All of the talk about "real Americans" coming from Sarah Palin and those of her sociopathic ilk has stirred a contempt in me that swells daily. The sleight-of-hand by which these people turn themselves into victims fleeced of their earnings and their dignity by haughty elitists never fails to impress me for its unbounded shamelessness. What is even more amazing, however, is that, at long last, it does not seem to be working.
One of the most useful exercises when one hears something that intuitively seems absurd or dishonest is to extrapolate the implications of the offending statement. When Sarah Palin speaks of her joy in addressing "real Americans", the implication is clear: there are "unreal Americans" out there somewhere.
Sarah Palin makes this exercise a bit too easy, and perhaps that is why it is finally failing. Sarah Palin seems to really believe that she represents a "real Americanism" that is shared by others she relates with but by none with whom she cannot. For Sarah Palin, "real Americans" are from small towns, vote Republican, are practicing Christians, etc.
The disquieting thing about this is that if Sarah Palin is a "real American", then apparently America is overrun by "unreal Americans". Why? Because most Americans don't shoot moose from helicopters (elitist), most Americans do not receive yearly checks from an oil company (socialist), and most Americans do not receive yearly torrents of cash from the federal government (welfare queen).
Sarah Palin has an image of a condescending, un-American urban elite that in reality accounts for about 80% of the entire country. And here is where the sleight-of-hand comes into play. If two-thirds of the American people (I assume both "real Americans" and "unreal Americans" were polled) say that they do not consider Mrs. Palin to be qualified for the presidency, how do Mrs. Palin and her legions reply? They condemn the opinion as being a vicious assault on small-town America, on American values, on Christianity, on civilization itself.
If I say to Sarah Palin, "you are not qualified to be president", she will respond as if I had said, "people who live in small towns are incestuous, Bible-thumping retards who spend their weekends burning books and shooting tin cans with shotguns."
If I say, "the war in Iraq was illegal, immoral, and unnecessary", she would respond by saying, "I really wish your respected the troops who gave you your freedoms instead of denigrating their sacrifice." (Just for the record, God and the Constitution gave me my freedoms, and Americans soldiers invading Mesopotamia does nothing to secure my right to a speedy trial, as far as I can see.)
These "real Americans" are so well-practiced at aggrieved indignation and constantly casting themselves as the victims that they are oblivious to the reality that THEY are the ones who hurl insults and slurs at their own countrymen as well as their (probably) future president.
The elitists tax you too much? No, blue states pay their own bills AND a sizable proportion of red states' bills as well. For every dollar a red state spends, maybe 70 cents of it is theirs. The rest of it is from the elitists, the "unreals".
I know I belabor this point, but it can't be said enough: self-sufficiency is the ultimate self-imposed delusion of the "real Americans", who are kept afloat by their "unreal" countrymen who actually do work for a living, despite what the "real Americans" may think.
In fact, blue-staters work so much that they have far less time to murder each other and get divorced nearly as often as folks indulge in those pastimes in "real" America.
Barack Obama, the godfather of the "unreal" Americans, is a "'socialist" because he believes in a progressive income tax whose function is to "spread the wealth around"? You know, like how pagan pothead fornicating slum dwellers like myself "spread" some of my wealth to the "real" America so they can have electricity?
Since every president in the last century has approved of and imposed a graduated income tax, then by the logic of the "real" Americans, Ronald Reagan was a "socialist" too. In fact, since Reagan's top tax rate was HIGHER than the top rate proposed by Obama, Reagan was even more a "socialist" than Mr. Obama, according to the unexplored "logic" of "real Americans".
In addition, Barack Obama is a "terrorist" or "appeaser" or some selfsame slur because he wants to talk to enemies of America. Okay. Ahmedinejad? Wackjob. But not very bad in the pantheon of bad guys who naive American terrorist appeasers such as Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, or socialist legend Ronald Reagan have sat down with.
The two biggest mass murderers in history were Mao and Stalin (Hitler wasn't even close). Both of these men met, shook hands with, smoked cigarettes with, posed for photos with, indeed, PALLED AROUND WITH American presidents. Would the "real" Americans tell us that every post-World War II American president was a naive terrorist sympathizer?
Perhaps the best intellectual exercise would be to imagine Barack Obama speaking in Chicago or New York or Los Angeles and saying, "its nice to be among some REAL Americans....some folks with real pro-American feelings!" Hard to imagine? Impossible to imagine? Exactly.
And this is why the "real" Americans must not fear; we ain't mad at cha. We don't look at people who spend 20,000 dollars per week on clothes for her VP campaign as an "unreal" American. We may doubt her integrity, her judgement, her fitness to serve, but never her Americanism.
