Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Beyond the Palin

So, to sum up:

The USA looks quite likely to elect a man as president who's main qualification appears to be that he spent part of his younger years dropping bombs on innocent people, and then subsequently got shot down and spent some time in jail (not that I want to belittle his time in jail, which I'm sure was not exactly a bed of roses - and since in the last 8 years the US has managed to acquire a reputation for torturing people, this might actually prove to be of some use to him). This man is a bit off the wall, and regularly loses his temper quite spectacularly or goes into some kind of bizarre mental loops where he says he can't remember anything and people should stop asking him difficult questions. He is also 72 years old. He looks healthy enough, frankly, but, should the worst happen, then power will transfer into the hands of...

Sarah Palin. A religious fundamentalist who doesn't believe in evolution, who thinks that the war in Iraq was God's will, and who urged people in Alaska to pray to get a gas pipeline built. Someone who claims that she is "as pro-life as any candidate can be" yet believes that gay people shouldn't get health care, and that capital punishment is a good idea (and presumably the right to life doesn't extend to Iraqis). Oh, and she thinks the environment is just something that gets in the way of making money. Drill for oil, and kill polar bears, appear to sum it up.

She is billed by the Republican party as a "typical" American. Well, you know I lived in the US for 6 years, and in all of that time, I never met anyone mad or stupid enough to believe in creationism. I never met any of these vocal but minority fundamentalist nutters who hate gays and oppose Roe vs Wade. I never met any fervent gun rights advocates, and most people I met were very concerned about the environment. She is in no way typical. She's typical of the extreme religious right of the Republican party, not typical of anything else. The only way in which she's a "typical" American is in the fact that she's white, which is presumably what they're not-so-subtly getting at here.

With this lot with the very real possibility of taking over the White House from the previous bunch of fanatical cretins, with Putin/Medvedev in charge in Russia and with bigoted warmonger Benjamin Netanyahu likely to take over in Israel before long, I reckon we're all doomed. And not because of the large hadron collider either.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

She also supports shooting wolves from helicopters. Seriously.

dumneazu said...

It's not over for another two months... I think that the public (or the press) is going to get over their McCain/Palin silliness and start thinking a bit more seriously in a few weeks. I'm voting Obama!

Dan Anghel said...

Just don't get too emotional about this whole US elections thing:) I believe that we, Europeans, are strongly biased about what happens there, so the wisest thing is to relax and observe. Just a thing, Sarah Palin is eating up into Hillary Cliton's female voter base, so things are far from being that black ans white as you emphasize them. Plus the thing with Benjamin Netanyahu risking to take the lead in Israel is far from being obvious, Tzipi Livni just won the head of the Kadima party:)

Gadjo Dilo said...

I confess that I find the election "ticket" thing in the US a bit cynical: "We got a grizzled old Vietnam vet from the Southern states so we got to put with him a young, attractive female from the north - unfortunately the only one available is this grinning nutter from Alaska". But I suppose that at least this meants Obama's team were required to choose somebody with some experience. It's not perfect, but I hope that Obama/Biden works out.

Anonymous said...

Dan, Sarah Palin is the anti-Hillary Clinton, apart from being females they have absolutely nothing in common.

I think most Hillary Clinton fans are smart enough to notice the differences.

Dan Anghel said...

OK Bogdan, let's play it more nuanced if you wish, even if Andy's original post and your first comment don't inspire any envy of nuance:)

Indeed, Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton and if the Clinton female voters base is formed mainly of persons with liberal feminist inclinations then I'm completely off the track. Deliberately I may say, because the point I was trying to make was that Sarah Palin has a broader appeal than just to the evangelical right or the rednecks. So she's not actually contending for Hillary Cliton hardcore female fans, but I thing she appeals to blue collar voters, a difficul ground for Obama but not for Hillary Clinton.

Andy said...

My point is that she appeals to blue collar voters because that's the media narrative. The same (right-wing driven) narrative that makes Obama an "elitist", has claimed Palin as a "typical American". She's not typical (as I've said), she's extremist and (quite frankly) barking mad.

The problem here is not Palin, as such, it's that the overwhlemingly right wing US media runs with the narrative as it is presented by people like Karl Rove

Dan Anghel said...

I don't know anything about Sarah Palin being a "typical american" since I don't know what that really means. I think choosing her was very targeted and blue collar (especially female) voters were part of the target and it worked quite well until now. Since I don't believe in the "typical american" nor in the "typical any national" I really don't give this assertion much attention.