Palin described “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act” as death panels. The Cathedral, (meaning the MSM, the politicians, the professoriat, senior public servants, and assorted people employed in the upper reaches of the ever more numerous quasi governmental organizations) react with apocalyptic outrage – thereby drawing the public’s attention to various parts of the act that are, indeed, death panels. Sarah Palin smiles sweetly and lets them hammer themselves to pulp. After uncontrollably inflicting massive damage on themselves, they delete most disturbing parts of the act – which retreat looks to the public like an admission that Obama indeed intended to murder their poor old Grandma and Sarah Palin’s cute little baby.
There are a lot of people who argue that Sarah Palin is a prole, therefore dumb as a post. Maybe she just got lucky this time?
Sarah Palin is a politician. Everything a politician does is theater, and must be analyzed as theater. Nothing a politician does is real. Sarah Palin is no more a prole than George Bush was a cowboy. That a politician sounds like a prole and walks like a prole is not evidence she is a prole, it is evidence that republicans need the prole vote. We must analyze her conduct as a show.
The people who argue that Sarah Palin is a prole, therefore stupid, also argue she is a prole, therefore stupid, nasty, hateful, vile disgusting and repugnant – which is why prolishness is a vote winner: her enemies will expose the fact that they hate a very large proportion of the voters.
The Cathedral hate, loath, and despise the proles. The thought of a prole in the Whitehouse enrages them to madness. If you think the Muslims went nuts when some people posted mildly disrespectful depictions of prophet Mohamed, you have seen nothing yet. If republicans nominate her, their enemies will go mad in public.
OK, if a politician wins a battle and devastates her enemies, that is evidence she is smart. But perhaps she got lucky. So secondly, let us examine her note that had this devastating effect.
- It looks casual. Just as Sarah Palin appears completely prole, the note appears that she is just chatting to her friends (in public) that big bad Obama might murder poor sweet members of her family.
- It is sweet and feminine. Sarah Palin appears a sweet feminine old fashioned woman who cares very much about her children. And yet the Cathedral is going apocalyptic! Our protective impulses towards hot women and and cute children automatically fires up. I slap on my shining armor and mount my high horse: We are going to protect poor sweet Sarah Palin and her cute little baby against the big bad Cathedral!
Sheer genius!
The lack of links suggests an alternative possibility: that very few in the echo chamber returned to the original material to read it for themselves. Instead, they relied on what others in the chamber selected. This is, of course, an example of the very mechanism that makes an echo chamber what it is.
Constantinople wrote:
Of course – that is what makes it an echo chamber – they are out of contact with reality. And since Charles Krauthammer is inside the echo chamber, he is not a conservative, but an entryist. If he was a conservative, he would know what actual conservatives, or at least actual Republicans, are saying and thinking. The Republican party is full of entryists, and to the extent that entryists can game the system to get entryist candidates nominated, we have a one party system.
Of course, for the reasons explained by Bryan Caplan, this is not necessarily worse than a two party system, but at least with a two party system, we get gridlock from time to time, slowing the rush to abyss.
And yet, despite the fact that Sarah Palin was fighting the Democrats, the mainstream media, and the Republican establishment, and despite the fact that Democrats have the presidency and overwhelming majorities in every legislative body and in both parties, she won, which is interesting, odd, and extraordinarily impressive. I find it hard to make sense out of that fact, hard to fit it into my worldview.
Interesting, a majority or very close to it support social security being made optional, despite the fact that this proposition is extraordinarily far from the supposed mainstream. Similarly, a majority in California voted to end affirmative action, a position so wildly far from the “mainstream” that the California government just plain flat out ignores it, simply denying that it ever happened. Similarly on pot.
I agree with Bryan Caplan that democracy is doomed, that if the will of the people was actually implemented it would merely result in us having problems with nazis instead of commies. Yet still, it is becoming glaringly apparent that the will of the people is not being implemented, which equally serves to discredit democracy.
Something I notice in all this is the stupidity of the interpretation being given to Palin’s remark. They respond not to her point, but to a straw man – which anyone who reads Palin’s whole entry with anything other than a desire to misinterpret it will see right through.
For example Charles Krauthammer (a conservative inside the liberal echo chamber) writes:
“But there are no “death panels” in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.”
This is, of course, a stupid misinterpretation. While there do indeed happen to be “death panels” in the bills, that’s not Palin’s point. Her point is:
“The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course.”
This is a fundamental and eternal critique of the very idea of a government health care system in a world of scarcity. It is not swept aside by a comment that there are no “death panels” listed in the bill (which is not even true). There will necessarily be “death decisions”, and those decisions will inevitably be made bureaucratically, presumably by literal “panels” as a matter of fact, though this is hardly key. Most importantly, they will be taken away from people and given to the state, putting people at the mercy of the state.
How can anyone miss this? They can’t miss this if they are reading the whole (short) thing honestly, which presents about as simple and short an argument as could be presented.
And they’re going to read it honestly if they think that they are doing anything other than preaching to the choir. They know that the echo chamber that they are addressing will not seriously examine what they are saying. They are telling the echo chamber what it wants to hear. They are also, presumably, trusting a wider public fully dependent on the echo chamber for its news and commentary to have better things to do than research the issue independently.
Another thing I’ve noticed in this is the difficulty of tracking down the original entry from which the echo chamber media have extracted the quote about death panels. The echo chamber does not make it easy to track it down. In various mentions, I found no links to the original material. So the echo chamber are in no rush to let people see the evidence for themselves.
This reminds me of the recent criticism of Limbaugh (from liberal echo chamber conservatives) for saying that he hopes Obama fails. That remark – at once hilarious and serious – also has a clear meaning which can be easily gleaned from the surrounding commentary, but it, too, is taken out of context and stupidly misinterpreted. Even taking it out of context should not make it impossible to understand. After all, Limbaugh is a conservative and Obama is a liberal, so obviously what Limbaugh is saying is he wants Obama to fail in his plans to move the state in a liberal direction. It’s not that hard to understand! But even conservatives who understood it argued that Limbaugh should not be saying things that could be so easily twisted by liberals.
But anything can be twisted by those who are willing to be blatantly dishonest and willfully stupid about it. The only way for Limbaugh to comply with the demand that he avoid saying things that could be twisted by liberals is to shut down his radio program.