Palin’s Blinding Hypocrisy, and the Tea Party “Platform”

A recent post illustrated the frightening yet typical hypocrisy of former half term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, as she called for Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to be fired for calling a liberal pro health care reform attack ad strategy “f**king retarded” (based on his use of the word “retard,” in a private meeting), yet initially had no problem with, and even said she “agreed” with, Rush Limbaugh when Limbaugh also used the word, and called liberals themselves, “retards,” multiple times, publicly.

Which brings up a more fundamental, and troubling point, on this very same issue of unrecognized hypocrisy and Tea Partiers, who recently held a convention where none other than this same Sarah Palin was the Keynote speaker.

While perhaps not as blatant as Palin’s absurd triple standards,  the main Tea Party “message” also has an element of unrecognized, and much more troubling, hypocrisy to it.  A hyprocrisy that is causing many to overlook that the main Tea Party message is misleading to both Tea Partiers themselves, and to most of America.

It also goes to the heart of what America either is, or isn’t, all about: Freedom, liberty, and in the case of the Tea Partiers claims, less government.  Does less government just mean less regulation that actually protects individual rights more than it protects unfettered corporate rights, less spending on help for the unfortunate in a society, and more of everything else, including unchecked governmental power, intrusion, and moral and social preaching, if not prescription — things that have no place in a truly free society?

Consider again Palin a  few days ago saying she “agrees” with Rush Limbaugh very non satirically and publicly calling a broad group “retards” multiple times over, while calling for Rahm Emanuel’s firing because Emanuel in a closed door strategy session referred to an ad campaign strategy itself as “f*’g retarded.” There is not much better example than that this so called “freedom beacon” Sarah Palin is actually invoking such speech control based upon her own, subjective, selectively imposed, and extreme interpretations as to call for somebody’s firing for the simple use of a common figure of speech used to denote foolishness, that in other, far more extreme, pejorative, direct and public employments was (originally, until it was pointed out to her), perfectly fine to Palin.

That’s the world view that imposes something entirely different, rather than the same set of rules, conditions and expectations, based upon one’s own subjective view of things, no matter how disparate.  In a nutshell, that is the initial basis for any type of fascist, authoritarian, or totalitarian rule. It’s okay if we do it. It’s a crime, or worse,  if anybody else does, and let’s base our policies, the country, and sometimes in the Tea Partiers’ case, our hatred, upon that unrecognized dualism.

Palin started off her Tea Party speech by stating “Don’t you just love America!?”  Everyone it seemed screamed yeah out loud (again, see video clip provided courtesy of the Daily Show).

But what is it that Tea Partiers (a few of whose espoused, rather than seemingly practiced, principles, I might agree with) love about America?

Is it our founding principles?  Most of those are slowly falling by the wayside to far right powerful government ideology.

Is it the idea of a robust Fourth Estate? That has been routinely lambasted and torn apart by the far right in this country except in those instances where it simply resembles exactly what one wants to hear, and in the manner it wants to hear it, cleverly couched as “fair and balanced” news, as the Fox Channel does presently, and what is in fact the opposite of an independent, robust, investigative check upon government, power, groupthink, groupthink run amuck, misrepresentation and rhetoric  – and which up until recently had formed an essential cornerstone of our robust representative democracy.

Is it love of the people?  Fox’s Sean Hannity, one of the main leaders of the Tea Party movement, wrote a best selling book which on its cover alone puts “Liberals” in with traitors and terrorists. Fox’s Glenn Beck is even worse. Tom Tancredo speaks at the convention, and manipulatively and even derisively calls “Barack, Hussein, Obama” (with special emphasis on the middle name) a socialist ideologue. Other talk show radio hosts, who seem to form a cornerstone of hatred, routinely conjure up hateful images and inflammatory rhetoric that appeals to our worst emotions and biases.  So it doesn’t seem to be love of the people of this country (unless one is the same as everybody else, which is a theme more fit, ironically, for pre wall collapse U.S.S.R. or, in the extreme, of course, Totalitarian Germany.)

What about other people.  Is it just love of half of the country’s people, and spewing hatred for the rest?

There is a big difference between disagreement with policies, and hatred for that disagreement, or for groups that are different than oneself.  For example, I’m a big supporter of serious immigration reform, and have been for a long time.  It’s a right wing view.  Some Liberals hate this view, and sometimes, opposite of Republicans, and missing the forest for the trees, ignore the fact that I am aligned with liberals on some key issues such as environmental and energy sensibility, openness and accountability in government, restricted and checked governmental power[i], health care reform and cost reform (but only sensible health care and cost reform, that addresses the root cause of the problem, over reliance upon for profit health insurance, otherwise I am an opponent), and rigorous anti trust enforcement to ensure we have a robust, and fair functioning capitalistic, not oligopolistic, market and economy.

