Why I think Sarah Palin wants to kill me & my friends & family, even though I know I'm overreacting
I find I cannot bear to listen to any clips from that Tea Party w/Palin. I have a visceral, near-panic response when I hear her voice now, which is unexpected; usually, even when I dislike a politician's stand or persona, I don't take it personally. Even when I was shouting, "I hate you, shuddup you moron!" at W., or shuddering at the gooey earnestness of Reagan in my livingroom, it wasn't like this. My lizard brain knows that Palin is The Enemy. She's mean-spirited and ignorant. She's the girl who made fun of you in the school hallway. She's the woman in the small town that my friends left vowing never to return, because it was run by people like her. And now she's rallying her troops . . . .
Yesterday I got into an interesting discussion with Paul Witcover & Greg Feeley over on Facebook, the cream of which I present here (with Greg's permission):
Paul Witcover [shared]: In a speech slamming Obama for using a TelePrompter, Tea-bagger-in-chief Palin tips her hand . . .
Palin's Cheat-Sheet - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
I was too busy taping away at my laptop to notice this little high-school trick. Having mocked president Obama for using a TelePrompter .... she had to scribble down her priorities as president on her palm.... [photo]
EK: My loathing of Palin knows no bounds. She reminds me of Hitler, and I don't say that lightly.
Yesterday at 1:29pm ·
Paul Witcover: I think the Hitler analogy is a bit premature, at best. She seems less intelligent, but also less driven by murderous pathologies -- just narcissistic and greedy ones. Still dangerous, though. I also loathe her and look forward to the day her house of cards comes crashing down.
EK: It's the faux-populist mean-spirited emotionalism masquerading as reason & political discourse. Gives me terrible chills. Usually I'm very detached from the winds of politics. Wish I could detach from this one, and hope you're right.
G-- M-- : she's such a complete dumb ass.
Gregory Feeley: Sarah Palin isn’t dumb, she’s something worse. She is a virulent anti-intellectual -- meaning that she fears and resents people who do not make decisions based on their immediate impulses, but rather analyze and reason their way to a conclusion, and often defer making judgments until they have undertaken to learn more. Palin actively scorns these people, and lauds the practice of responding according to one’s already-established sentiments and prejudices, which she calls “character.”
Intelligence is a virtue, but it’s not a moral virtue, and a person of limited intelligence can be a good person. What Palin lacks isn’t intelligence, but rather the willingness to acknowledge that complex issues cannot be answered by insisting on one’s familiar and unexamined values as the answer to everything, and unfamiliar ideas to be scorned and driven away.
Yesterday at 5:32pm
EK: Greg, thank you. You nailed it for me. Still hyperventilating when I hear that voice, but at least that makes sense of why.
Well, America survived MacCarthy. And Father Coughlin. And a lot of very nasty movements in the 19c that we've forgotten ever happened. But this is the first time I've ever thought, "If this person & her followers ever come to power, I may have to leave" - this despite my mocking my friends who whinged about the re-election of Bush, crying - like Faisal under the Turkish barrage of his camp, or Mother Jones on the picket lines - "Stand and fight!"
So here I type.
Yesterday I got into an interesting discussion with Paul Witcover & Greg Feeley over on Facebook, the cream of which I present here (with Greg's permission):
Paul Witcover [shared]: In a speech slamming Obama for using a TelePrompter, Tea-bagger-in-chief Palin tips her hand . . .
Palin's Cheat-Sheet - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
I was too busy taping away at my laptop to notice this little high-school trick. Having mocked president Obama for using a TelePrompter .... she had to scribble down her priorities as president on her palm.... [photo]
EK: My loathing of Palin knows no bounds. She reminds me of Hitler, and I don't say that lightly.
Yesterday at 1:29pm ·
Paul Witcover: I think the Hitler analogy is a bit premature, at best. She seems less intelligent, but also less driven by murderous pathologies -- just narcissistic and greedy ones. Still dangerous, though. I also loathe her and look forward to the day her house of cards comes crashing down.
EK: It's the faux-populist mean-spirited emotionalism masquerading as reason & political discourse. Gives me terrible chills. Usually I'm very detached from the winds of politics. Wish I could detach from this one, and hope you're right.
G-- M-- : she's such a complete dumb ass.
Gregory Feeley: Sarah Palin isn’t dumb, she’s something worse. She is a virulent anti-intellectual -- meaning that she fears and resents people who do not make decisions based on their immediate impulses, but rather analyze and reason their way to a conclusion, and often defer making judgments until they have undertaken to learn more. Palin actively scorns these people, and lauds the practice of responding according to one’s already-established sentiments and prejudices, which she calls “character.”
Intelligence is a virtue, but it’s not a moral virtue, and a person of limited intelligence can be a good person. What Palin lacks isn’t intelligence, but rather the willingness to acknowledge that complex issues cannot be answered by insisting on one’s familiar and unexamined values as the answer to everything, and unfamiliar ideas to be scorned and driven away.
Yesterday at 5:32pm
EK: Greg, thank you. You nailed it for me. Still hyperventilating when I hear that voice, but at least that makes sense of why.
Well, America survived MacCarthy. And Father Coughlin. And a lot of very nasty movements in the 19c that we've forgotten ever happened. But this is the first time I've ever thought, "If this person & her followers ever come to power, I may have to leave" - this despite my mocking my friends who whinged about the re-election of Bush, crying - like Faisal under the Turkish barrage of his camp, or Mother Jones on the picket lines - "Stand and fight!"
So here I type.