She's not quite as vapid as people think. Indeed, Palin is a rather intelligent woman that the majority of people cannot separate the real Palin from Tina Fey's portrayal of her. That said, she is ultimately a politician and one without any political substance to which I could subscribe or adhere. I would not vote for her; but then voting for establishment candidates of any sort is not a thing I do.
FarSky:
"Rightist" populism is not a falsehood. It is a political and social reality that emerges from situations exactly as the one America finds itself currently facing. When the "Left", I won't use conservative or liberal because those are labels which have no substantive meaning any longer ... in any case, when the "Left" pushes too much in a direction that the silent majority does not want, it finds that the pendulum is pulled (not pushed) in the opposite direction. I have linked, numerous times now, Slavoj Žižek's treatise --
"Against the Populist Temptation" -- on this phenomenon several times now. I again implore you to read it. It is quite enlightening, if slightly dated at this point.
American politics are the politics of advertisement and mass marketing. They are not the politics of self-interest or collective-interest. And to that extent, Palin is merely another product that can be sold to a segment of political consumers. Moreso, the same is undoubtedly and doubly true for the sitting President, because Obama presumes himself to be in part the poster child of the "enlightened, liberal, technocratic elite." That the very segment of the population that generated his will to power
now abandons him is indicative of this very reality. American politicians cannot deliver on their claims, for a variety of reasons, nor can they manifest themselves as someone capable of leading. This populist rejection, by both factions of the political consumer, indicates precisely the failure of Obama's presidency and capability. The impossibility of being the man he sold himself as to get elected also created the inevitability of his failure. That Obama has proven himself incompetent (Health Care and the Oil Spill); that Obama has proven himself unwilling to accept compromises (Health Care, Financial Regulatory Reform); that Obama has displayed the worst kind of partisanship when availed of a voting majority in both houses of the Congress demonstrates that he is not, nor could be the individual he promised during his campaign. The reality of having to lead confronts Obama with his own inadequacies as a political person; consequently, he retreats into being a political product. The same was true of George W. Bush. The same was true of Bill Clinton. The same was true of Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy ...
Indeed, since the start of the Twentieth Century there have been exactly two Presidents who existed such that they were leaders beyond the "populist temptation" ... leaders outside the political marketing machine and commoditized reality of American politics. One, at least in my estimation and that of his peers, was a tyrant: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The other was Dwight Eisenhower: ignored by the contemporary Democratic Party and Republican Party alike precisely because the reality of his leadership runs counter their will to power.
_________________
Corolinth wrote:
Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.
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