Monday, July 13, 2009

Palin, Noonan, and the fears of euro America

Peggy Noonan recently outlined the GOP establishment’s personal fears (emphases mine) …

... Here are a few examples of what we may face in the next 10 years: a profound and prolonged American crash, with the admission of bankruptcy and the spread of deep social unrest; one or more American cities getting hit with weapons of mass destruction from an unknown source; faint glimmers of actual secessionist movements as Americans for various reasons and in various areas decide the burdens and assumptions of the federal government are no longer attractive or legitimate....

I channeled Noonan’s dog whistles to respond …

  • … Secessionism?! That would imply she's worried about American right wing terrorism, and the intolerable burden of Black President.
  • Bankruptcy?! Do the wingnuts in the GOP really believe that America will default on its debt obligations, or is this something they do to incite the lunatic fringe?…

Frank Rich’s July 12th OpEd is an indirect response to Noonan, pointing out that whatever she might want to believe, Palin is the heart of today’s GOP. Ironically the Palin-GOP is listening to the same tunes as Noonan, the song of the end of euro dominated America (emphases mine) …

She Broke the G.O.P. and Now She Owns It -Frank Rich - NYTimes

… The Palinist “real America” is demographically doomed to keep shrinking. But the emotion it represents is disproportionately powerful for its numbers. It’s an anger that Palin enjoyed stoking during her “palling around with terrorists” crusade against Obama on the campaign trail. It’s an anger that’s curdled into self-martyrdom since Inauguration Day.

Its voice can be found in the postings at a Web site maintained by the fans of Mark Levin, the Obama hater who is, at this writing, the No.2 best-selling hardcover nonfiction writer in America. (Glenn Beck is No.1 in paperback nonfiction.) Politico surveyed them last week. “Bottomline, do you know of any way we can remove these idiots before this country goes down the crapper?” wrote one Levin fan. “I WILL HELP!!! Should I buy a gun?” Another called for a new American revolution, promising “there will be blood.”

These are the cries of a constituency that feels disenfranchised — by the powerful and the well-educated who gamed the housing bubble, by a news media it keeps being told is hateful, by the immigrants who have taken some of their jobs, by the African-American who has ended a white monopoly on the White House. Palin is their born avatar. She puts a happy, sexy face on ugly emotions, and she can solidify her followers’ hold on a G.O.P. that has no leaders with the guts or alternative vision to stand up to them or to her.

For a week now, critics in both parties have had a blast railing at Palin. It’s good sport. But just as the media muttering about those unseemly “controversies” rallied the fans of the King of Pop, so are Palin’s political obituaries likely to jump-start her lucrative afterlife.

One must give a sort of odd credit to right wing whackos – they buy a lot of books!

There’s a lot of fear out there in white America -- the fear of an era ending. It’s a fear that attracts the GOP, from Noonan to Palin.

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