Sarah Palin had me at hello–or when she said, My husband and I worked with our hands. I was grateful that a different set of prerequisites was being applied to public service than scoring well on the SATs or being able to suck up to people in east coast institutions.
The Palin nomination has been a good thing for that fact alone: it has revealed faultlines in the meritocracy, shown that people don't want to be governed only by Ivy League dweebs. The meritocracy is 40 years old, and the elite's sense of dissociation from ordinary people has justly become a source of resentment to a lot of Americans. When I reread William Deresiewicz's Emersonian attack on Harvard and Yale et al in the American Scholar, I see anger in it: "The first disadvantage of an elite education is how very much of the human it alienates you from. The second disadvantage…is that an elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth."
Palin had neither of those disadvantages. She's in the human mix, she doesn't take herself too seriously. The problem is that she's not intelligent enough to be vice president. She doesn't have an idea in her head. George Bush has ruined stupidity for the White House. The neocons gave him ideas and we're going to be recovering from his credulity for at least ten more years. You can't be stupid and get near the place these days–the issues are just too demanding.
Even if she goes (or when she does), Palin has struck a blow against the meritocracy. Americans know there's something wrong with the present order. The resentment isn't limited to the working class or the middle class, the poor slobs the media condescend to in stories about how hurting Americans are. It extends to well-educated independent types like Deresiewicz, who makes sure to attack John Kerry, Al Gore, George Bush, and Scooter Libby, all well-off and out of touch. "The most elite schools have become places of a narrow and suffocating normalcy. Everyone feels pressure to maintain the kind of appearance—and affect—that go with achievement." A lot of us loved Palin because she couldn't care less about all that stuff. She doesn't seem to care anything about money, she has taken risks in her life and had fun. "She has experienced more of typical American life than either McCain or his opponent," David Brooks says, while agreeing that she should go because she lacks a political philosophy.
A lot of the attacks on Palin at Huffingtonpost are blue state elitist. So what that her husband had a DUI. So what that her daughter is pregnant. These may be qualifying experiences. There's something's afoot here, ordinary Americans may demand less condescension from the rich people who govern them and write about them. McCain's error was seeking out someone as ordinary in mind as Sarah Palin. Heck, there are populists out there who have good minds–Lindsey Graham, for instance.
(Is there a Jewish angle here? For me: always. American Jewish life is too invested in meritocratic values, from globalism to wealth to prestigious badges. I'm pushing for more bandwidth in the Jewish experience. One of the good things about Israel is that it provided many other modes of being to Jews than professional life: manual labor, agriculture, military service etc.)
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{ 6 comments }
public service than scoring well on the SATs
except for her support for squatland, bet she is smarter than bush, dershowitz, libby/libowitz, feith, the kagans, the cagans, lewis,goldhagen, wurmser,lieberman, the clintons, gore, kerry, greenspan/grynzspan, and kristol to name a few.
she just aint in their league as a liar and thief with a love for murdering the innocent.
" The resentment isn't limited to the working class or the middle class, the poor slobs the media condescend to in stories about how hurting Americans are."
"So what that her husband had a DUI. So what that her daughter is pregnant. These may be qualifying experiences."
"Heck, there are populists out there who have good minds–Lindsey Graham, for instance."
I guess you are trying.
I think it's way past time to just dissolve the Union peacefully. Why keep it going at this point? Most Americans would be better off, and it could be argued that many people around the world would be also if the U.S. just dissolved into smaller, more natural, states. Let's be done with it.
We have no idea as to Palin's intelligence. I would not call her stupid. I suspect that she is quite intelligent. She is not qualified for many reasons. First, she is guided by an ideology based in fundamentalist Christianity. Creation science and denial of global warming puts her deep into a camp that denies reality. Second, she is vindictive in ways that should completely disqualify her. Here she has real character problems. Third, she lacks the experience and education required of anyone who could lead a complex society. With these handicaps, it is quite amazing she has gotten as far as she has, I suspect there may be some real intelligence and shrewdness behind her.
she's born-again, which may or may not make her one of the goyishe neoCons, but Huffpost has story saying she hired Abramoff minion Steven Silver to lobby DC on Indian affairs (read US $) issues, so she's definitely part of the kleptocracy
Yeah Palin is religious, and I'm not, but the big threat to American isn't the religion of Christianity of Palin, it is the liberal religion of Obama worship.
Bow down you unworthy dogs! Our Lord Obama is in da house!
Ken
http://www.LaserGuidedLoogie.com
Let's face facts the left gave the election to McCain. After eight years of the Bush regime the only way the Democrats could lose is put up someone so culturaly and racialy repulsive that White America would pull the GOP lever in a reflex action.
Barack Hussein Obama is the man to give us four more years of Republican neocon rule. All you Democrats had to do is to put up somebody who just "looked" American and the White House would have been yours.
Even before Palin came on the scene the GOP was going to win this, B. Hussein being only four or five points ahead means a loss when you factor in all those White people who lie to polLsters about how they are going to vote for the Black guy and don't. Now with Palin millions of White women don't even have to lie and can vote with a clear PC conscience.
So say goodbye to the White House say hello to nuclear war with Russua in 2010. Thanks alot you White liberal Negro worshipers you have doomed us all.
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