Palin Again and Again

Recently the National Review said that Palin means "again" in Greek.

Sarah Palin may be headed for defeat (still too early to know). She may be turning off more voters than she's inspiring. She may be winking and bumbling her way back to a diminished governancy in Alaska. But one thing is certain: she's not going away.

You will be seeing Palin again, no matter if it's on the lawn of the Naval Observatory or in front of the sporting center in Wasilla. Her fans are many and they are fervent. Her crowds identify with her on a subrational level and she seems much to enjoy the adulation. Perhaps more notable, she takes particular joy in transmitting not-so-muted messages of race and cultural hate to what has rapidly become a dangerous, potentially violent rabble.

When she winks, she's winking at Joe Sixpack--him with a shotgun at the ready. When she says "community organizer" she means (and everyone knows but few will say) "African-American activist"; using the words in much the same way words like "urban" and "minority" once were freighted with pejorative intent. When she says "palling around with terrorists" she means "he's an Arab" (or else why would a uniformed sherriff precede her with a reference to Barack "Hussein" Obama). And when Joe Sixpack gets the wink and the message, he shouts back "Kill him!"

She'll be around for a while--playing the pipe of race hatred. She'll be with us--lying with particular glee in response any question asked. She seems in fact to prefer lying to the truth. It seems as if she believes lying proves her cause the more just--any means to an end, right?

What we have witnessed in Sarah Palin is nothing less than the birth of a new and dangerous strain of American fascism. With truculence and aplomb, she rejects any notion of deceny, truth and fairness in pursuit of her extreme right wing agenda. When she introduced us all to her style and her ideas at the Republican convention, we saw a crowd giddy with delight that someone was finally talking to "the base". As weeks progressed, the saner part of America became chilled to the bone by her obvious lack of qualification, her eagerness to lie, and indeed her mossback political agenda itself.

But she is not going away. Win or lose, Sarah Palin is the new, winking, "you betcha" face of right wing hate and violence.

--Renaissance