Critics of Sarah Palin overlook her real threat
Monday, January 11th, 2010
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
If Nobel Prize winning author Sinclair Lewis were alive today, he would have to rework his statement. A timely version might read, “When fascism comes to America, it will smile and wink like Sarah Palin and carry a cross.”
The book’s name is similar to the title of Palin’s recently published autobiography. But their monikers and their main topic are the only things the two have in common. Unlike Going Rogue, Going Rouge is a compendium of essays and columns that thoroughly and often wittily skewer the former Republican vice presidential candidate and ex-governor of Alaska. The authors form a roster of well-known leftwing and progressive commentators.
Many of the pieces were written in the heat of the 2008 presidential campaign once John McCain tapped Palin as his running mate. A few were published after the GOP election debacle. Although the editors group the essays under varying themes, it gives readers whiplash to move back and forth between the before-after perspectives. A chronological ordering of the work might have been easier to digest.
One of the most powerful parts of the book is the brief compendium of Palin criticisms from conservative pundits. And there is also a good deal of angst from women who worry that Palin’s stark deficiencies in experience and understanding of complex issues set back the cause of serious female candidates for high office.
“Palin won’t bust through the ceiling that has Hillary [Clinton]’s 18 million cracks in it,” writes Slate columnist Emily Bazelon. “She’ll give men an excuse to replace it with a new one.”
While there are many pithy, cogent observations about Palin, most of the contributors do not seem to understand the deeper significance of what they are analyzing. Typical is New York Times columnist Frank Rich, who writes that Palin “puts a happy, sexy face on ugly emotions.”
What Palin truly represents is a sexy, winking stalking horse for a twisted version of Christianity every bit as radical and destructive as Muslim extremism. Adherents of this militant Christianity, known as the New Apostolic Reformation, scheme to remake the United States as a Christian theocracy, and have enlisted significant swaths of the U.S. military in their cause. They want power and control every bit as much as bin Laden and his followers, who dream of imposing a new Muslim Caliphate over the entire Middle East and do not shy away from violence to achieve their ends. Neither do Christian militants.
Not even Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family, an expose of how right-wing politics and politicians are financed on a global scale, connects the dots. Instead, his column compares Palin to Westbrook Pegler, an ultra conservative commentator masquerading as a populist in the early 20th century.
The omission is perhaps the editors’ doing, not Sharlet’s. If there’s one thing left-wing punditry shy away from, it’s examining core religious beliefs. That’s very uncomfortable territory for them.
It’s a shame. The editors of and contributors to Going Rouge might want to spend time reading the knowledgeable researchers at websites like Talk2Action. Bruce Wilson, the site’s founder, and his colleagues understand exactly what Palin really represents, possibly because they are also people of faith. They are doing their best to alert the rest of us to the true perils of Palin’s rise to political prominence before it is too late.
Gives this book 3.5 stars out of 5.
