Palin the Demagogue

Tusayan, AZ

The Contentious One submits this post from the Grand Canyon, where he and The Misses continue on a road trip of this great land, with Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco still in the works.

One might hope that the magnificence of the Grand Canyon would distract me from politics, and of course it can, at least a little bit for a little while. But then Sarah Palin has to open her yap, and the grandeur of the scene and the grandeur of our nation both take a bit of a hit.

I have to admit that Sarah's kind of cute (that's a tough admission to make), but I also firmly believe that she fits the standard criteria for a demagogue. In the fall of '08, she loved to call Obama a "socialist," and she was downright giddy (honest, I read about this) when her party said OK to her use of the phrase "paling around with terrorists" (she actually had to get that approved). Now she's concerned about "death panels," that will enable the government (supposedly) to KILL GRANDMA if they want to. (And after the death panels meet, grandma's estate will be decimated by the so-called death TAX!) Never mind that the "death panel" label has been thoroughly debunked; one CNN analyst I saw at breakfast yesterday said that "Palin's pants were on fire." She throws out these inflammatory labels, with no concern for the truth, and then people react--especially stupid and ignorant people.

I realize that calling her a demagogue is itself a form of name-calling, but if you read any standard definition of the term you'll see that it's not out of line. (And indeed, I was surprised, after thinking she was a demagogue, to find others on-line who agree; "demagogue in a skirt" is one of the pejorative labels for her.)

Speaking of labels, some people are claiming Obama is not only a socialist--he's a Nazi! Over the last 12 months, we have seen such horrific abuses of language, largely by those on the "right," that it makes me ill.

So go ahead, if you want to, and support our socialist, Nazi, terrorist, Muslim, not-even-an-American-citizen President, who favors killing grandma and giving sex education to kindergartners! I know that I am going to--in part to combat the mean-spirited idiots who would claim to love this nation yet don't have a clue about what it means to be the "LOYAL opposition" or what it means to engage in civil discourse.