Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review Online’s The Corner:
I keep reading—most recently in an email Kathryn posted—that Palin is anti-intellectual. Now I can readily see that Palin is not an intellectual herself, as most people are not, and is not interested in the type of things that intellectuals are. But why do people say she is anti-intellectual? Has she given a speech belittling book-larnin’?
If these people had an ounce of self-awareness, they would be dangerous.
Comments from Rev. Arnold Conrad, giving the invocation at a McCain rally in Iowa:
“I would also pray Lord that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their God — whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that his [McCain’s] opponent wins for a variety of reasons.
And Lord I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you would step forward and honor your own name in all that happens between now and Election Day.”
It’s pretty clear now that the idea of Barack Obama actually winning the U.S. Presidency has driven a fair amount of the populace to the brink, if not over the edge completely. Racists and xenophobes and wingnuts who have been at a low simmer for months are starting to boil as Obama’s poll numbers climb. I’m beginning to get as afraid about an Obama victory as I am an Obama loss. And that’s not a fun place to be.
Thanks to The Other Adam for pointing me to this video.
“So the necessity is some sort of power-sharing arrangement between what have really become two completely different civilizations, unable to agree on even the most basic propositions about what society is. Furthermore, any such arrangement must be designed to be self-stabilizing and self-enforcing. The time is near when we will prefer any experiment, no matter how rash or misconceived, to the status quo.”
-Blogger Interrupted commenter Frank Wilhoit, on the seemingly unspannable gulf between the red and blue states
I pretty much agree with Frank. I wonder if we’re more divided on a basic, fundamental level today than we were at the dawn of the Civil War. When the words “society,” “democracy” and even “civilization” don’t have commonly-shared meanings, maybe it is time we go our separate ways.
After my mother read my “Culture war” post, she told me I needed to better define what “stupid” meant in that context. (I thought I made it pretty clear, but she does a good job of keeping me honest.) Well, here you go.
Yes, you saw it. In the debate tonight, John McCain did point to U.S. Senator Barack Obama, his opponent in the race for the White House, and refer to him as “that one.”
There’s video. Or how about how McCain wouldn’t shake Obama’s hand? Yeah.
Maybe McCain was confused, and he was really thinking about Marlo Thomas.
Petulant child or racist douchebag? You decide.
Congress voted down the Wall Street bailout the first time partly because at $700 billion, it was too expensive.
The Wall Street bailout that passed this week clocked in at $850 billion.
It took 40 years of superpower conflict during the Cold War for the former Soviet Union to spend itself into bankruptcy and ruin.
With us, all it took was a few flying lessons and a handful of box cutters.
Let’s not fool ourselves. The real culture war in this country isn’t between the North and the South, or between Christians and Atheists, or between Pro-Choice and Pro-Life.
It’s between smart and stupid.
“There *are* two Americas,” Bill Maher said this week on The Daily Show. “There is this progressive European nation that a lot of us live in, or would like to live in, and it’s being strangled by the Sarah Palins of the world. It can’t quite be born, because the other, stupid redneck nation won’t allow it.”
“Elitist,” after all, is just dogwhistle code for “You’re smarter than me.” It isn’t about how much money people make. Or where they live. Or how many houses they have. It’s about celebrating stupidity – reveling in it. Sarah Palin thinks “Joe Six-Pack” should be in the White House, and perhaps a majority of Americans agree with her. After all, who wants some snotty Rhodes Scholar or Harvard Law Review editor lording it over you through your big-screen TV every day?
What the know-nothing conservatives don’t seem to realize is that’s how this empire is going to die – by starving its brain of oxygen. After all, they thought Terri Schiavo would bound up out of bed and win a triathlon if someone would just give her a Fig Newton and a sip of Mountain Dew.
It is said that the political pendulum swings with regularity, seesawing from liberal to conservative with (achingly slow) regularity. But when are we going to go back to a society that actually values education and intelligence?
UPDATE: I promised myself I wasn’t going to write about politics until at least after the election. So I’ll just link to this bracingly angry article on Palin by Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi. I have my own version of the Clinton-era “where’s the outrage?” – where’s the anger? Are we so anesthetized by these clowns that we just don’t care about anything any more?
Every time Barack Obama says some variation of “I trust the judgment of the American people,” I hear one word:
LOSER.
Q: What was Sarah Palin’s worst mistake as Governor?
A: Letting Bristol wear the “Drill Here, Drill Now!” t-shirt.
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