Would you believe... in editing this post over to here I lost a couple of key sentences from the middle.
But thinking about them led me to realise why my repulsion from her is so visceral.
Palin seems smug about her ignorance. She is actually proud of knowing so little.
But she's more than just aware of it, I think. It's deliberate. Unlike Bush, who was comes over to me as naturally heedless and weak-minded (or he may have done the damage through substance abuse), she has actually tried to be this vapid.
It's easiest seen in schoolyard terms. She's in the clique of jocks and girlies who hates anyone clever, or who reads, or simply different, because she recognises the threat to her own position, and the likelihood of being left behind by them in the real world. Any wit she has is directed to deriding and undercutting anyone not in her clique, which is why the attack politics come so naturally to her. She cements her own position by knowing nothing and mocking anyone who does.
And it's this that explains my loathing. She is aiming, accurately, to embody the anti-intellectual. She's the candidate of the downwardly evolving - of people who believe in the gut and not the brain, who fear the "other" and anything new. She's the next step in the Rove-designed politician: she's trying to capture and shape the vote of people who feel and react but cannot, will not think for themselves.
Far more than McCain, she and the movement she represents are the enemy of progress and reason. |
