Sarah Palin's America

Read today about how Sarah Palin's whipping up a storm at campaign events. She gets the audience worked up, and they start wanting blood -- calling Obama a terrorist (or shall I pronounce it in proper heartland English terra-ist), a closet Muslim, saying they want him dead, etc.

She reminds me of why -- during that brief flirtation years ago in DC -- why I couldn't commit myself completely to the Republican cause, and how I've ended up being a more committed Democrat than I ever was in my younger years.

It seems that for many Republicans -- Palin included -- the policy differences between Republicans and Democrats are irrelevant. The issues is a bigger discourse on what it means to be an American, and what kind of country America should be in the world.

For Palin and those who love her -- they seem addicted to this idea of America as the Warrior State, some kind of modern day Sparta. Membership in this America means being a Warrior, or at least worshipping the Warrior Ethos.

In fact, I remember some crotchety ex-Marine who was a Senior Executive in the bureaucracy, venting about the current generation of Americans (me included) being selfish, decadent, and cowardly. He further recommended everyone read that book Gates of Fire, that fictional retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae.

This guy probably forgot the Spartans were flaming homosexuals -- albeit very violent and ascetic ones.

That crowdin the GOP that Palin appeals to doesn't bother to ask the question of who they are actually defending, and why. They just get off on the idea of being able to kill something for the cause.

Its just about God & Country -- plain and simple, right?

That's how we got ourselves into this 4 year fiasco called Iraq. And that's why we are stuck there.

But God forbid you tell them that.

Their hatred of the Obama, the Clintons, Coastal Liberals, seems to be driven by the fact that all these groups seem to represent an America they are not part of, and wish never to join. The idea of a cosmopolitan commercially oriented America is deeply offensive.

-Making money and enjoying your life instead of killing people, unpatriotic.
- Giving people who aren't White equal opportunities and the respect that goes along with their achievents -- blasphemous.

I will bet cash money -- if Obama wins the election in November, we will see a rise in radical right wing terrorism, a modernized version of the militia movements we saw in the 1990's

If we have to contend with that, at the same time as our existing Middle Eastern terrorist problems, I pity the poor slobs making policy in the Obama Administration. This will be an impossible balancing act.