Me on Speaking of Faith

Listened yesterday. Good interview.

Rod --

I just caught you on SOF on KWBU. Nice job!

Hello, Rod. [I tried to read your rules of conduct, but I got a 404 internet error; I think I understand civility however and will work within those bounds.]

I was intrigued by your discussion today on Speaking of Faith. I am a regular listener to the program, a political junkie, and a spiritual "seeker." I found much of what you said thoughtful and informed and I appreciated your stance that dehumanizing the opponent was not a Christian value--nor is it a humanist one, for that matter. I did wish to raise a few points with you,however, in the spirit of continuing dialogue on important issues.

First, Sarah Palin. Some of us who despise Sarah Palin don't despise her for her attitudes about hunting (hunting seems, when done right, a logical extension of conservation in a place like the Alaskan wilderness), her Christian faith, or for her mis-contextualized statement about God and the war in Iraq. On balance, I think her statement was a sincere expression of that same sentiment which Abraham Lincoln expressed--incomparably better, of course, and, let's face it, less ambiguously--when he said that we must pray not that God is on our side, but that we are on God's side. Indeed, it seemed to me one of the few honorable public moments we have seen from Palin in this campaign. And when she first appeared on the scene: poised, perky, folksy, and apparently articulate, I had to admit that I could see her appeal. And then she started to campaign...

You see, here's the reason I find her untenable as a leader for this country: she's a hypocrite and a demagogue. (These are problems I would think any conscientious Christian would have with her as well.) She may not have been a demagogue before she was nominated as VP, but she has consistently behaved like one since. The dictionary defines a demagogue "as a leader who obtains power by means of impassioned appeals to emotions and prejudices." But I think a better definition--one that more clearly separates the wheat from the chaff on this one--is a leader who using these emotional appeals presumes to a more intimate and representative relationship with the people than is warranted by the facts of their political life and for the sake of their own political aggrandizement. Palin has been unable, even during the debate, to offermuch substance to support her claims about either McCain or Obama (let's set aside the issue of the surge for now since she does have a point there), so she has relied primarily on a collection of folk-isms that try to use her ignorance and lack of experience to her advantage. When she claims to speak for "joe six-pack," she doesn't talk about her 650,000 dollar home or private airplane. (And don't tell me "if you live on the water in Alaska, a marine plane is a necessity" since if you DO live on the water in Alaska, you are doing a lot better than Joe Six-pack.) When she claims that Joe Biden's shift on the war shows that she really does think differently than "Washington types" since she doesn't understand this "I was for the bill before I was against it" way of thinking, she shows either deliberate mendacity or a shocking lack of self-awareness. For the proof is in: this is exactly what she did with the "bridge to nowhere" and her reason for shifting wasn't a genuine shift in perspective as Biden's was, but quite clearly simple political expediency. With all the winking and running together of half-baked colloquialisms, Palin hopes to appeal merely to people's emotions, by-passing their frontal lobes, and this for the sake of her own--and John McCain's--poltical aggrandizement. From Huey Long to Hitler, that's a functional definition of demagoguery. This is why I despise her, because she corrupts our political thought and discourse by her way of going about it. Because she hopes to never have to answer an uncomfortable question that she can't just wink and "aw shucks" her way out of. Because she's too lazy to do her homework ( for how else is it that one gets two weeks into the campaign without studying a folder summarizing at least a few of McCAin's legislative accomplishments in it?) We have seen recently what such a lack of intellectual curiousity gets us--an unnecessary war mishandled for six long years.

In sum, my despisal of Palin has nothing to do with the culture wars. It has to do with her dangerous combination of arrogance (masquerading as folksy humility) and ignorance (which imagines itself as innocence). LIke all demagogues, she believes personal charisma can and should trump all else, and, on a much less grand scale, that puts her in the political party not of Republicans or Democrats, but of Huey Long and Mussolini.

Well, I was going to question the civil rights abortion analogy you used on SOF, but I think I've used up enough of your blog's bytes for now. Thank you. David C. Pasadena, CA