ignoring that nobody really thinks that she’ll ever even be nominated, let alone elected.
it’s just “speculating about a hypothesis”.
February 8th, 2010 at 11:11 am
@ narciso:
Yeah, that’s the eternal tension for the Fed, to find the micron-wide path between popping someone’s bubble and keeping the currency sound. Of course, there’s unexamined analytical freight with equating higher discount rates to soundness of currency. A whole separate philosophical inquiry.
I think most economic reactions are relative, myself. There’s no such thing as the one, eternally “right” interest rate, as if “Thou shalt set the Fed discount rate at 3.25%” was the 11th Commandment.
But there is value in a consistent discount rate. Using the cost of borrowing, or the passive return on lending, as a tool for managing the economy — that practice, which we have pretty much stopped questioning, is fraught with consequences.
In my view, it’s that idea right there — that the Fed should manipulate the discount rate to have a specified effect on the economy in general — that needs to be revisited. I think you put it correctly, narciso, in that the Fed intended to put the brakes on what was called an “overheated” economy with its rate hikes in ’99-00 and 2006.
But the wrong tool was being used for that, because currency inflation (the Fed’s purview) wasn’t the “overheating” problem. The problem was, essentially, overvaluation of aggregate debt, the use of it to back additional lending, and the trading of overvalued debt as securities. Government policy that demanded the same access to borrowing for high-risk customers as for low-risk customers, and that intended to cushion the consequences of bad debt, drove this bubble.
Raising the discount rate could discourage this activity on the margins by making it more expensive to lenders and good credit risks. But raising the discount rate cannot make the bad government policy sustainable. The two things operate independently. The discount rate isn’t the right tool for addressing government-mandated unsound lending.
February 8th, 2010 at 11:21 am
It’s a tricky situation, I’ll admit Greenspan raised rates, back when the deficit was supposedly shrinking, but also when it was increasing to some degree. Now this ran counter to Greenspan’s own complaints about sub prime debt volatility, so let’s try to pop the bubble anyways
February 8th, 2010 at 11:28 am
fuster wrote:
Don’t know how you define “nobody” or “really,” but a number of nobodies have traced a clearer path to the nomination for her than for anyone else. Good or bad, right or wrong, she’s got the math. Your favorite nobody JRub had a nice post yesterday on the subject, and she’s by no means alone. Walter Shapiro put the matter in more concrete terms last November.
February 8th, 2010 at 11:43 am
@ narciso:
lawl…..only as long as there were NO FOLLOW-ON questions.
I dont think there will be a do-over on that one.
February 8th, 2010 at 11:49 am
@ fuster: you got nobody else. Petraeus turned you down like 20x, Pawlenty is invisible, Thune started too late, Huck had a Willie Horton moment, and Romney is a MORMAN in case you haven’t noticed.
77% of registered republicans think she should be president.
She’s got the nom, but she can’t win the country.
Republicans are 22%, WECs are 20% of the country…possibly the same thing anytmore.
Non-republican women won’t vote for her, and there are more XX and than there are XY.
February 8th, 2010 at 11:54 am
@ strangelet:pardon, MORMON.
There is a segment of WECs that would vote a satan ticket before electing a MORMON and you all know it.
February 8th, 2010 at 11:56 am
@ strangelet:
We’re gonna go with Hamsher/Norquist.
She’ll whip the base into a froth and he’ll drown them in it.
February 8th, 2010 at 11:56 am
To:Stranglet
Please be aware that while 36% of the electorate may like Palin,another 36% is pro=socialist,that leaves 28%,to make the decision.
February 8th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
If you dare offer to JRub my face a second time, ruffian, we’re in for a bit of a slap fest.
http://lynnrockets.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/malkin-eyes-2.jpg
February 8th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Highlander, I think the BOMB-Iran and Israel pin are loozers for her.
Isn’t the electorate sick of our soljahs dyin in foreign wars, not to mention the expense?
Also, too……Jews mostly loathe her like they loathe all WECs and Pre-tribs.
What is the tactic here?
February 8th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
@ Rex Caruthers:well I don’t that matters a whit, unless y’all can figure out a way for her to survive a presidential debate….a putsch maybe? A brain transplant?
February 8th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Possibly, but that they not that keen about an Iranian nuke in NY or DC either. There is strong support for killing terrorists but not sticking
around to long, it’s the Jack Bauer way
February 8th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
@ narciso:
half the people eager to vote for Palin wouldn’t much mind if NYC got nuked.
