Palinsanity

Palinsanity

I'm just coining a word. It means the way everyone went nuts after Sarah Palin made her entrance on the national stage. What are the symptoms of this mental disorder?

I have been amazed at the misogyny, vitriol, and rage that has followed Sarah Palin's selection as McCain's running mate. It makes Clinton hatred and BDS pale in comparison. Previously, it took years to get this much blind hatred, now it takes a weekend.

I have never understood this. Agree or disagree with a position, strongly and vocally, but when someone resorts to personal attacks and innuendo, particularly with such venom, it says more about them than their target.

Anger Fear and Madness

These people are afraid; and their fear is making them mad and reckless. They sound like wild, rabid creatures, out of their heads, and they’re starting to worry me. I begin to think they have surpassed the madness of the right at its Clinton-hating worst. Hell, I think they’re surpassing the left at its Bush-hating worst. And I didn’t think that could be surpassed!

And there is a difference, too. Clinton and Bush “hate” grew over time to the insane levels. These people admit they knew nothing about Palin before John McCain announced her, yet their hate for her was immediate and electric. It is not sane. It is disturbingly unnatural. It is almost supernatural.

Failing to understand

Do those on the left actually know anyone they routinely label as "religious right" or "fundies?" I don't see how they could. Their conception of what conservative Christians believe is so far from anything resembling reality that I can't imagine they actually know anyone personally who falls into the category. Constantly throughout reading the posts and comments at DU and Kos I was shocked at how they thought conservative Christians would react to news of Palin's pregnancy. This has happened in the past, as well. They thought those on the right would be shocked and angered to find out that Dick Cheney has, gasp, a lesbian daughter. Do these people really live on planet Earth? They have such an over-the-top stereotype image of who those on the right are that it is hard to believe they could know anyone on the right personally. They believe those on the right who are of faith are all about judgment. They completely disregard or discount (or are perhaps unaware of?) forgiveness, which is, of course, the foundation of the faith. They also miscalculated what would be important to conservatives of faith -- not that a teenage girl became pregnant, but the reaction of she and the child's father and their families. They took responsibility. They chose life. As so many others have pointed out -- they walked the walk.

Jeff Goldstein touched on this this week at Protein Wisdom.

Many on the left will believe, quite mistakenly, that such an announcement is likely to weaken Palin's support among "the hard-right conservative base". But in fact, it will do no such thing -- first, because the "hard-right conservative base" that liberal Democrats consistently invoke is largely a caricature that lives only in their minds and as a convenient trope in their rhetoric, from whence it can be trotted out as a foil and a boogeyman on cue...

We can only hope

Do you get the impression I am getting, that if Sarah Palin does not learn her place and “go home” soon, the members of the press, especially on tv, are going to begin shaking and screaming, and totally losing it? That’s the impression I am getting; that Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews, and Olbermann and Alter, (and all the rest) their heads are literally going to explode soon if - after this relentless journalistic jihad, meant to destroy Palin in a matter of days - McCain does not drop her or Palin does not collapse.