Thought for the day
Bookworm on Oct 20 2008 at 3:34 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
My thought for the day is the result of analyzing the glee that the parents at my local soccer games took from their sense that Palin “humiliated” herself on Saturday Night Live. It is amazing how they — meaning Democrats — loath Palin. It has nothing to do with her actual political positions (about which they’re fairly ignorant) and has everything to do with her as a person. She embodies everything they find disgusting and frightening: God, guns, pro-Life, small town, no graduate degrees, pro-drilling. She is their version of Satan incarnate.
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Book,
They tend to loathe anything that is not like them. As has been observed before, the very worst racists I’ve ever met are “progressives”, “liberals”, and often “democrats”. They want to help the poor, but don’t want a family of any type other than white and professional to live in their neighborhood. Heck, one of my sisters lives in a development that is 97+% white, wealthy, and has its own set of security guards to keep the riff-raff out. There is no rule prohibiting other races from moving in; but one of the reasons that most of the families moved there was to take advantage of making sure their kids went to school with the “right kind” of people. Oh, and the area went for Kerry 63-35 in 2004 (St. Louis suburb).
And the racism isn’t limited to the Caucasians, either. I’ve been told by a black friend that he really can’t invite me to visit his family. I’d be in danger from the neighbors and his mother doesn’t really trust white people. He was really embarrassed to say it; he’s still a closet conservative (he’s an avid Rush Limbaugh fan but only listens in the car when he goes to work).
Most of the Democrats suffer from xenophobia – they fear and loathe that which is different. As long as it is away from them they make a scene to show how much they aren’t phobic – the trick is getting them close enough to the problem to make them admit their fears. Then you have a chance.
I’ll give credit on one thing to the Mormons – they send their kids out to some of the worst places in the world to spread their faith and help others. After seeing El Salvador in the 90′s (post communism and civil war), it makes me appreciate what I have more than ever. I won’t talk about the other places I’ve been – some I don’t want to think about ever again. I’m just happy I don’t live any of those places and had the fortune to be born here.
Take care, be well, and remember that their actions betray their insecurity. And I’ll lay odds that at least a few of them vote for McCain because he’s far less foreign than a man named Obama (though they’ll never admit it to anyone).
SSG Dave – “In the end, a scorpion stings because of what it is. Men lie and make war for the same reason.”
Friday eve I reported on my neighbors who for the first time in 30 years put out a lawn sign (for McCain/Palin). Today driving home from work, I noticed another oddity:
On the 40 minute drive home, I did not see a single political bumper sticker not one. Not on the Prius with the peacesign on it. Not on the Mini Cooper with the Cape May sticker. Not on the cars with an icthus. Nada.
Now NJ is solid blue on all the maps, not even a twinge of red. Gore won NJ by 15 points and Kerry by 7 1/2. As a high tech state, we are overly educated, high incomes etc. Obamaland for sure.
So why no Obama/Biden bumper stickers? Theory 1) Why bother, BHO’s got it in the bag? 2) the enthusiasm’s a little low? 3) PUMA’s? (I think Hill won NJ.)
I’m beginning to wonder if the silent majority will deliver a November surprise.
Bookworm, if I didn’t respect you and your site so much I would insert an epithet here relating to the people you describe.
BTW, SNL pulled the largest audience in 14 years. A hell of a lot of people are obviously interested in Sarah Palin.
Hatred eats at the soul. I don’t hate those people that you describe. But I do hold them in contempt and move on. SGT. Dave is spot on in his analysis.
Why I don’t put a McCain/Palin bumper sticker on my car:
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/oct/18/owner-believes-lexus-vandalized-due-mccain-sticker/
I’d be in danger from the neighbors and his mother doesn’t really trust white people.
I’ll go with ya and then the neighbors will be in danger from us if they get within a circle space.
Most of the Democrats suffer from xenophobia
Psychologically speaking, Dave, the Dems decry small town “parochialism” and blame us for being closed minded and prejudiced about others. Yet the Dems themselves are folks with the highest level of parochialism. The ocean wouldn’t exist to them if nobody in their village has ever seen it. That’s how it is, you know.
the trick is getting them close enough to the problem to make them admit their fears.
Shrinkwrapped the psychoanalysis posits that it takes a catastrophic stimuli to make people like narcissists question their own internal self-narrative. Catastrophic in terms of loss of job, loss of community respect, loss of one’s mistress, and so forth. As Yuri Bezmenov said, the useful idiots won’t understand the truth until the military boot crashes on their fat bottoms. In this case, any type of personal loss will substitute if it is high enough in degree that the individual in question cannot just smooth it over.
