Friday, September 11, 2009
The Empty Suit And The Beauty Queen
Many in the Right have taken note of Barack Hussein Obama's repeated shafts at Rightist commentators who've accurately characterized his attempt to nationalize American medical care. We're "liars," "fabricators," and "divisive voices." We're adamantly opposed to "reform." We must have evil motives, for why else would anyone stand athwart something so compassionate as health insurance for all?
Though he seldom mentions them by name, it could not be clearer that Obama's two principal nemeses are Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Heath Palin. His diatribes are aimed too directly at the points they've made and the phrasings they've used to support any other conclusion.
There's a wealth of insights embedded in this pattern. First and most obvious, when a man repeats one "argument" over and over, it implies rather strongly that he has no others. (Cf. "The science is settled" from the warmistas.) Second, to prefer to attack the motives of objectors rather than addressing the substance of their objections suggests equally strongly that the objections are substantial, difficult if not impossible to refute. Third, Alinskyite tactics -- "Pick the target, freeze it, polarize it, personalize it" -- are clearly at work here, in an attempt to create demon-figures against whom leftist sentiment can mobilize its troops.
Fourth, and no longer controversial, Barack Hussein Obama isn't very bright.
Your Curmudgeon has written in the past that we neither need nor want persons of high intelligence in government. He stands by that contention. High intelligence isn't just a tool in the possessor's toolbox; it has a seductive influence upon him, as well. Because of the esteem such a person usually enjoys, he's likely to think himself above the common herd...and above their laws and customs. Because he's adept at solving certain sorts of intellectual problems, he's likely to think he can finesse his way around the foreseeable consequences of a proposed course of action...consequences that have bedeviled others of less ability. And of course, we have the "they don't know what's best for them" and the "it's for their own good" effects, as well.
No, we want no geniuses in the corridors of power. Yet even a government functionary -- and stripped of the pomp and pageantry that surrounds his doings, that's all a president really is -- has to have a base level of intellectual capacity, enough to recognize that the pain he just felt is from stepping on his own privates. Obama appears to lack that capacity.
But then, the Democrats nominated Obama for the presidency for other reasons. He's physically attractive. He had little "paper trail" or record in government the Right could assail. When equipped with a teleprompter, he gives a good speech. And of course, the novelty of a mulatto president with an Islamic background appealed to many who felt that the procession of white Christian men had to be brought to an end. So Obama won the nod as an "empty suit:" a candidate without indelible attributes of his own, onto whom the audience could project whatever characteristics or aspirations it might prefer.
Fade to black. Next scene: Wasilla, Alaska.
Alaska, America's "last frontier," is generally viewed by those who know nothing about it as a primitive and forbidding place. Some of that is true, of course: the population is low and sparsely distributed; parts of the state are uninhabitable or nearly so; it's very cold much of the year; there are many wild animals there that exist only in zoos in the lower 48 states; a frontier mentality still prevails there, especially outside the larger cities.
But even a frozen wilderness can produce extraordinary individuals. One such emerged in the Nineties in Wasilla.
Undeniably, Sarah Heath Palin first became known for her great beauty, which very nearly made her 1984's Miss Alaska. But her forthrightness, incorruptibility, and staunch pro-freedom conservatism were recognized soon thereafter. In 1992 she became a Wasilla city councilor. In 1996 she was elected its mayor. In 2006 she displaced old-line Republican pol Frank Murkowski, then the incumbent governor, from the Republican nomination for governor and won the office by a handsome margin over former Democratic governor Tony Knowles.
Governor Palin's achievements as an administrator, corruption fighter, and restrainer of the state government are well documented. Some, such as the contract to build the Alaska Gas Pipeline, are still coming to fruition, after her resignation. She retains immense popularity and affection among Alaskans, who were greatly grieved when she resigned her office in favor of Lieutenant-governor Sean Parnell. Nevertheless, Palin appreciated that the avalanche of slander and accusation that had rained down on her since her nomination for the vice-presidency had undermined her effectiveness as an administrator, costing Alaska the full attention and energy it deserves from its top executive. Her resignation was both moral and practical.
Today, Palin exercises great influence over our national discourse whenever she speaks. She's a likely candidate for the presidency in 2012...and should Barack Hussein Obama continue on his present course, she could be defeated only by an assassination.
The Left is painfully aware of Palin. They view her as the personification of conservative Americanism, the embodied antithesis of their agenda, and desperately want to see her marginalized, if not destroyed. Nothing else would account for the continuing campaign of calumny major leftist mouthpieces are conducting against her.
It's not working. Using only her established public profile and a modest page on FaceBook, Palin continues to rally Americans against the Obamunist agenda and toward a conservative revival. No volume of baseless accusation, no amount of denigration as a mere "beauty queen," has stopped her. It seems doubtful that anything could.
But then, what does the Left have with which to oppose her? Military enfeeblement? Kowtowing to foreign tyrants? Subsidies for abortionists and illegal immigrants? A regimen designed to choke off all new exploration, development, and distribution of watts and BTUs? Multi-trillion-dollar deficits? An empty suit who promotes a fascism so thoroughgoing that federal bureaucrats would rule on what medical treatments Americans could receive?
"Your enemy is your teacher," wrote Orson Scott Card in his award-winning novel Ender's Game. The instruction an enemy provides is of several kinds. Not to be neglected is what he most fears...and the Left is terrified to incontinence of Sarah Heath Palin.
UPDATE: Commenter "Reeker" -- an insight into his hygiene, perhaps? -- writes as follows:
You nut, she's delusional, just like 50 percent of the cons. You are the terrified ones, blocking all the words that don't fit your "faith" in how things are. Why don't you have someone lay hands on you, and cure your ills, like God said is available to all whom believe? Exactly...
...which your Curmudgeon contends is a confirmation of his point.
