My Two Cents on Sarah Palin
She should not even be in the running. This is akin to Clarence Thomas: I couldn't care less (and didn't at the time) that he was black. He sucked: a C rating by the ABA. Shouldn't have even been nominated, and the Anita Hill thing was a typically spineless Democratic gambit to find "another reason" not to approve of the choice, whether she was telling the truth or not. I can't stand Alito, Roberts, and Scalia, but they have brains and the right to be on the court, objectively speaking. Of course they are dangerous, but they're not unqualified, from a certain perspective. Thomas was and is; ditto Palin.
The GOP is very good at catching liberals in their own silly, narcissistic identity politics, and when they squirm, they show how spineless they are. All the Demz have been doing is touting how "historic" the Hillobama run has been. As if there has never been a female ruler in the history of the world. Margaret Thatcher was female (presumably). Good model? Condi Rice? She's black, too. Let's vote for her! Colin Powell held very high office. Not particularly beneficial to the nation or the world. You can't run on such idiocies, using them to energize potential voters and donors, and then complain when the other side does it, too. But if you can't run on the policies that poll after poll shows that the Great Unwashed Masses want -- if both parties are far to the right of the population, in other words -- you have to run on this kind of garbage.
The entire notion of ethnic/gender loyalties is idiotic, dangerous, and undemocratic in the extreme, and follows logically from an election in which "qualities" are important, not issues. And identity politics is what you'd expect in a consumerist society in which class cannot be taken seriously and in which advertising/PR rules. Buy this razor and women will love you. Use this goo on your face, and you'll never grow old -- and men will love you. This kind of psychological assault (which is what it is) on rationality and truth starts the moment we flick the tube on or open a magazine and continues throughout our lives. It accustoms people to doublethink and irrationality -- as if our species needed any encouragement in that direction! And this industry is run by the corporations that rule our lives and amass capital for themselves and their hired servants (aka, white-collar workers).
And rightwingers are worried about the effect of a few silly self-refuting French postmodernists on Truth!
Palin is a rightwing nutjob with nothing to offer. At least Obama can give a good speech and seems to be intelligent. No, he has no business being where he is, either, and I don't care what color he is. The increasing lack of experience in presidential candidates is purposeful, not incidental. As issues recede and image dominates, the lack of a record becomes more important: the larger the screen upon which to project one's wishes. McCain is struggling to maintain his image as a "maverick," which is totally belied by his record. But in a pseudoevent, that's all the matters (Boorstin's book The Image is worth reading -- prescient; nailed the nascent Camelot myth pretty good).
Whether any of us prefer one screen to another is, to me, kind of beside the point. You can't have a representative democracy based on demagoguery and leader-worship. As Aristotle and Plato warned, rightly.
Or, as Ben Franklin put it, when asked what he thought of the Constitution that had just been written:
The GOP is very good at catching liberals in their own silly, narcissistic identity politics, and when they squirm, they show how spineless they are. All the Demz have been doing is touting how "historic" the Hillobama run has been. As if there has never been a female ruler in the history of the world. Margaret Thatcher was female (presumably). Good model? Condi Rice? She's black, too. Let's vote for her! Colin Powell held very high office. Not particularly beneficial to the nation or the world. You can't run on such idiocies, using them to energize potential voters and donors, and then complain when the other side does it, too. But if you can't run on the policies that poll after poll shows that the Great Unwashed Masses want -- if both parties are far to the right of the population, in other words -- you have to run on this kind of garbage.
The entire notion of ethnic/gender loyalties is idiotic, dangerous, and undemocratic in the extreme, and follows logically from an election in which "qualities" are important, not issues. And identity politics is what you'd expect in a consumerist society in which class cannot be taken seriously and in which advertising/PR rules. Buy this razor and women will love you. Use this goo on your face, and you'll never grow old -- and men will love you. This kind of psychological assault (which is what it is) on rationality and truth starts the moment we flick the tube on or open a magazine and continues throughout our lives. It accustoms people to doublethink and irrationality -- as if our species needed any encouragement in that direction! And this industry is run by the corporations that rule our lives and amass capital for themselves and their hired servants (aka, white-collar workers).
And rightwingers are worried about the effect of a few silly self-refuting French postmodernists on Truth!
Palin is a rightwing nutjob with nothing to offer. At least Obama can give a good speech and seems to be intelligent. No, he has no business being where he is, either, and I don't care what color he is. The increasing lack of experience in presidential candidates is purposeful, not incidental. As issues recede and image dominates, the lack of a record becomes more important: the larger the screen upon which to project one's wishes. McCain is struggling to maintain his image as a "maverick," which is totally belied by his record. But in a pseudoevent, that's all the matters (Boorstin's book The Image is worth reading -- prescient; nailed the nascent Camelot myth pretty good).
Whether any of us prefer one screen to another is, to me, kind of beside the point. You can't have a representative democracy based on demagoguery and leader-worship. As Aristotle and Plato warned, rightly.
Or, as Ben Franklin put it, when asked what he thought of the Constitution that had just been written:
I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other."Need" may be challenged, but the universal historical tendency toward despotism is unquestionable, as is the validity of Franklin's prediction.