Several hundred years from now the career and public life of Sarah Palin will be summed up with two statements made 24 hours apart:
August 7th: "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
August 8th: "There are many disturbing details in the current bill that Washington is trying to rush through Congress, but we must stick to a discussion of the issues and not get sidetracked by tactics that can be accused of leading to intimidation or harassment. Such tactics diminish our nation's civil discourse which we need now more than ever because the fine print in this outrageous health care proposal must be understood clearly and not get lost in conscientious voters' passion to want to make elected officials hear what we are saying. Let's not give the proponents of nationalized health care any reason to criticize us.
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The logic is flawless: make an unsubstantiated, inflammatory statement about "Obama's Death Panels" and then appeal for civility and calm. As I have said literally hundreds of times regarding the rhetoric of right wingers over the years, one of two things must be true here. Either Palin does not understand that her statements make no sense collectively and utterly lack thematic consistency, i.e. she is stupid, or she understands exactly what she is doing, i.e. she is a sociopath.
This was consistently the case with George W. Bush, and I frequently responded to his supporters by asking them to pick one. Is he an idiot who doesn't understand what phony intelligence and bad decision-making look like or is he a liar with an agenda and no regard for the consequences of his actions? The explanation proffered – it was an innocent mistake made with the best of intentions by people who were fooled (and who wasn't?) by highly credible intelligence – simply defies plausability. Similarly, in Palin's case we are expected to believe that she is interested in having a civil debate based on the merit of ideas while riling up the idiocracy with dire warnings, warnings which mouthbreathers near and far will unquestioningly accept as fact while hand-loading their own rifle ammunition in their basements, that the President's plan is a carbon copy of the Nazi T-4 euthanasia program. Even Trig wouldn't buy that.
While a lot of these people are probably morons, I lean more toward the "asshole psychopaths" explanation.
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People like Palin and Beck and Limbaugh know exactly what they're doing. They're pushing their violent, asocial followers over the edge and periodically issuing phony, ass-covering pleas to Keep Things Civil and Don't Do Anything Violent. And when some unhinged asshole decides he needs to kill his Congressman or take a few dozen shots at the President to keep him from instituting his "death panels," Palin and Beck will be the first to say "Well, gosh!
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We certaintly don't condone that, nor did we intend for it to happen!
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That hordes of deluded, screaming idiots are "almost lynching" members of Congress is hilarious to the GOP. When they finally get their wish, we know from the multiple "violent right wing shut-in arms himself to the teeth and dies in the midst of a killing spree" incidents since Obama's victory that Beck, Instarube, Palin, and the rest of these mentally unstable demagogues will not only defer responsibility but work to place it on the victims.
daphne says:
I think "useful idiots" applies as well as any other label. Unlike you, I ascribe that description to most of them, while others I would call "aspiring bigshots" yearning to become the corporate types, office holders, and other powerful players instructing the useful idiots, for whom these Town Halls are practice events. Of course, the latter category is more insidious, since evil and greed always trump mere ignorance.
Penny says:
>>
Either Palin does not understand that her statements make no sense collectively and utterly lack thematic consistency, i.e. she is stupid, or she understands exactly what she is doing, i.e. she is a sociopath.
>>
You've missed a third option: That they are, "…tactics that can be accused of leading to intimidation or harassment…" only when anyone who disagrees with Palin employs them. When the uber-right whackjobs use such methods, they're just bein' good 'Merkins.
You can call me, 'Sir' says:
It's a disturbing trend that the collective frontal lobe of society appears to be more and more oatmeal-like every year. My oatmeal is very responsive to my every command (Stay! Congeal!), which leads me to apply such comparisons, sad though it may be. Still more disturbing is that groups of people unwilling to be accountable for their actions are leading 'oatmeal' down paths of failure and destruction. History is very clear on this: Once you unleash oatmeal, there's no turning back.
P.S. If you ever need a guest lecturer in one of your Political Science classes, just let me know. Always happy to share an analogy with today's youth.
Bob says:
How does that tactic differ from candidate Obama on: health care, the wars, the crimes of the Bush administration, et el, vs. President Obama on the same issues?
Beck and Limbaugh are well paid entertainers who care only about ratings. Palin is – still – a politician. She is clearly positioning herself as a Presidential candidate for 2012. Show me any politician in either major party who doesn't routinely contradict him or herself and I'll give you a prize.
I don't like it and I'm not defending it and I can't think of a worse possible president than Palin, but I hardly see it as newsworthy that a politician offers inherently contradictory statements.
ladiesbane says:
Between morons and psychopaths there are childish egomaniacs for whom reality (facts, logic, the realm of that which is observable and measurable) is irrelevant. All that matters is how they feel. Internal consistency is not a remote concern.
