Greetings. Over the past few days Warren suggested that we begin a “critical theory of religion” blog. He mentioned that perhaps some sort of discussion about Sarah Palin. I responded with something like this:
Can you explain the interest in Sarah Palin to me? It seems to me that the Democrats are going to win the next election. McCain had to do something and picking Palin just seems very . . . predictable. But people are f-r-e-a-k-i-n-g out about this. Yet, there is nothing unusual here. In the past week almost every blog and newspaper and ivory tower sweeper started with “Well, if Sarah Palin. . .” The one that really put me over the edge was Jacques-Alain Miller’s post about how Palin was a sign of the times, playing the role of invincible castrator (Miller is the heir apparent of the Lacan legacy, see Lacan.com). It is kind of extraordinary, this response. It is almost as if in the last two weeks people have been prevented from talking seriously about any issue unless they write it on her body first. Why has Palin becomes the public Pillow Book? Am I just too much of an outsider on this one? We should be able to talk about abortion with mentioning Palin. We have been for years but now seem unable to at the moment. She’s become like a media bone that can’t be swallowed. It’s all very creepy and misogynist and weird.
best, Ken
Tags: Sarah Palin, the Religious Right
To try to answer your question- you are approaching it through a gender perspective- and I think this is part of the catch. Because she is a woman, this gives the prolife position, etc. more legitimacy. It is kind of like Philis Schafly- a right wing anti-feminist woman- but this one touts gender equality. Equally important is that she is a fundi. What is clear is that McCain can not get elected without the support of the Christian right. They were lukewarm about his candidacy (i.e. John Tower and womanizing) until he put her on his ticket. The mainstream media has begun to shred her apart but this only falls on the ears of those who are already convinced. Most Americans do not read the New York Times or listen to NPR. What is significant is that 40 million people watched her during the convention but after that switched back to their sitcoms and sports shows. The resurrection of the culture wars has populist roots- traditional Midwestern and southern small town American against the Northeast liberal establishment. What is paradoxical is that the liberals are wealther and more educated and the working class more conservative. The division of Red States and Blue States follows denominational lines- Liberal Protestants, Catholics and Jews in the Northeast, Baptists in the South, Methodists in the Midwest, Mormons in Utah and Arizona, an unchurched belt on the West Coast. But what we really have here is certain elites- like the Oil Companies making alliances with the Christian Right. Alaska is the perfect place for that. Drill baby Drill.
make sure folks read this piece…this woman is really scary
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10167
Re. Christian Fundamentalism Permeates the Republican Party: Sarah Palin’s links to the Christian Right by F. William Engdahl
I can’t comment on any of the details here but…
The US is a fairly secular place. Almost every attempt to imbue the law with supernatural sensitivities has failed. In their own ways Steve Bruce and Thomas Frank have explained why. Unless people are genuinely worried that the legislature is going to advocate Third Wave dominion theology, which strikes me completely unlikely, her religious affiliation is [yawn]. Any move to implement this kind of religious agenda would be the nail in the coffin for any further association between the right and the religious right – both the right wingers AND the conservative Christians are tired of being roped together — note: Haggard’s replacement at New Life Church, Brady Boyd, called for a moritorium on politics, claiming the mission of the church is the spread the gospel, not to be involved in politics. This is a trend that seems to be catching on. Remember – the Pentecostal movement was a withdrawn community, refusing to serve in the military and openly anti-capitalist. It will very likely return to these roots because that particular location will be effective for them as an organization. Check out Dan Morgan’s Rising in the West.
If I’m not mistaken, there is a fairly significant decline in religious participation within evangelical circles. The numbers have been dropping since 1 Jan 2000, spiked a bit on 12 Sept 2001 but dropped again by Autumn 2002.
Let’s call this a reversal of the Great Awakening. “The New Exodus: Withdrawing from America.”