Pain is the name of the game, Dave. With enough pain, anybody will start paying attention.
Y,
You have my points exactly. I’m not a psychoanalyst; I’m a trained intelligence professional that knows how to use the pressure points to secure that catastrophic stimulus. We usually call it “capture shock” for enemy combatants.
Anyhow, you are being too kind by calling it parochialism. Aside from the fact that the word draws on the Catholic church’s original community concept and applying it to amoral humanists, one could argue that they wouldn’t believe in the ocean unless they themselves had seen it. They don’t believe other members of their tribe – they only believe in what they themselves perceive. Xenophobia manifests itself by promulgating conspiracy, uniformity (to an extent), and isolation. In some ways, the next branch Davidian compound will not be isolated in Waco, but is already springing up in the gated communities outside metropolitan areas. They aren’t singing Bible phrases, but they are taking part in a insular, xenophobic, and homogenous community that punishes members that do not conform.
Anyhow, I’m going off to bed. Have a good night and I appreciate the thought of walking in a bad area with good company. Last time it was a whole bunch from 4th ID and we caused the bad dreams.
SSG Dave – “Lethal force shall be authorized in response to a real or perceived threat to life, limb, or eyesight of the soldier or another person.” OIF Rules of Engagement, Utilization of Lethal Force
They don’t believe other members of their tribe – they only believe in what they themselves perceive.
It depends on what you mean by tribe. If you mean the United States, that’s one thing. But if you just mean people who think like Leftists do, then that “tribe” is just their community of friends and family: like minded people.
one could argue that they wouldn’t believe in the ocean unless they themselves had seen it.
Let’s take a scenario then. If a Leftist went and saw the concentration and gulag camps in Stalin’s world and that Leftist and his friends supported Stalin’s rise to power as a time of good, then would that Leftist admit his break from his cherished beliefs and self-narration, Dave? If he did, he would have to go against his tribe, his friends, and his family. He would have to step out of the circle dance.
One reason why parochialism is a bad thing is because it prevents people who operate under it a wider understanding of the human condition. It prevents people from one village of empathizing and seeing the viewpoints of others who have a different culture or even a different language. Whatever is alien to them is a threat. A stranger is a threat because he is unknown.
This is not all that separate, on a sociological scale, from xenophobia, Dave. Xenophobia is a survival orientated reaction to the unknown. To members of a different tribe, a different culture, or someone speaking a different language. Human beings naturally have this reaction that if they aren’t like you and your people then those others aren’t “human”. If they aren’t human, if they are dehumanized, then you can raid and kill them whereas for your own people you would be limited by laws and social restrictions. Xenophobia, thus, is the instinctual comprehension that you must expect such a reaction from strangers even if you don’t know why.
However, since human beings are sentient and self-aware (supposedly anyways), we also have the responsibility to determine if others are truly a threat or whether they can offer some mutual cooperation with the rest of us.
The Founding Fathers created a mutual cooperation between the States, but the current generation of Leftists (and the previous gens) had no part in creating this system, Dave. They just live under it, so they tend to fall back on parochialism because parochialism is the natural state for people that can’t rise above it to comprehending the viewpoints of others. If you can’t comprehend the viewpoints of others then you can’t make mutually beneficial contracts with them. You can’t include them and assimilate them into your society. You can’t learn their society or laws, either.
We have seen what the Left does to people like Neo-Neocon, Bookworm, and Sarah Palin. If a Leftist saw the truth, would he admit it to himself? We have already seen what tends to happen to Leftists or Democrats that see the truth and want to step out. The rest of the crabs in the bucket try to pull them back in.
So this means that most of the fake liberals we see believe as they do because the rest of their friends and family believe as they do. They don’t want to step out of the circle and challenge the authority of the Group. Those that do get punished. THey don’t have the courage to face that punishment in the search for truth because they don’t care about the truth. And since they don’t care about the truth, it doesn’t matter if they personally see it or not.
“We have seen what the Left does to people like Neo-Neocon, Bookworm, and Sarah Palin.”- Y
This would explain the necessity of creating a caricature of Palin. By making her a cartoon, it is less likely that those in their tribe would see any benefit to her beliefs. People like Neo-Neocon and Bookworm are a more real threat to them than Palin, since they are people that could be and are in their own tribe, but have broken free from the parochialism.
