The Glade 4.0

Well, that's because she had the audacity to be a female politician from a state people don't want to take seriously because they think everyone there is an ignorant redleck. Not only that, but the mere fact that she goes to church they don't like means she wants to turn the country into a theocracy.

Those were what the objections boiled down to when she was first nominated, before any of the other supposed "dirt" came out. Ever since then it's been just one nonstop attempt to dig up dirt on the woman, and quite a few otherwise intelligent people have been on the nonstop bandwagon that the Tina Fey impression of her actually is how she is. Evidently the hope is that other people won't pay enough attention to her to realize that one screwed-up interview with Katie Couric does not make her SNL parody accurate.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a pretty famous interview with the campaign director for McCain where he basically flat out states that she didn't know anything on most all of the national topics.

Note, that is very different than being smart or not Khross. One can be smart and still an ignorant git.

I admit, I'm still on the fence concerning Sarah Palin, and the whole Tea Party thing may throw wrenches into the works in unintended directions.

Except, the statement was kind of cherry picked out of the book Game Changer by those opposed to Palin. She was a relative unknown struggling to deal with backyard political issues who was picked precisely because she was unobtrusive. What gets left out of that quote is the fact that they prepped her and coached her and educated her on everything she needed to know, and she absorbed it like a sponge.And were it actually true, I'd agree with you guys. I dislike Palin for a lot of reasons, but she's neither stupid nor ignorant.

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Unfortunately, I honestly don't have time to provide specific links in support of my view of Palin. Basically, it's a gestalt of the various interviews of her that I've seen and accounts I've read from her former colleagues and personal acquaintances. Regarding the lack of knowledge and intellectual curiosity, like Aizle said, her handlers at the McCain campaign have gone on record as saying she knew absolutely nothing about history, policy, economics, etc. when she was first selected as his running-mate. And she routinely bashes elites, experts, "liberal" universities, law professors, etc.. All that adds up to a lack of intellectual curiosity and a class-based resentment of those who have it, at least in my view. That, in turn, ties in with her pandering to identity politics. Obama benefited from identity politics, of course, but he didn't really play to the resentment side of it the way she does. She strikes me as being more like Al Sharpton for the white, Evangelical, rural set.

That is one of the best descriptions of her I've heard. Completely spot on.

True, but I've yet to see any evidence from her in subsequent interviews that indicates she's done more than memorize information, as opposed to really understanding the issues involved. My impression of her is just not of a woman who's interested in getting into the intellectual weeds on such things.

She makes me facepalm, but I have to admit she is very knowledgeable on her core issues like energy. She's had a lot of experience there, it's one of her main concerns being from Alaska, but it shows capacity.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

DE, this is exactly what I mean when I say she's appealing to identity-based resentments. My impression of her as being ignorant (or at least intellectually incurious) has nothing whatsoever to do with her being from a rural cultural background. It's based on her performance in interviews and the statements of those who've worked with her. My impression that she has a troubling view of the relationship between church and state isn't based on prejudice against Christians or the particular church she attends. It's based on her making statements like this:



Maybe you agree with that view, and if so, that's fine, we just disagree. But my disagreement isn't based on prejudice against Evangelical Christians, it's based on philosophical differences over the principles involved. Palin, however, plays the identity politics card in order to make it into an "us vs. them" thing, which, again, I think is reflected in your comment above.

She isn't the one appealing to identity-based resentments, nor was I speaking about you, specifically. She's responding to the identity politics that has been directed at her since she was nominated - and more specifically, that identity politics is OK when blacks, women (as long as they're the "right" women) and other minorities are appealing to them, but are suddenly problematic when they're not about the politically correct groups.



All she is saying is that politicians should not be afraid of offending someone by stating their personal beliefs. I don't see why you would find that troubling. What she's speaking about is the sort of thing that was done to her during the campaign: wild claims about the imminence of theocracy because a politician is open about their faith.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That is so NOT what she's saying. Let's review that section in detail...



Ok, as an athiest I'm a little offended at the notion that only by being a God fearing nation will America's spirit rise, but whatever.



So we need some divine intervention so we can be safe and secure and proserous again. The subtext here is that because we've supposedly become godless, our nation is being punished. I've heard that nonsense from other people on this forum before too. The implication is that she advocating tossing out the first amendment regarding free practice of religion, because those differing ideas are making God punish the nation. It's not too much of a leap to assume that any other godless habits should be stricken down as well, like atheism, homosexuality, etc.



This is flat out wrong and ignorant. Most speeches made by the President of the United States end with, "God Bless America". "In God We Trust" is printed in our money. Free practice of religion is part of the First Amendment. The current standing president and EVERY SINGLE PRESIDENT that's ever been elected has freely proclaimed their faith in God. At Obama's innauguration, one of the most prominent evangelical ministers in the country provided the eulogy.

