I dearly hope Sarah Palin runs for president, because she has absolutely no change of getting elected. She'd get at most 20% of the vote if she ran as an independent and maybe 40% if she ran as a Republican, but that's it. Her opponent would win by a landslide. She's a political messiah to the tea-baggers and either a joke or a damn scary joke to the rest of the US population.
Yeah, I can see why the Republican party are pissing themselves at the thought of Palin getting enough support to run for office, she's probably about the only candidate they could select who wouldn't have a pretty good chance of winning.
Well, that Republican candidate for office who enjoys dressing up as a nazi at the weekends, he'd probably be a bad choice.
And that one who used to be a satanist. She'd probably not be great either.
... You know, a year ago I would never have said the GOP could seriously promote candidates who are nazis and satanists (but they never inhaled) and expect to still be taken seriously as a political party. And yet. Here we are. They still have their supporters.
It has surprised me in recent years the sheer scale to which the Republican party no longer even bothers to try and pretend that they aren't the party of the rich white power elites, bought and paid for, purely to further the interests of said elites.
It has further surprised me how their core supporters, primarily the poor and utterly disenfranchised, seem to be completely okay with this.
But then, as you say, the Palin Phenomena surely teaches us that even if we imagine the most bizarre and unlikely thing in American politics, the reality is, something even weirder than that is probably already happening.
oh, the reason for that is simple and utterly insidious:
people who live in a state of self-perpetuating ignorance are *far* more comfortable with other ignorants than anyone even vaguely intellectual. An offer of 'help' is seen as interference, and deeply unwelcome. Some rich idiot bangs on about low taxes and doing whatever you like with no government oversight, that's soul food for a guy living in a shack who wants the world to leave him the hell alone. With his daughter-sister-wife. and their 10 kids. And gun closet.
And anything that might paint their beloved Republican party in a light they don't want to acknowledge is obviously the creation of the 'liberal media'...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
It all depends on how the Tea Party do.
no subject
no subject
Well, that Republican candidate for office who enjoys dressing up as a nazi at the weekends, he'd probably be a bad choice.
And that one who used to be a satanist. She'd probably not be great either.
... You know, a year ago I would never have said the GOP could seriously promote candidates who are nazis and satanists (but they never inhaled) and expect to still be taken seriously as a political party. And yet. Here we are. They still have their supporters.
no subject
no subject
... and then got re-elected.
no subject
a genuinely scary moment. The process was stolen, as he had openly stated it would be.
Palin is different. Pretty much no-one outside of the US can understand why anyone takes her remotely seriously. It's like Jordan running for PM.
ah. my brain just vomited.
no subject
It has further surprised me how their core supporters, primarily the poor and utterly disenfranchised, seem to be completely okay with this.
But then, as you say, the Palin Phenomena surely teaches us that even if we imagine the most bizarre and unlikely thing in American politics, the reality is, something even weirder than that is probably already happening.
no subject
people who live in a state of self-perpetuating ignorance are *far* more comfortable with other ignorants than anyone even vaguely intellectual.
An offer of 'help' is seen as interference, and deeply unwelcome. Some rich idiot bangs on about low taxes and doing whatever you like with no government oversight, that's soul food for a guy living in a shack who wants the world to leave him the hell alone. With his daughter-sister-wife. and their 10 kids. And gun closet.
no subject