Well-Intentioned But Manipulated

In “The Mirrored Ceiling,” the latest post in her New York Times blog Domestic Disturbances, Judith Warner articulates incisively the gross insult and danger that is Palin’s nomination.

Palin sounded, at times, like she was speaking a foreign language as she gave voice to the beautifully crafted words that had been prepared for her on Wednesday night.

But that wasn’t held against her. Thanks to the level of general esteem that greeted her ascent to the podium, it seems we’ve all got to celebrate the fact that America’s Hottest Governor (Princess of the Fur Rendezvous 1983, Miss Wasilla 1984) could speak at all.

Could there be a more thoroughgoing humiliation for America’s women?
…
One of the worst poisons of the American political climate right now, the thing that time and again in recent years has led us to disaster, is the need people feel for leaders they can “relate” to. … it brought us after all, two terms of George W. Bush. And it isn’t new; Americans have always needed to feel that their leaders were, on some level, people like them. …But never before George W. Bush did it quite reach the beer-drinking level of familiarity… There’s a fine line between likability and demagoguery. Both thrive upon manipulation and least-common-denominator politics.”

Some of the comments to this Blog post were especially worthwhile. In particular, I appreciated Elizabeth Fuller’s comments (#5 and #387 ), as did so many others who commented, and Bill’s comment #363. They were gems. I just hope that the populace is made up of such thoughtful people who do discern the dissimulation being waged by Steve Schmidt, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the Republican Party who, in order to put themselves in the White House, would do everything but put the country first and in fact would soil and undermine the very values upon which this nation was founded. I hope they are able to see that Sarah Palin is none other than a lipstick wearing, Alaskan iteration of George W. Bush: just as ill-prepared because they are not curious about the world in which they live, they have not dedicated themselves to challenging themselves, their hubris allows them to believe they possess all the wherewithal that could possibly be necessary to be (V)POTUS, and they lack respect for the Constitution and would violate that foundational belief in the separation of church and state.

 

Well-Intentioned But Misguided

When I returned from my first year at Bryn Mawr College, I was a bit of a firebrand. Full of zeal, passionately committed to righting wrongs, to disabusing grossly mistaken notions less enlightened folks held, and so on. (Yes, cringe all you’d like… It’s totally deserved.)

One of the issues of note for me was the politics of naming. Of ensuring that we did not continue to perpetrate violence by denying people their right to self-definition. So, holier than thou I was, thumping on my soapbox (yep, this tendency is obviously not new) that it’s not merely about being politically correct (which to me meant wanting pat, easy answers so that those who were so hung up on being pc would not have to really reflect upon their own complicity in the perpetration of violence) but about putting an end to violence psychically, socioeconomically, culturally, that it was about radical change, and so on.

So, here I was, a zealous eighteen year old telling my very kind thirtysomething neighbor (who was trying to raise her son on her own after a divorce all the whilst trying to pursue a meaningful career that’d utilize the top knotch education she’d received at William and Mary) how horrible it was that people continued to say “indians” to refer to Native Americans, that this name reiterates the violence of Euro-American hegemony. At that moment, my good neighbor tried to get me to step back and question whether I might be shooting myself in the foot by being so aggressively dogmatic in “enlightening” and “raising the consciousness” of my neighbors. And to question whether I was not in my own way doing violence to Native Americans by reducing them to being nothing but dignified victims of Western hegemony, by allowing myself to regard them primarily in terms of their victimization. And to ask myself if every single person who was of indigenous descent would choose to self-identify as Native American, that might it not be that Native American was yet another externally imposed label, one that says more about those other Americans who are not Native? If I remember correctly, I think she tried to tell me that, if anything, it was a more common practice amongst those I was calling Native American to identify themselves by their tribal affiliations.

I didn’t catch it then. In fact,