If Palin makes any move in the direction of the supernatural it will crash down the Republican Party. Apart from that . . . she’ll have to argue her position just like everyone else, using a publicly acceptable language with claims supported by good reasons.
Ok, I confess, I couldn’t even type that sentence with a straight face.
She just needs to keep up the sports metaphors… but I’m telling you, one speech that provides details about an exorcism and she’s out.
Thanks for the link. Ken
Palin-not so much because she is a woman, but energizes the Christian vote
Palin’s appeal masks a cruel lie. Thomas Frank | September 15, 2008
IT tells us something about Sarah Palin’s homage to small-town America, delivered to an enthusiastic Republican Party convention last week, that she chose to fire it up with an unsourced quotation from the all-time champion of fake populism, the belligerent right-wing columnist Westbrook Pegler.
“We grow good people in oursmall towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity,” the vice-presidential candidate said, quoting an anonymous “writer”, which is to say, Pegler.
Small-town people, Palin went on, are “the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food and run our factories and fight our wars”. They are authentic; they are noble, and they are her own: “I grew up with those people.”
But what really defines them in Palin’s telling is their enemies, the people who supposedly “look down” on them. The opposite of the heartland is the loathsome array of snobs and fakers, “reporters and commentators”, lobbyists and others of “the Washington elite”.
Presumably the various elite Washington lobbyists who have guided John McCain’s presidential campaign were exempt from Palin’s criticism.
As would be former house speaker Dennis Hastert, who hymned the “Sarah Palin part of the party” thus: “Their kids aren’t going to go to Ivy League schools. Their sons leave high school and join the military to serve our country. Their husbands and wives work two jobs to make sure the family is sustained.”
Generally speaking, though, when husbands and wives work two jobs each, it is because working one job doesn’t earn them enough to get by. The two-job workers in middle America aren’t spurning the Ivy League and joining the military just because they’re people of principle. It is because they can’t afford to do otherwise.
Leave the fantasy land of convention rhetoric, and you will find that small-town America, this legendary place of honesty and sincerity and dignity, is not doing very well. If you drive west from Kansas City, Missouri, you will find towns where Main Street is largely boarded up. You will see closed schools and hospitals. You will hear about depleted groundwater and depopulation.
And eventually you will ask yourself: how did this happen? Was it those “reporters and commentators” with their fancy college degrees who wrecked Main Street, USA?
No. For decades now we have been electing people like Sarah Palin, who claimed to love and respect the folksy conservatism of small towns, and yet who have unfailingly enacted laws to aid the small town’s mortal enemies.
Without raising an antitrust finger they have permitted fantastic concentration in the various industries that buy the farmer’s crops. They have undone the New Deal system of agricultural price supports in favour of schemes called “Freedom to Farm” and loan deficiency payments – each reform apparently designed to secure just one thing out of small-town America: cheap commodities for the big food processors.
Richard Nixon’s agriculture secretary Earl Butz put the conservative attitude towards small farmers most bluntly back in the 1970s when he warned: “Get big or get out.”
A few days ago I talked politics with Donn Teske, the president of the Kansas Farmers Union and a former Republican. Barack Obama may come from a big city, he admits, but the Farmers Union gives him a 100 per cent rating for his votes in Congress.
John McCain gets a zero.
“If any farmer in the plains states looked at McCain’s voting record on ag issues, no one would vote for him,” he says.
Senator McCain is known for his straight talk with industrial workers, telling them their jobs are never coming back, and that retraining is their only hope.
But he seems to think small-town people can be easily played. Just choose a running mate who knows how to skin a moose and all will be forgiven. Drive them off the land, shutter their towns, toss their life chances into the grinders of big agriculture … and praise their values.
The Wall Street Journal
The two articles given to us by Lauren and Ken’s comments capture different angles of the Palin phenomena.
