At the Iowa Freedom Summit this past weekend, the following piece of incomprehensibleness tumbled from Sarah Palin's mouth :
"Things must change for our government. Look at it. It isn’t too big to fail. It’s too big to succeed! It's too big to succeed, so we can afford no retreads or nothing will change with the same people and same policies that got us into the status quo. Another Latin word, status quo, and it stands for, ‘Man, the middle-class everyday Americans are really gettin’ taken for a ride.’ That's status quo, and GOP leaders, by the way, y'know the man can only ride ya when your back is bent. So strengthen it. Then the man can't ride ya, America won't be taken for a ride, because so much is at stake and we can't afford politicians playing games like nothing more is at stake than, oh, maybe just the next standing of theirs in the next election."
If her teleprompter was broken she should have just stopped talking, or she should have scribbled the meanings of words she did not know on her hands ahead of time. She knows that she is ignorant, but she does not care. She has dedicated herself to be the paid tool of the forces of reaction in the current political process. She hates the current Administration because during the campaign that led to this Presidency it shone a bright light on the existential ineptitude of a woman whose blind ambition led her to the precipice of intellectual and cultural ridicule. She subsequently became the hero of those whose ignorance is vehicularized by a hate deeply based in a historical…and a hysterical evil. She has become a driver for the interests of those whose vision of our world and our society is motivated by an unenlightened self interest.
The following is an excerpt from her speech at CPAC early last year:
“…, this is the guy who promised to provide for the sick, but there are more uninsured today than when Obama began this. He promised jobs for the jobless but fewer people work today than since the peanut farmer was our president, and the average family is bringing in $4,000 dollars less today than when Obama started all this. He promised us a safe peaceful world, promised he’s got al-Qaeda on the run, yeah, perhaps towards us. And safer? He would gut our arsenal, he allows others, enemies, to enrich theirs. Man, that’s just like a liberal on gun control. Mr. President, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.” [big applause - inaudible].
The recurring phrase “when Obama started all this”, demonstrates the absence of a real historical context for her criticism. Let us ignore her economic analysis, if we can call it that, and her convenient disrespect for President Carter and for the current President of the United States. The impact of the Affordable Care Act is undeniable. More Americans now have health insurance than ever before as a result of this Act. Reactionary attempts to upend it have been and will remain unsuccessful. The unemployment rate is at a six year low. Her repetition of a statistic about the average household income lacks economic context, and reflects the kind of political sleight of tongue that is well practiced among those who would sacrifice truth for partisan applause.
Most troubling of all is the carelessness of her view on how we should address the prevalence of conflict in our world. The Palin wisdom is: “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke”. Here is one circumstance where we do not have the luxury of leaving the fool to her foolishness. Add to this her little nugget about water-boarding being “our way of baptizing terrorists”, and we have a good case for censoring her kind of political “speech”. She is dangerous. Her lack of intellectual curiosity is well demonstrated and documented. What is most curious is her penchant for celebrating those base instincts that are best left in the septic pit of our cultural and political reality.
Her dilemma… Salvation vs oblivion
We should not hate Sarah Palin. Ultimately she is another human being. She is a wife, a mother and grand-mother. Her dilemma is a shared one… How do we chart the course of our lives given the gifts we have acquired and the opportunities that life presents to us. The challenge we face is one that demands that we avail ourselves of a moral compass as we chart the course of our ambitions. This is where many fall down. This is where she has fallen. When we race ahead into the uncertain future blind-folded by a morally and ethically challenged perspective, we inevitably find ourselves unable to navigate away from the stumbling blocks in our path. Hence our almost certain down-fall.
There comes a point at which we are forced to stop and take stock. To not do so is to suffer an existential stumbling that is certain to force us down the slippery path of self-destruction. It is time for Sarah to stop and take stock. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows an overwhelming majority and plurality of the American public want her to find a quiet place and retreat there from our presence. That’s putting it as kindly as I care to. It would be advisable for her to avail herself of the implicit wisdom of such a recourse.
To continue as a mercenary tongue for the hateful and obstructive influences that keep her motor running, is to assure herself a place on the garbage heap of the American political and cultural consciousness. Her dilemma is a function of her self ordained destiny. For Sarah it is either salvation or oblivion. She has time to change course. And she should.
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