February 8th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Your concern is touching and duly noted, you are satisfied with 9.7 %
unemployment, stalemate in South Asia, troops under fire at our bases
back home,
February 8th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
@ strangelet:
As for “Bomb Iran,” that’s never been her stated policy – and Daniel Pipes and others have gone well beyond her words to Chris Wallace in trying to make them an endorsement. Since anything other than “bend over” puts her to the right of Ø, she has wide flexibility on this issue, and can let events determine her positioning if she runs in 2012. For all we know, things might turn out wonderfully well in Iran, and it will be a footnote to the campaign over who deserves credit. Stranger things have happened.
Israel’s a heckuva lot more popular in America than Ø, and has durably remained far above his current levels for many years. You need to get over mistaking echoes of your own voice, and convenient myths, as signs from the American electorate.
Palin’s support for Israel is of long standing, and cuts in a familiar way across the internal contradictions within American Jewish politics that Norman Podhoretz and many others have discussed at length. It’s too much to expect the sea change suddenly occurring – American Jews waking up to where their real friends are and where their real interests arguably lie – but increasingly open anti-semitism and Islamist apologetics on the left may help.
February 8th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
So much concern, don’t you think CK, for someone they think won’t go very far. Now a year later we are beginning to press for a tougher sanctions regime, what Brown and Sarkosy was champing at the bit
for. as the Chinese say; interesting times
February 8th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
IS “Bomb Iran” much different than “declare war on Iran” ?
February 8th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
fuster wrote:
Could be. Don’t see what either has specifically to do with anything SP has ever advocated.
February 8th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Don’t worry about it, strangelet, Iran wll get the bomb, which means that in fairly short order, through the assistance of the Revolutionary Guard Hezbollah will get the bomb. I know Sarah is much scarier than
that prospect, have a nice day
February 8th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
donut!
http://static1.firedoglake.com/1/files/2010/02/gjWnU.jpg
February 8th, 2010 at 8:22 pm
in the palm of his hand
February 8th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
close, but no donut.
think this hand jive will catch on?
February 8th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
http://www.conservatives4palin.com/2010/02/governor-palin-in-redding-california.html
February 8th, 2010 at 9:45 pm
You’ve seen this of course: http://ckmac.com/thewholething/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/610x-e1265656272678.jpg
Andrea Mitchell wrote some stupid notes on her hand as well giving a live remote on MSLSD.
It’s certainly a “thing” that all political junkies will forever understand as a reference – but I think it would take lightning striking again to universalize it.
February 8th, 2010 at 9:49 pm
@ CK MacLeod: You are not listening. Jews LOATHE WECs and Pre-tribs. Academe loathes WECs and Pre-tribs. Hollywood loathes WECs and Pre-tribs.
The core of the teabagger movement is NOT fiscal conservatism.
It is white evangelical christian religion and ressentiment convolved.
It isnt that Obama is black….it is that Obama is a public intellectual and a Jeffersonian natural aristoi AND that hes black.
February 9th, 2010 at 3:52 am
Ah, that was a strange argument when Noam Schreiber of the Journolist forwarded it a year and a half ago. Is there anyone more curdled up with ressentiment then Obama, his ‘ghostwritten’ memoir
is filled with petty slights, at his home country, for any number of reasons. ‘Jefferson’s natural aristoi’ that’s a laugh and a half, no the fact that he rises out of the professional agitator class, is bigger issue.
February 9th, 2010 at 5:21 am
@ strangelet:
Nice, if typically foul, summary in the mode of elitist bigot who refuses to acknowledge the humanity, the independent subjectivity, of her political opponents, and instead insists on dealing with stereotypes, along with the familiar irony of the superior pose that already proclaims its own intellectual and moral depravity. Really, it’s as disgusting as some old time cracker going on and on about what “the colored” think.
To the extent it’s true that the stances of those groups – “academe,” “Hollywood,” “Jews” – can be characterized by reflexive prejudice and explicit “loathing,” it’s what makes them loathsome, and helps explain why, when they’re given influence and leadership positions in a democratic society, they and their policies fail.
February 9th, 2010 at 9:51 am
@ CK MacLeod: The MacLeod of Clan MacLeod….I’m sorry, but it is science and history.
Its cultural evolution and the demographic timer. Its Jefferson’s natural aristoi and the iron law of the bell curve.
You could have held power forever, except that there will be no black or brown or jewish “conservatives” in the near future, until the stench of your party’s race-baiting and IQ-baiting and anti-semetic evangelical xianity dissipates.
It was a pure choice.
And you chose the side of Kylon every time.
February 9th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
@ strangelet:
Surely you’re aware that there are countless “black, brown [and] Jewish ‘conservatives.’” The only one race-, IQ-, and otherwise “baiting” here is you – typically.
February 9th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
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