Palinic Rage

So, I seriously get a little blinded by rage whenever I think of Sarah Palin's idiot comments regarding her son, old people and the wholly fabricated Obama "death panel." It makes me furious that this whackadoo a-hole, who supposedly serves (well, served, since she just up and quit her post) the public, is in the same business of whipping up the already frightened and befuddled masses of America into a terrified hysteria as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. At least those three ne'r-do-wells are pundits, obvious extremists whose purpose is more to entertain than to inform. But Sarah Palin is NOT a pundit. She's sort of a real politician and, as such, her words end up carrying more weight than a series of talking heads' do. She has a cult, a large one, of fervently devoted Palinites hanging off her words, because they mistakenly believe she is a.) an independent thinker, b.) looking out for their best interests and c.) not a steaming pile of nutjobbery. And this is dangerous. I can forgive cable news freakos. With their incessant stream of misinformation, lies and exaggerations, they're just doing what they get paid to do. But Palin seems to be on a different track entirely... one in which she is setting herself up as a moral authority and a figure of importance, cementing her reputation as a right-wing queen and giving her crazy army their marching orders. She's doing this by spewing outright lies in a performance that makes her fearmongering vice presidential campaign look tame and professional by comparison. She should be taken to task for this. She should be publicly humiliated for being a modern-day Joe McCarthy, the worst sort of personality our political system can puke out. She should be ashamed of herself, not only for actively working to keep this country in the dark ages, but by doing so in such an underhanded and wholly vicious way.

It bothers me because she is fanning fires where tremendous combustion may be imminent. She is doing a grave disservice, not just to us lefties looking for real progressiveism, but also to her own side's ideaology. Personally, I welcome debate on this topic, and I honest-to-God wish that the Republican party would chuck these politics of fear, the same tatics that bludgeoned our country into sad submission throughout the Bush administration, and offer up some legitimate concerns and counterproposals to the health care reform package. But instead of providing thoughtful, rational disagreement, they stoke their already loony and absolutely mortified base into mob mentality loudness and nebulous agression... who does this help? What good does this do for the country, when your opposition is based only in knee-jerk reactions free from the constraints of logic, understanding or reason? It's another sign of the right-wing meltdown... and that meltdown has grave implications for everyone, leftists included. As the Republican party continues it's ever-quickening descent into old-school Puritanism, Salem-style, there is a void of genuine fiscal conservatism left in the wake. Reasonable people are fleeing the right just as rapidly as the right is fleeing from them. And my side, of course, will view this flight as a mandate, and begin to get too big for its britches, like groups in power always do. And the pendulum will swing too far and people will be put off and a new, more powerful right wing will grow up as moderates on both sides of the aisle feel abandoned once again. We NEED the balance of reasonable, intelligent conservatives... but the current right wing seems hellbent on ignoring those folks and raising up cuckoos like Palin to raise the banner against imaginary boogeymen.

She's the closest thing we have right now to a honest-to-goodness supervillain.