I know it's a kitchen sink diagnosis, but I believe Palin clearly shows borderline personality disorder. George Bush was merely a spoiled brat with a rusty machine for a brain.
SeaTea says:
As someone who hand-loads rifle ammunition in his basement, I take offense at being lumped in with the brain-dead hoard who would find value in anything coming out of Palin's mouth (apart from entertainment value).
In all seriousness, great article. I find "sociopath" a better label because when you want to know what the right wing will do it's enough to realize that they will ALWAYS attack any action proposed by the left (regardless of the value to the country or the world of that proposed action) and will ALWAYS move to increase their own power (regardless of the damage to the country or the world this will cause).
displaced capitalist says:
Wait, what? I thought the reich-wing explanation was, "'cuz it's about time we kill them sand-n****rs!!" or, altenatively, "because they defamed our Lord and Savior!"
Tc says:
Ed,
will you send a link to where you have had these conversations with Bush supporters about the intelligence? I'm not challenging you – it's just that I've had these arguments, too, and I want to see if you handle it better than me.
Cletus Warhol says:
I'd have to go with "a little bit of both" when it comes to what makes Sarah tick. She's a little bit sociopathic and a little bit (perhaps a "lot bit") dumber than a box of rocks.
But that's always been the conundrum with that whole crowd, how do you separate the merely dumb from the actually evil? When you get down to brass tacks, it doesn't really matter because the end result is the same. It's like asking "is this person clubbing me to death with a blunt instrument because they were raised in a dysfunctional home or because of some inherent cognitive flaw?."
Speaking of inherent cognitive flaws, has anyone seen this revelation (pun somewhat intended) about GW's pitch for Iraq invasion?
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=haught_29_5
Please pardon my inability to properly embed the link.
Cletus Warhol says:
Oh good, WordPress does it automatically.
waldo says:
Yeah my vote's for both as well. Sarah is dumb, insensitive and wilfully obstructive in order to achieve her goals. She also has no qualms about 'feeding and provoking the loonies' in order to provoke chaos, and the consequences be damned.
Shorter: Nutard
Penny says:
Waldo, I prefer "fucktard".
JohnR says:
Just as an aside, and perhaps I simply missed it, but has any major news outlet made anything like the point that with this Palin, birther and deather stuff, the GOP has essentially become a Lyndon LaRouche-style party? All I see is thoughtful, reasoned, beard-stroking consideration of the facts that the President is an illegal alien and intends to turn America into a socialist fascist euthenasia state.
jon says:
I remember in her farewellian speech she mentioned honoring the troops by not "makin' stuff up." I guess her supporters would claim that there's a different standard for the press, but it seems to me that she set herself up as someone who is now spitting on our military.
Her untouchable baby, her lies, and her hiding behind the troops make her the perfect poster child for the current GOP leadership.
Prudence says:
I have just one thing to say: there is no way in hell Lady McBush wrote that second Facebook post herself. The complete and coherent sentences were a dead giveaway.
topsy, part one says:
Concerning "beard-stroking consideration of the facts," JohnR nails it (1:16). We wonder: Are editors and news directors across our great land looking up from their wire copy, turning to each other in wide-eyed astonishment and asking, What the fuck? Alas, probably not. If they didn't get there with Bush, it's hard to imagine them getting there ever. If only this were the movies!
Cletus Warhol says:
The excuse that media people often use when folks complain about them not calling dissemblers on their BS is that it wouldn't be "objective" for them to do so.
"It's not our job to point out that Palin, Beck, Gingrich etc. etc. are lying, we're only supposed to report what each side says."
As if reality was some radical ideology that they would be promoting.
Like Stephen Colbert says, "Don't facts have a liberal bias?"
Apparently much of the MSM seems to think so.
kiki says:
Why doesn't anyone just come out and say it? The right wing Nazi commentators are inciting their base – the mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging one-tooth hillbillies- to assassinate President Obama. THAT IS THEIR GOAL. SAY IT. SAY IT. I know you sort of said it, but I want it out there in plain, unambiguous language. THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT OBAMA IS THE GOAL OF RUSH LIMBAUGH, SEAN HANNITY, GLENN BECK, ANN COULTER AND (INSERT ANY PANT-SHITTING RAGEFUL REPUBLICAN/CONSERVATIVE HERE.) They simply cannot allow the reign of the nigra to continue for 8 years, and they know this is their only way out.