Bartlet for America

I can’t believe I didn’t remember this before. This is what I get for going so long without watching my beloved West Wing.
Do you remember, waaaaaay back in the first season, that President Bartlet had a Navy major as his personal physician? He died not too far into the series, but before he did, he and Bartlet had some excellent conversations. A lot of it was the non-soldier Bartlet trying to seem cool and tough before the military man, and one exchange in particular seems relevant right now, for reasons that might possibly suggest themselves to you:

Bartlet: It’s not like I’m totally without experience. You’re talking to a former governor. I was the Commander-in-Chief of the New Hampshire National Guard.
Morris Tolliver: You guys get into a lot of tough scrapes, did ya?
Bartlet: We didn’t have to. We’d just stand on the border and stare you down. Then we’d all go for pancakes.

Allegory

So, as you all know, I moved recently. My new building has a laundry room. It’s good to have it, but I haven’t done anything with it yet. I go out to Mama’s every weekend to do my laundry. It’s a reason to spend a little time with her and the biscuits, and an excuse to drive a good distance at a time when gas prices have made driving for pleasure a luxury beyond my means.
The Palin, as governor of Alaska, was technically Commander-in-Chief of the Alaska National Guard. The GOP is pushing this as further proof that she’s ready to be VP and possibly President, if the need arises. They say she has experience as CIC, even though she never once in her 18 months on the job gave the Guard a single order.
Still, it’s technically true she has experience of being CIC, in the same sense that I have experience of the washer and dryer in my building: I’ve never actually used them, don’t really know how they work or how much they cost, but I’ve seen them, and it’s nice to know they’re there, I guess.

Working to make the world a better place=stupid

This is the thing about Republicans: they appeal to the worst bits of us. They appeal to everything that’s ugly in us, and we just keep going for it.
It 2000, Dubya ran on the “dumbass frat boy” platform. His whole campaign was based on being the smirking guy in the back of the class who didn’t get it, but made himself feel better by making fun of the kids who did.
Now there’s Sarah Palin and her big laugh line about a small-town mayor being like a community organizer, only with “actual responsibilities.” She used it at the convention, of course, and now she’s using it in her stump speeches. The Palin wants to make fun of community organizers who, among their many accomplishments, are the only reason she has the right to fucking vote.
Barack Obama got his start as a community organizer, of course, which is why she targets them. She doesn’t want to admit that these people do good work, because if she did, she’d be forced to face the fact that, while she was off winning beauty pageants, Obama was working hard on the Southside of Chicago, helping working people (those same working people that some inexplicably believe he’s “afraid” of) who had been ruined by the failed steel industry to salvage something and rebuild their lives.
But there is another reason for this line of attack.  See, there are still community organizers (of every political stripe) all across the country trying to do what politicians only pretend to do, which is to change the world and make it a better place. These are the people The Palin wants to turn into a national joke. Of course she does. She doesn’t want you to organize, because organized people rock the boat. She doesn’t want the boat rocked. She wants you to spend money and do what you’re told.
Dubya spent the 2000 campaign laughing at his intellectual superiors, and America laughed along, and he won (sorta). He proved that we’re stupid. Now The Palin is laughing at her moral superiors. She wants to prove that we’re not only stupid, but mean. Are you gonna laugh along?