thrill wrote:sighyoung wrote:When I visited the Revere House a few years ago, there was plenty of signage in and around the place to learn about the ride, his work as a smith, and his role in public affairs in Boston. She could have learned a thing or two if she'd tried to.
That's the most galling thing. She had spent all day "learning new stuff" about Paul Revere. I'm probably extrapolating too much from this, but the dismissive anti-intellectual cocksure attitude about their knowledge and opinions is just so typical of right-wing politics in this country. Their opinion is the only truth that matters regardless of fact.
To be fair, I think this is true of partisans of whatever stripe--they only care whose side you're on. People who will try to change a Wikipedia entry to accord with Palin's mangling of facts--that's truly pathetic.
But there are two other things that strike me about Palin. 1) I do believe that she believes in inspiration (as in divine inspiration--the Holy Spirit entering her). What matters to her (and some followers) is not what she says, but their gut feeling that what she believes is truly American and moral, and thus correct. She sees herself as the embodiment of America, and her heart expresses fundamental American values. That will never change, no matter what comes out of her mouth.
2) She's drawing on an old, old tradition that sees nature as a repository for American identity, rather than, say, the city. This is a powerful tradition in many settler cultures--not just the U.S., but Canada, South Africa, Australia. The pastoral tradition of the farm (see Jefferson) or the frontier as the locus of American values--never urban centers or centers of power. She's trying to draw upon all these cultural symbols to define herself as fundamentally American, and anything different as suspect or alien.
She has defined herself as quintessentially American, inspired by God, and basically correct all of the time. It's troubling to see that.