Palin is not a direct threat to their tribe, but does represent a larger threat that her tribe (social conservatives) may gain power from the message of Palin, since the best the Left can do to this competing tribe of social conservatives is denigrate, demean and discourage them at this point in time.
Palin has also broken free from their circle dance, but in this case it was a specific form of circle dance: feminism. Radical feminists of the newer generation promised that you had to start your careers right out of college and once you were successful then you could get married. Or they believed that if you wanted political and business status, like Hillary Clinton, then you needed the help of your husband or some other patriarch to boost your way.
Sarah Palin got out of that feminist plantation trap by demonstrating to America that you can have a career after your house wife duties raising the kids. Feminists claim that the house wife deal traps women. Feminists believe that women who want to be house wives haven’t left the plantation of sexism. Feminists don’t like it when people escape from their plantations and are able to demonstrate that women can get power and status and a family without the need for feminists. Feminists feel resentment that Sarah Palin could get to where she is without paying her dues to feminism. PUMAs are also escaping the plantation since the plantation wasn’t ever really designed to empower women. It was just designed to put a different kind of shackle on women and call it liberation: women’s lib.
If more people adopted Sarah Palin’s life philosophy, Brian, then the tribe of feminism and radical nutjobs really would be in existential danger.
This would explain the necessity of creating a caricature of Palin.
This isn’t something special for Sarah. THey do this all the time. Reagan, Bush, etc. The military baby killing rapists as another example.
I had assumed it was her literalist view of Christianity, causing the intellectual classes to foam at the mouth, that was driving the heartache on the left. What must be even more distressing to them is that her feminism (and Todd’s acceptance) runs counter to their understanding of how Christians should act.
This is moving into unchartered territory for them.
I’m not disputing your analysis Y, but Ozzie’s objection always centered on her literalist Biblical interpretation.
To expand my point though, the left initially tried the traditional objection– wife should be home taking care of the family; not a good role model for her pregnant daughter. Was it only after her tribe didn’t respond the way they thought they would that the left went ballistic?
Also, don’t want to be misunderstood about the Todd remark. Whether it’s Todd agreeing to his role, or vice versa, the spouse has to be an enthusiastic partner if this sort of life altering event is going to work.
My wife was prominent in a state association, and I was just the tag along spouse. It was OK, except when the spouses were segregated, and I was the only male in the group.
I’m not disputing your analysis Y, but Ozzie’s objection always centered on her literalist Biblical interpretation.
But Oz says she isn’t a member of the Leftist movement. Now if you accept her words on the face value, that means Oz isn’t connected to a particular brand of Leftism nor its tenets on feminism, blacks (i.e. as with Helen), and minorities.
I had assumed it was her literalist view of Christianity, causing the intellectual classes to foam at the mouth, that was driving the heartache on the left.
It is undisputed that many people, regardless of what you call them (Left, middle, moderate, Right, isolationist, etc.) hardened in their opposition to McCain once Sarah was picked as his VP. As for their particular individual reasons, I assume that there is no one reason applicable across the spectrum for it but that Sarah Palin contains them all nonetheless.
Was it only after her tribe didn’t respond the way they thought they would that the left went ballistic?
What do you mean by “her tribe”?
“What do you mean by “her tribe”?”- Y
I think the left thought her support would soften among conservative Christians when they attacked her for betraying what they thought was a Christian principal that the woman’s place was in the home, or at least traditional male-female roles.
They thought that would be sufficient to put her in her place.
>>They thought that would be sufficient to put her in her place.>>
Alinsky’s Rule #xx : Use their own rules against them.
Looks like they didn’t understand the rules on this one!
If I remember the stats, about thirty years ago, 80% of the “evangelical right” thought a woman’s place was in the home. These days I think it runs 30%.
Now, the answer to a slightly different question, of whether a woman’s place is *best* in the home, is unclear.
Conclusion: The left formed their impression of the evangelical right in the early 80′s under Reagan, and then they ossified their brains and can no longer think.
Or perhaps the reason is that the mainstream media hasn’t reported on the evangelical right since the early 80′s, and it seems clear that if the mainstream media doesn’t say it, then it doesn’t exist.
Mike,
Funny you should say that. My wife stayed home with the kids from 1982 until 1992 when the youngest one started school. It was a sacrifice.
I would still recommend it to those that can afford it, even if it means giving up all the toys. Those are years that can’t be reclaimed.
Having said that, my brother, who was a pastor, worked a second job (his example was Paul) while my sister-in-law worked full-time all the time their children were at home. Their children are some of the finest people you are likely to meet.
Proverbs 31 is always the fall-back position.