First, Ken’s observation that “The US is a fairly secular place” is off the mark. The United States is the most religious of developed nations with about 90% beliving in God and a good 60% regular church attendence rate. On the other hand, I am not as paranoid as F. William Engdahl- the link to whose article Lauren gave us. Yes, there is a political alliance between the economic and cultural conservatives in the Republican Party, but the economic side has the upper hand and the U.S. as Ken points out is not about to become a theocracy. Yes, about 30% of the population identify with evangelicals (which is pretty fuzzy itself) but there is a much larger chunk who can’t tolerate it. The Christian right has been pretty frustrated by the Republican Party. While Reagan and the Bushes have been able to set through their economic policy, after 34 years, Roe is still pretty much in tact (even if it is being chipped away). I do not think that this is about small town America, as the article from WSJ would suggest, but rather the mass marekting of small town America. Palin’s image as the “Hockey Mom” with her hair in a bun and glasses is too cultivated, polished and crafted. Both campaigns spend too much in advertising to leave their demographic target audiences to chance. By choosing Palin, they were going after a certain vote in swing areas where they thought they could tip the election (rural Ohio). Yes, Palin comes out of the Assemblies of God Church which is about as far right as you can get in the denominational spectrum, but I do not think that the real elites (even Republican) will let her every push a religious agenda (that is, if she really has one). According to today polls, Gallup and CBS/NYT the Republican bounce from the Palin phenomena is fading and the meltdown on Wall Street is taking center stage. Perhaps this could be our next discussion- the high priests of Wall Street.
If one follows elections and cultural politics, from a CT perspective, my informed guess is that the flash in pan of Palin has peaked, and the econ news will be the central topic….Obama can easily blame Repubs since they have been in charge. Further, there are huge numbers of young voters not picked up in polls, they have cell phones…so watch Ohio, with MI now in Obama column, election will depend on OH, that while there will be cheating, there is a dem gov and secy state. So that I am clear, I am predicting that Obama will win the presidency. But then as a Marxist, I don’t think he can do much about the contradictions of capital. Cheers, LL
Sept 17
Polls may not be accurate, but NYT and Quinipac now also put Obama ahead….and –hate to sound like broken record-ok that’s dated, say I pod that won’t switch tunes, but none of the polls get the youth vote that is about 70% Obama, 98% only have cell phones, and several million have been registered by Move On, the Obama campaign, etc. Many since the nomination. This is what did Hillary in, and IMnotsoHO, will do McSame and Palin in on Nov 4th.
The Palin effect, never as much as the media thought, has worn thin, looking at Russia across the sea is not the qualification for understanding geo politics. Now that her pot use, trooper gate, bridges to nowhere and then Wassilla are coming out, some of her appeal is fading–except for the hallelujah, the world is ending/Jesus is coming folks–helping McSame where he was weak. His new image, born again populist, just doesn’t cut it…..not w/7+ homes, $500 loafers, and a long record of hobnobbing with the rich and often infamous. Next version, he was a community organizer–while in Hanoi Hilton
US: Daily Tracking (9/14-16)
By Eric Dienstfrey
National Daily Tracking Surveys
9/14-16/08
DailyKos.com (D) / Research 2000
1,100 LV, 3%; Live Telephone Interviews
Obama 48, McCain 44
Diageo / Hotline
913 RV, 3.2%; Live Telephone Interviews
Obama 45, McCain 42
Gallup
2,787 RV, 2%; Live Telephone Interviews
Obama 47, McCain 45
Small-town people, Palin went on, are “the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food and run our factories and fight our wars”. They are authentic; they are noble, and they are her own: “I grew up with those people.”
* * *
“Remember this,” Tyler said. “The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. We’re the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you’re asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life… So don’t fuck with us.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Sorry, couldn’t resist. KGM
Amazing! Eerie resemblance. Do you think her speech writers ripped this off from the film? This would be even scarier.
As for Lauren’s last post, I saw her on Fox last night. She is running as a reformer. Do people actually believe this?
One scary MILF….see what Karlin, editor of Buzzflash.com says and see the video.