The beauty of America, according to this "unreal" American, is that it resembles any single human being; a fundamentally good thing, but also a fundamental contradiction, a volatile mix of angels and devils, but something we must love regardless. Sarah Palin is as American as apple pie. And so am I.
One of the most useful exercises when one hears something that intuitively seems absurd or dishonest is to extrapolate the implications of the offending statement. When Sarah Palin speaks of her joy in addressing "real Americans", the implication is clear: there are "unreal Americans" out there somewhere.
Sarah Palin makes this exercise a bit too easy, and perhaps that is why it is finally failing. Sarah Palin seems to really believe that she represents a "real Americanism" that is shared by others she relates with but by none with whom she cannot. For Sarah Palin, "real Americans" are from small towns, vote Republican, are practicing Christians, etc.
The disquieting thing about this is that if Sarah Palin is a "real American", then apparently America is overrun by "unreal Americans". Why? Because most Americans don't shoot moose from helicopters (elitist), most Americans do not receive yearly checks from an oil company (socialist), and most Americans do not receive yearly torrents of cash from the federal government (welfare queen).
Sarah Palin has an image of a condescending, un-American urban elite that in reality accounts for about 80% of the entire country. And here is where the sleight-of-hand comes into play. If two-thirds of the American people (I assume both "real Americans" and "unreal Americans" were polled) say that they do not consider Mrs. Palin to be qualified for the presidency, how do Mrs. Palin and her legions reply? They condemn the opinion as being a vicious assault on small-town America, on American values, on Christianity, on civilization itself.
If I say to Sarah Palin, "you are not qualified to be president", she will respond as if I had said, "people who live in small towns are incestuous, Bible-thumping retards who spend their weekends burning books and shooting tin cans with shotguns."
If I say, "the war in Iraq was illegal, immoral, and unnecessary", she would respond by saying, "I really wish your respected the troops who gave you your freedoms instead of denigrating their sacrifice." (Just for the record, God and the Constitution gave me my freedoms, and Americans soldiers invading Mesopotamia does nothing to secure my right to a speedy trial, as far as I can see.)
These "real Americans" are so well-practiced at aggrieved indignation and constantly casting themselves as the victims that they are oblivious to the reality that THEY are the ones who hurl insults and slurs at their own countrymen as well as their (probably) future president.
The elitists tax you too much? No, blue states pay their own bills AND a sizable proportion of red states' bills as well. For every dollar a red state spends, maybe 70 cents of it is theirs. The rest of it is from the elitists, the "unreals".
I know I belabor this point, but it can't be said enough: self-sufficiency is the ultimate self-imposed delusion of the "real Americans", who are kept afloat by their "unreal" countrymen who actually do work for a living, despite what the "real Americans" may think.
In fact, blue-staters work so much that they have far less time to murder each other and get divorced nearly as often as folks indulge in those pastimes in "real" America.
Barack Obama, the godfather of the "unreal" Americans, is a "'socialist" because he believes in a progressive income tax whose function is to "spread the wealth around"? You know, like how pagan pothead fornicating slum dwellers like myself "spread" some of my wealth to the "real" America so they can have electricity?
Since every president in the last century has approved of and imposed a graduated income tax, then by the logic of the "real" Americans, Ronald Reagan was a "socialist" too. In fact, since Reagan's top tax rate was HIGHER than the top rate proposed by Obama, Reagan was even more a "socialist" than Mr. Obama, according to the unexplored "logic" of "real Americans".
In addition, Barack Obama is a "terrorist" or "appeaser" or some selfsame slur because he wants to talk to enemies of America. Okay. Ahmedinejad? Wackjob. But not very bad in the pantheon of bad guys who naive American terrorist appeasers such as Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, or socialist legend Ronald Reagan have sat down with.
The two biggest mass murderers in history were Mao and Stalin (Hitler wasn't even close). Both of these men met, shook hands with, smoked cigarettes with, posed for photos with, indeed, PALLED AROUND WITH American presidents. Would the "real" Americans tell us that every post-World War II American president was a naive terrorist sympathizer?
Perhaps the best intellectual exercise would be to imagine Barack Obama speaking in Chicago or New York or Los Angeles and saying, "its nice to be among some REAL Americans....some folks with real pro-American feelings!" Hard to imagine? Impossible to imagine? Exactly.
And this is why the "real" Americans must not fear; we ain't mad at cha. We don't look at people who spend 20,000 dollars per week on clothes for her VP campaign as an "unreal" American. We may doubt her integrity, her judgement, her fitness to serve, but never her Americanism.
The beauty of America, according to this "unreal" American, is that it resembles any single human being; a fundamentally good thing, but also a fundamental contradiction, a volatile mix of angels and devils, but something we must love regardless. Sarah Palin is as American as apple pie. And so am I.
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