Sarah Palin, a professional politician with a 17 year career, who recently dissed professional politicians, a creature who was largely created by the right-wing media, but likes to blame everything on the media, has resigned. Of course, even though she saw nothing wrong with spending lots of campaign money on clothes, and raising political money to cover her legal bills (which is an ethics violation), she delivered her resignation speech — blaming government spending for our nation’s problems.
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I really am sad to see her go. On balance, I’d guess that she did just as much good for Democrats as she did for Republicans.
The average guy on the street doesn’t always know enough to form an informed opinion on complicated policy issues. Enter Palin, the great “simplifyer”.
She embodies, not only, a lack of intellectual curiosity but a sense of anti-intellectualism, altogether – she actively rejects information that she doesn’t understand and doesn’t agree with…she had a distrust of academia paired with the kind of certainty in personal convictions that are typically found in cults. She was almost cartoonish in nature, more so than President Bush. And with her gone, we risk going down the boring (and historically-speaking dangerous) road of debating policy that goes over the top of people’s heads.
Sigh.
…I don’t know if I’ll ever forget that idiotic exchange with Hannity where she denounces socialism just after taking pride in tax cuts that were the result of a partial socialization of the energy sector in her state.
This morning I was listening to the last 10 minutes of NPR’s On Point. The episode was about the “Birthers,” those wacky folks who claim that Obama is not a natural born citizen. I came in with enough time to hear a self-identified Republican (because apparently that was relevant – although she never stated in what way) claim that she wants to see a “Certificate of Live Birth”. When pressed as to why this bothers her and why she doesn’t believe all of the information that clearly proves that Obama was born in Hawaii, she mumbled something about the constitution and then went on an incoherent rant about Indonesia and “Certificate of Live Birth”. Ashbrook was totally exasperated by the whole exchange. I swear that the folks at SNL could not have come up with anything funnier.
It is this kind of person that is attracted to Palin. They don’t just ignore contrary information, they ignore information altogether. They are perfectly happy to live in the world of feelings, opinion, and “convictions.”
I’ve had some of these people as students. Quite a few consider themselves liberal, but their attitude toward information is the same as these Birthers. They don’t do well in my classes.