Sarah Palin is a Manchurian Candidate for One Extremist Splinter Group of the End-Times Crowd
Submitted by Mark on Thu, 10/09/2008 – 8:36am. EditorBlog
MARK KARLIN’S EDITOR’S BLOG
October 9
If a group of people conspires to seize control of the American Government in order to accomplish an agenda to force an extremist theology on U.S. citizens, a religious belief that views the presidency as a necessary step in advancing “end times,” isn’t this treason?
We think so.
While the mainstream media has been preoccupied with regurgitating – for the third time this year – discredited assertions about a ‘60s radical turned esteemed educational professor and Barack Obama, it hasn’t given any notice to the extreme branch of Dominionism that Sarah Palin adheres to.
Perhaps the “you betcha’” and “pit bull with lipstick” folksiness veneer makes it hard to accept that Palin is part of a rebel cult aimed at taking control of the U.S. government in the name of advancing Armageddon. It is kind of hard to think of the VP candidate that Republicans touted at the GOP convention with buttons as “The Hottest VP from the Coolest State” as a Manchurian candidate, but who are you going to believe, Palin or the evidence?
If you think BuzzFlash is going off the deep end of conspiracy theories, then watch this smoking gun video. It was put together by the diligent people at talk2action.org who expose the extremist, anti-democracy, anti-Constitutional tyrannical theocracy of the religious far right.
In the video, you will hear about how Palin was recruited at the age of 24 to be a political “warrior” to gain governmental power to assert an authoritarian end-times theocratic state that would rid the land of “non-believers.” The credibility of the tape comes from its narrator, Mary Glazier, who is a key sponsor and mentor to Palin, as the Governor has been groomed to seize power as part of a plan of “spiritual warfare.” Glazier details the recruitment of Palin in chilling terms and makes pronouncements, such as “There is a tipping point, at which time, because of the sin of the land, the people then have to be displaced.”
Again, don’t dismiss this as some sort of loony theory, listen and watch the tape. And you might also read some of the great research on Palin’s religious background and beliefs at Talk2Action.org.
We’ve also posted several alarming articles on BuzzFlash, including: “The Irony of Sarah Palin: Her ‘Third Wave’ Radical Christian Theology”; “By Any Measure, Sarah Palin is a Radical Political and Religious Extremist”; and a must-read interview with Bruce Wilson of Talk2Action.com, “Sarah Palin’s Extremist Religious Beliefs: The Republic is At Risk.”
It is important to recognize that the “spiritual warriors” know that they have to use deceptive tactics, including concealing their extremist religious agenda to seize the control of government at every level – and that Sarah Palin is their most charismatic “populist” vehicle for literally taking over the U.S. government and establishing an extremist theocratic, pre-Armageddon state. We are not exaggerating.
In fact, some extreme right-wing religious fanatics have been openly talking of John McCain’s death, should McCain and Palin win, which would then allow Palin to implement a “Third Wave” theocracy in the U.S. And, trust us, if you aren’t a “believer,” things are going to get very ugly.
If you notice, Palin is very careful not to renounce any of the religious extremism that she adheres to. Instead, she gives vague answers that distract from the issue, while not really rejecting the assertions – but she doesn’t really have to worry because Sean Hannity is not going to pressure her on the subject.
Palin has mastered the art of appearing like an everyday person in order to appeal to the working class population. The “spiritual warriors” are well aware that they can’t attain power by being honest about their goals, so deception is glorified in the name of their “divine” objective of making the U.S. a nation adhering to their fanatical beliefs. (Although Palin did wage her first campaign for mayor on abortion and religious “values” issues, going so far as to demand that her opponent produce a marriage license to prove that he and his wife weren’t living in sin because she chose to keep her own name. We’re not making this up.)
It’s hard to look at Palin and believe that anyone who is so confidently scary stupid could be the chosen one for the practitioners of Biblical Apocalypse.
But the mounting evidence shows that is exactly what she is.