Alternate Palin Post
On Wednesday night, we saw once again why the Republicans win elections. VP nominee Sarah Palin fired up an already-raucus Republican National Convention crowd with a tight, sassy, and aggressive speech. It was vintage GOP, hitting every heartland theme with vigor. She lauded John McCain as a true hero and public servant, and bashed Obama and other dems as out of touch elitists who just want to grow the government and pick the pockets of hard working families.
As political theater, it was a bravura performance, and it will translate well to the campaign trail, where snarky remarks on opponents get maximum play and minimal vetting for accuracy. But if McCain and Palin do end up winning in November, it will be a sad testament to this country's unwillingness to face up to some tough truths about the current American situation. Palin's speech was a grand menu of wish fulfillment, a tableau of fantasies that conservatives and others like to believe about themselves. And if we fall victim to this kind of make-believe again this fall, the next four years are going to be shockingly unpleasant.
You will look high and low in Palin's address for policy specifics beyond the usual cliches of cutting waste and fostering fair private sector competition. Instead, listeners were treated to the usual conservative story, one in which virtuous maverick outsiders like McCain and Palin fight against the pompous experts and technocrats, those scoundrels who disparage heartland values like religion and the Second Amendment. In small towns, Gov. Palin assured us, people "love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America." It doesn't get much more archetypal than that. It is the classic conservative narrative, where policy discussions and sophisticated intellectual concepts are simply tools of the liberal elite, designed to steal money from hard working people and fund grand socialist boondoggles. In this land of make-believe, the world's complexity is just not that important, and might actually be a liberal ploy to distract us from the down home simplicitly of patriotism and faith. As far as complexity goes, the marketplace will work out all the details that need attention. It is government's job to get out of the way, let the market do its thing, while regular people are left alone to work out their private lives and virtues.
This is wish fulfillment at its highest level, an amazingly narcissistic approach to the epochal challenges of climate change, ecological collpase, peak oil, and economic implosion. As more and more Americans lose their jobs, see their homes forclosed, watch their savings disappear, and notice the failing social and natural systems all around them, can we really afford to pretend that all we really need is some more tax cuts and a commitment to "victory" in our various wars? Can we keep really hoping for a return to the world as Thomas Kinkade painting, where all differences, conflicts, and problems are smoothed away with brushstrokes of holy light? How long can we wait for the trickle-down to happen before realizing that conservative laissez-faire economic theory is never going to deliver?
At some level, we all want life to be simple. We want to believe that a plucky young hockey mom like Sarah Barracuda can unite the country around the values of small town America. We need to think, after decades of the same promises, that the next regime in Washington will finally sweep away the waste, corruption, and dreaded "special interests." And we all scapegoat to some degree, with the world's problems attributed to some shadowy cabal of nefarious America-haters. But the real world is not that easy, and fantasies that stoke our own sense of self-righteousness, whether on the conservative or liberal side, will not hold up the unstoppable global forces that are about to descend on this country. We need adult leaders who will tell us what we have to hear, not what we want to hear. The truth is that we face some unprecedented tough times ahead, and some major systemic changes are coming to America, whether we like it or not. The only question is, will we acknowledge what's coming and make adjustments to temper the tumult, or will we cling to our comfortable fantasies and be swept under with unexpected violence? This is no time for make-believe.
As political theater, it was a bravura performance, and it will translate well to the campaign trail, where snarky remarks on opponents get maximum play and minimal vetting for accuracy. But if McCain and Palin do end up winning in November, it will be a sad testament to this country's unwillingness to face up to some tough truths about the current American situation. Palin's speech was a grand menu of wish fulfillment, a tableau of fantasies that conservatives and others like to believe about themselves. And if we fall victim to this kind of make-believe again this fall, the next four years are going to be shockingly unpleasant.
You will look high and low in Palin's address for policy specifics beyond the usual cliches of cutting waste and fostering fair private sector competition. Instead, listeners were treated to the usual conservative story, one in which virtuous maverick outsiders like McCain and Palin fight against the pompous experts and technocrats, those scoundrels who disparage heartland values like religion and the Second Amendment. In small towns, Gov. Palin assured us, people "love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America." It doesn't get much more archetypal than that. It is the classic conservative narrative, where policy discussions and sophisticated intellectual concepts are simply tools of the liberal elite, designed to steal money from hard working people and fund grand socialist boondoggles. In this land of make-believe, the world's complexity is just not that important, and might actually be a liberal ploy to distract us from the down home simplicitly of patriotism and faith. As far as complexity goes, the marketplace will work out all the details that need attention. It is government's job to get out of the way, let the market do its thing, while regular people are left alone to work out their private lives and virtues.
This is wish fulfillment at its highest level, an amazingly narcissistic approach to the epochal challenges of climate change, ecological collpase, peak oil, and economic implosion. As more and more Americans lose their jobs, see their homes forclosed, watch their savings disappear, and notice the failing social and natural systems all around them, can we really afford to pretend that all we really need is some more tax cuts and a commitment to "victory" in our various wars? Can we keep really hoping for a return to the world as Thomas Kinkade painting, where all differences, conflicts, and problems are smoothed away with brushstrokes of holy light? How long can we wait for the trickle-down to happen before realizing that conservative laissez-faire economic theory is never going to deliver?
At some level, we all want life to be simple. We want to believe that a plucky young hockey mom like Sarah Barracuda can unite the country around the values of small town America. We need to think, after decades of the same promises, that the next regime in Washington will finally sweep away the waste, corruption, and dreaded "special interests." And we all scapegoat to some degree, with the world's problems attributed to some shadowy cabal of nefarious America-haters. But the real world is not that easy, and fantasies that stoke our own sense of self-righteousness, whether on the conservative or liberal side, will not hold up the unstoppable global forces that are about to descend on this country. We need adult leaders who will tell us what we have to hear, not what we want to hear. The truth is that we face some unprecedented tough times ahead, and some major systemic changes are coming to America, whether we like it or not. The only question is, will we acknowledge what's coming and make adjustments to temper the tumult, or will we cling to our comfortable fantasies and be swept under with unexpected violence? This is no time for make-believe.
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