28 March 2010 “You can lead Palin to a tea party, but you can't make her think.”

28 March 2010 “You can lead Palin to a tea party, but you can't make her think.”




An on-line, fly fishing acquaintance known as Yatahey is the source of today’s title.



Another long time acquaintance, Emerger, on the same forum asked the question:

What makes so many people on this board post threads about Sarah Palin and about what she thinks?



And a third opened the thread with the question:

“What makes Sarah Palin think that:

1) she and the Tea Party have lost this country; and,

2) they have any more rightful claim to it than the citizens with whom she and the Tea Party disagree?



In response to Emerger:

Ms. Palin is the epitome of the puppet politician driven by greed and lust for fame. She is poorly spoken, poorly read, incapable of constructing a grammatically correct sentence. She wants to make her fundamentalist faith the law of the land. She has no personal grasp of national or foreign policy, of history, and certainly no acquaintance with personal or political ethics.

She is remarkably unqualified for any political office at any level. She obviously felt herself to be outside the law when she carried out Alaskan business on a private web page rather than on the official state website.

She has chosen to front the Tea Party campaign, allowing her to continue the incendiary campaign rhetoric she employed during the 2008 campaign. She employs lies, misinformation, and innuendo rather than any actual concern for or acquaintance with factual information. Her use of speech and graphics intended to incite violence is unconscionable. She has attached herself to the lowest common denominator voter base, those who share her lack of intellect, education, and awareness of history. While they remain a highly vocal splinter party they may be able to influence some elections.

Because I consider myself a reasonably well educated, highly concerned voter; I feel that I am obligated to try to counter any lies and misinformation spread by Palin and her minions. I can only speak for myself but I hope that the other folks who congregate here feel the same.

In response to John, who offered the two questions:

I’m honestly distressed at the mob’s insistence that they have lost their nation. The borders are still mostly intact, the government sort of functions. All those people complaining about government spending still get their Social Security payments, disability payments if indicated, still have access to Medicare if eligible, and no doubt, some of them still receive unemployment insurance payments. Mail still arrives in a timely manner, and the various government agencies that they complain about still protect them.

What they have lost is a demographic situation where they are the numerical majority. In a short time the nation will have a majority of residents who claim Hispanic ancestry, who may speak Spanish, who are either Roman Catholic or evangelical Christian, and who reproduce at a higher rate than Caucasian citizens. Also reproducing at higher rates are those citizens of African-American ancestry.

The day of the WASP is behind us. Even more dislocating, the jobs that used to be filled by blue-collar workers are long gone and aren’t coming back. The mob has to face a future that has no steady income, that has them outnumbered by people with darker skins and different languages, and a future where they no longer control the social mores or morality from their protestant or evangelical churches.

The mob is largely white, unemployed or under-employed, under-educated, or lacking an interest in education. The mob does not like anyone who does not look like them, speak like them, or pray like them. The mob is insistent upon receiving continued federal benefits but does not want to pay a penny to benefit anyone else. The mob does not want to reform health care, education, banking, or deal with immigration. The mob wants to wave guns around, chanting bits of the 2nd Amendment but t is either too old to join our military or has no interest in sharing the duty of actually serving in uniform. It’s more fun to play at being a soldier on weekends.

The mob has lost the right to claim the patriotic symbols of this nation as their own. The flags they wave at their rallies, all too often not in compliance with U.S. Flag codes, fly over the graves of men and women of all skin colors who have fought and died for this nation. No one race or immigrant group own our national symbols. They want to push the social and legal structure back to the middle of the 19th century, whether or not they realize and/or admit it. Add a generation or two and the people migrating to the Tea Party mobs are the same people attracted to Nixon’s and Reagan’s southern strategy, the same mobs that followed George Wallace. They are afraid of change, afraid of being treated by others as they have treated those others. And they hate the thought that they might be asked to share anything with anyone else. They firmly believe that all people on disability are scamming the system, that they all can work but simply choose not to work. They will deny the GOP healthcare plank is “don’t get sick, but if you do, die quickly. Then they will suggest that anyone who can’t afford health care should not receive it. Their sacred writings preach charity. And they will contribute to missionaries to go overseas to heal and convert the “heathen,” while refusing to consider that their charity would be better spent in their own hometowns.

They have a rightful claim to the symbols of America. But they have the concomitant responsibility to use them in a manner that is consistent with the America that welcomed immigrants from all nations, that once had the best public schools, universities, and hospitals to be had, that once understood that a bible is not a national symbol, which once really believed the words, “with liberty and justice for all!” Until they use them in that manner they have no right to our nation’s symbols.

To them, I say: Please fold the flag carefully, put it down, and return to your junior high school civics classes. This time, pay attention. You’ve already failed the midterm.