Yes it is what she's saying. Picking it apart in bits and pieces instead of addressing it as a whole won't help.



A) She didn't say "only" and B) what do you care? Being a god-fearing nation doesn't stop you from being an atheist, and in any case, a "god-fearing nation" is so vague as to be meaningless.



No, ti's not the implication that she wants to toss out the first ammendment. That's you inventing stuff based on this strawman Christian you have in your head that's secretly pushing for a theocracy. So yes, it's an extreme leap that she's wanting "godless practices" ended, because she's not in any way advocating getting rid of the first ammendment. You're just reading that into what she's saying talking about "implications" and "subtexts" to confirm to yourself that she's an evil Christian intent on establishing theocracy. It verges on paranoia

Yes, I find the idea that the nation is being punished by God absurd, but that isn't what she said. She may think that if individuals are more god-fearing they will be more prosperous, and the aggregate will make the nation more prosperous. It isn't a call for any specifc national effort.

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Except that it's not all that wrong or ignorant. We hear whining and bellyaching about what it says on money every day, as if it somehow actually affects anything other than hurt feelings.

There was plenty of whining and bellyaching about Obama having that guy, and there's planety of whining and bellyaching about God Bless America too. It's this cricticism of politicians for having people like that at their inauguration or about what the money says that she's pointing out.

It's the same argument that somehow is unacceptable when applied to gay marriage. "Gays being allowed to marry infringes on our right to have marriage defined as we want it". Guess what? That argument is just as much bullshit when you're saying "If a politician is talking about being a God-fearing nation, they want to take away my right to freedom to be an Atheist" or "What is says ont he money/what the President says in speeches is infringing on my rights". Those are the arguments and claims made whenever those subjects come up and that's what she's speaking against.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

RD:

I find it.... I dunno, something not good; that you don't see Obama's identity politics and the negative therein.

His entire campaign was negative in subtext. Don't be fooled by the positive optimistic veneer. Implicit in "Change and Hope" is that something was going wrong we needed to change and that there was no hope. That theory is an indictment of the current administration (at the time).

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Yeah, Adrak, I read your posts and they don't make any sense to me either. Are you attacking posters or politicians? It's hard to tell. Also, what value does calling someone a cow have? That really doesn't tell me anything substantive about your position, and doesn't really contribute to any sort of coherent discussion.

I mean, I'm assuming you don't have any actual evidence that she's a cow or a whore, so you're just name calling.

He's calling her a whorecow, me a retard, has nothing substantive to add, and won't explain his reasoning for either.

In short: he's being a tool.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Well sure, any campaign against an incumbent party is necessarily going to involve criticism of that party and its governance. That's different than identity politics. Also, I do see a big difference between an implicit "Electing the first black President would be a big deal" message and an explicit "us vs. them" message.

It is beneath your intellect and credibility to call the identity politics of the Obama campaign implicit, RangerDave.

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Let's define the term "identity politics" then, since I suspect we all have different ideas of what we're talking about here. In my view, identity politics refers to the practice of appealing to "us vs. them" sentiments in the electorate based on racial, cultural, or class identification, with the politician in question obviously positioning him/herself as one of "us" and his/her opponent as one of "them". I don't see how Obama really did that to any significant degree. Palin, on the other hand, seems quite crude and blunt about it, similar to Sharpton or Jackson rather than Obama.

RangerDave:

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I was thinking of this example:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/stor ... 348&page=1



He definitely played it like the GOP was out to get him because he was black. This is him personally now. The media at large, well there are countless examples.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

I continually bash liberal universities, law professors, economic theory as well as nobel winning economists, elites, and experts RD.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Khross and Dash give excellent examples, but I'm sure I could pull up a dozen more with a quick web search.

Now, if you want to argue crudity of message, I might be willing to concede that; but just because Obama and his team were better at it doesn't mean they didn't do it, and aren't doing it still

Think of your own post about healthcare, where you're essentially citing the "us v. them" nature of the healthcare debate. That's straight from the horse's mouth vis. "Republicans have no ideas and no coherent plan." Not only is that a blatant falsehood, it is the exact definition you're using above being spoken by the PRESIDENT OF OUR COUNTRY every day.

A has-been governor is nothing compared to the same type divisiveness coming from the President's office. It was the same under Dubya.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

That's partisan politics, not identity politics. For it to be identity politics, it has to be about a person's sense of tribal identity within the broad racial and cultural cleavages (boobies!) in the electorate. In short, black vs. white, men vs. women, religious vs. secular, rural vs. urban, populist vs. elitist, etc., not Republican vs. Democrat.

True, but your critique tends to be against groupthink and a failure to fully examine/understand the issues rather than against the pursuit of knowledge and expertise itself. I see Palin's critique as more akin to the latter.

The healthcare debate is playing heavily on the "Rich vs. Poor" dichotomy which is definitely identity politics.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."