The End is Fucking Neigh

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/552kbtvz.asp

The above article, entitled "Give 'em Hell, Sarah", appears in the Weekly Standard magazine, the leading mouthpiece for Neo-Conservative talking points and dogma on the American Right. The author, one Steven F. Hayward, comes to a spirited defense of the embattled Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, saying that "just below the surface of the second-guessing about Sarah Palin's fitness to be president is the serious question of whether we still believe in the American people's capacity for self-government".

This is the idea the Right has been trying to talk itself into since John McCain made the cynical, dangerous and ridiculous choice of Palin as his VP candidate a couple weeks back, and I'm calling bullshit on it.

The thrust of this article is that the media is giving Palin such intense scrutiny about her political beliefs, history and ideals because she's a normal person, just like the average voter, and that the political elite that is the mainstream media doesn't accept her because she's an outsider, that they're inherently skeptical because, in Hayward's words, "she didn't go to Harvard; she's never been on Meet the Press; she hasn't participated in Aspen Institute seminars or attended the World Economic Forum." As if these are bad things, as if being asked questions on national television or attending one of the world's best colleges is overrated, or negative. It's almost implying that her experience as a mother, a mayor and a governor (for less than two years) is enough experience to lead the country, which simply isn't true.

Conservatives are so fond of promoting government be run like a business, but if the outgoing CEO of your multi-billion dollar company was promoting somebody who had been a mid-level manager for less than two years and spent time in the mail room before that to be their successor as CEO, you would call them nuts, which is exactly what John McCain is for doing this. It would be an unsound and risky move for a business; for the most powerful government in the world it would be catastrophic.

It's not that she's qualified, it's that she has the same ignorant worldview, the same fantasyland set of antiquated ideas on topics like abortion, gay marriage, global warming and war that the rest of the back-to-the-dark-ages agenda the religious right that runs the GOP advocates now a days. She's the perfect vessel for this, a plain-talkin' hockey mom (a hunter no less!), masquerading as an agent for change who can be defended from all sides by playing the gender, religious persecution, or small-town card.

Sarah Palin is the perfect storm of the modern Neo-Conservative movement: an intellectual lightweight willing to ignore facts, truth and commons sense to perpetuate power. If I can be more blunt, she is quite stupid. She's a tool in all senses of the word: a vessel being used to promote an agenda, but also a moron.

These words may seem harsh, but someone who thinks intelligent design should be taught in schools along side evolution I have very little intellectual respect for. Someone who believes global warming isn't predominately man-made, ignoring all legitimate scientific evidence to the contrary, is either delusional or an imbecile. Someone who believes rape victims shouldn't be allowed to abort their babies because Jesus thinks it's a human life is religious zealot. Someone who thinks simply drilling for oil wherever they want will have any sort of immediate impact on gas prices is not dealing with reality. Sarah Palin believes simply because she believes something, it makes it true. This is the kind of thinking that got us into the quagmire in Iraq: The belief that Iraq is a threat and we should invade them, then coming up with reasons to do so, finding "facts" and "intelligence" (no matter how dubious in nature) that conform to the idea, rather than letting the facts and circumstances shape the policy.

It's this anti-intellectual worldview that I have such a fundamental disagreement with, that the fact anybody questioning her experience or intelligence is an elitist themselves, that John McCain telling us she's qualified and ready to lead is all the assurance we should need about her qualifications. It's bullshit, and if anything more scrutiny, research and questioning needs to be done before anybody could, with a straight face, say Sarah Palin is qualified to be second in line to lead our country.

Watch these two videos together and tell me they don't have a disturbing amount in common:






Sarah Palin is ignorant because she obviously didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was when ABC's Charles Gibson asked her a straightforward question about it. She is a tiny notch above Miss South Carolina in content, and about even on delivery. Sarah Palin is dishonest because she's been touting her independent persona by saying she said "thanks but no thanks to the 'Bridge to Nowhere'", when in actuality she advocated it's construction before changing her mind along with popular opinion and a surge of common sense. Sarah Palin is unqualified because her only experience in government was as a mayor of a town of 6,300 people and as governor of a state with less than 700,000 people. Saying these things is certainly not an affront to small town people, although most conservatives would have you believe it. It is an affront to unqualified pretenders trying to seize control of our government.

Hayward makes the claim that "The establishment is affronted by the idea that an ordinary hockey mom--a mere citizen--might be just as capable of running the country as a long-time member of the Council on Foreign Relations." I am not the establishment, but I am affronted by this idea. She has no experience! SHE IS NOT QUALIFIED! I DON'T want an ordinary citizen being President! I want someone intelligent, I want someone who went to the best schools and has served in the Senate on a national level running things. I want someone who has well-thought out ideas rooted in reason and facts, I want someone who knows what the fucking Bush Doctrine is and doesn't shit her pants on national television. When did it become a bad thing to be intelligent? When were the atributes of self-awareness and introspection axed from the requirements for successful leadership?

Some national polls have McCain/Palin in front of Obama/Biden. Time and time again I assure myself that the American people will see through the fog, that the last eight years (and the vile persecution of the previous eight Clinton years) will be enough to spur change, that we as a country will finally get it, that we will aspire to make real change, to do the right thing, but after seeing the reaction to this I'm really starting to doubt myself. The voting electorate needs to prove that they can push aside the bullshit and move forward, but the hour is getting very late. I honestly can't even bring myself to fantasize what a McCain/Palin White House would look like, but I have a feeling it's twin is in the White House right now, and I have no idea how we could survive another four years of it.