I even think the U.S. should not be putting out information in two languages, and I hate when banks and other companies do it. It only discourages incentive to learn the language that most speak, and keeps people apart, and from being able to effectively communicate with one another.  (Interestingly, many recent and even not so recent, but language sheltered, immigrants have told me they agree completely with me on this. ) But I don’t hate immigrants. I don’t blame America’s problems on Immigrants, or on anybody but all of us, for various reasons.

But Tea Parties seem to scapegoat immigrants. Not all, but many. They certainly don’t seem to love them.  And if racism does have a place still in American society — and it seems it does — its role seems to be far more fully realized among the Tea Party crowd, than elsewhere.

So it is not love of America’s people that the Tea Partiers Love.

It is not love of our founding principles of limited, checked government with a president restrained in full by the will of he people and the constitution, a judicial systemt that serves as a check upon the unfettered will of the majority against the inherent rights of the minority, or love of that which has also made our democracy great, a robust and completely independent hard hitting fourth estate that Thoams Jefferson once called more important to our democracy than government itself.

Is it love of our mountains, land, and its natural pristine rugged beauty? Many who identify themselves with the Tea Party movement have a strange argument for efforts to move of us of fossil based fuels — fuels which are adding to an atmospheric forcing that has already ratcheted GHC concentrations to levels that are higher than any observed over the past three quarter million years, whose reliance upon compromises our national security, and sends countless billions to unfriendly and often repressive regimes, which also, GHG aside, greatly pollute the air, and in the case of coal, add to our bio-accumulation of key toxins (such as mercury) and devastation of landscapes, watersheds, and even, in some cases, whole mountain tops.  They argue that these efforts are designed for the purpose of “wrecking the economy” or because of “hatred of mankind” regardless of the fact that most scientists are telling us that we are undertaking an exceedingly risky path when it comes to potentially radical future climatic shifts with potentially devastating implications for mankind — particularly future generations.

So it doesn’t seem to be love of the natural environment, ecology, and the land.

What is it then?

Love of unfettered corporate anarchy, rather than rigorous, true capitalism, and love of rhetoric is what, at times, it seems to be. Particularly love of  rhetoric unrecognized as such, and that is the scariest thing of all.

And it is what American, including many earnest, well meaning, Tea Partiers themselves, should be most concerned with.

And Palin is probably better at misleading rhetoric than anybody in America. Save perhaps for this gentleman, another Tea Party favorite, and someone who almost got all teary eyed when he met Palin (see below).

The guy who spends most of this time railing about Fascism, and exhibits more of its underlying traits than perhaps any other leading figure in America today.Glenn Beck.

Huey Lewis once said that facism will come, in the name of anti-facism.  Glenn Beck is America’s Exhibit A.

Sarah Palin, with her emotions stirring ‘freedom’ speeches when she doesn’t even know what the word means, but can spin the head off a carrot with her rhetoric, is Exhibit B.

Glenn  Beck, meet Sarah Palin. The statute of Liberty, slightly withers in the background.
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Endnotes:

[i] Although a few liberals think more restrictions are needed, but in general that argument is vastly over stated by the far right, a fallacy which Liberals themselves often don’t see the importance of, and so play right into.

Other Links to this Post

1. Essays-Letters-Articles » New York Times Blindly Plays Right into Tea Party Rhetoric. — February 17, 2010 @

2. Essays-Letters-Articles » What’s the Most Fundamental Difference Between a Free, Civilized Society, and an Unfree, Uncivilized One? — March 7, 2010 @

3. Who Exactly Is He Talking About « Donkasaurus Post — March 15, 2010 @

4. Essays-Letters-Articles » Health Care Reform, Political Honesty and the Rhetoric We’ve Been Hearing, in Contrast — March 30, 2010 @

5. Essays-Letters-Articles » He “Could” Have Had Other Issues — Like Maybe Extreme, Psychopathic Beckism? — July 30, 2010 @

6. Essays-Letters-Articles » This is What Our Government Just Mandated — August 11, 2010 @

7. Essays-Letters-Articles » “News” Commentator Glenn Beck and Extremism, and the Left’s Response — August 17, 2010 @