There's a pretty good discussion on the topic at VFR in which several posters posit their own theories on what is the source of this irrational visceral hatred of someone as real and genuine, and non-threatening (personality wise) as Sarah Palin.
So, what do you think? Why do the Sarah-haters hate her so much?
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Why do the Sarah-haters hate Sarah?
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19 comments:
First, one must separate hatred, despite, and disdain. They are related in some of their effects, and easily confused by outside observers, but they are entirely separate entities.
Disdain is what humans feel for entities which are unquestionably beneath them. Pointing at ways in which Palin is lesser or inferior to those who attack her can reveal reasons for their disdain, but nothing more.
Despite is an emotion provoked by that which thwarts some desire or ambition. Humans despise what interferes with their own goals, from personal comfort or pleasure to honor or life itself. While Palin is certainly a threat to much that progressives (and even doctrinaire conservatives) desire or value, those can only be reasons that she is despised. For conservatives, the reasons to disdain her and reasons to despise her tend to be closely aligned, but the combination of disdain and despite is not yet hatred.
Hatred (of the type observed by LA) is an emotion reserve solely for that which is better or above oneself. All sentient beings must feel the equivalents of despite and disdain. But hatred is a different matter. Those who do not automatically hate what is superior will be at a loss to understand hatred. Nevertheless it does exist and is very common among progressives. Those who hate seize insistently on justifications to despise and disdain what they hate. Because, after all, admitting the true reason for hatred--some unarguable superiority of the object of hatred--would only twist the knife deeper into their own sense of inferiority.
An amusing "Demotivator" reads "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent...but you'd be a fool to withhold that from your superiors." A comical statement, but also a fundamental truth recognized by all rational beings. If someone is really better than you in some way, the obvious logical response is to acknowledge one's inferiority.
To a fool, the obvious (and irrational) response is to refuse to admit that there can be anything good at all about such a person. Which is really all one needs to know about hatred.
As for why Palin is hated more than many people whom we would consider to be much better than her, the answer to that is quite simple. The people who hate Palin are mostly such fools that they cannot even comprehend certain degrees of superiority, nor are they sufficiently attentive to notice what is not held before them on a continuous basis. Palin's virtues (like Bush's) fell within their range of perception and attention and are thus excoriated.
I believe it is simply that she is the biggest threat to their power that has come along in quite sometime. A threat to liberals and RINO's in power, and a threat to parts of the population who believe she will disrupt their status quo.
In general people don't like to be held accountable or have to make sacrifices (they love their comforts), which is why they have slowly been lulled by secular, tolerant agendas; it is more comfortable. Sarah threatens to disrupt that comfort and hold both parties accountable and that will require some sacrifices from everyone.
I think they despise and hate her because she dare be a conservative, pro-life, good looking woman.
When she actually gave birth to Trig, who is a blessing from God, she set an example that just drives the far left crazy. Her advocacy for energy independence of the US is also a thorn in their side.
I appreciate this post; it is interesting.
I know this is off topic, but...
You were among my choices to receive the "Honest Scrap Award" for your blog. It seems a bit like a chain letter, but it brightened my day and I hope it will brighten yours as well to know that I find your blog brilliant in design/content or encouraging.
Call Me Mom
Here are the guidelines for accepting the award:
In accepting this award, I need to do the following:
1) Say thanks and give a link to the presenter of the award.
2) Share "ten honest things" about myself.
3) Present this award to 7 others whose blogs I find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged me.
4) Tell those 7 people that they've been awarded HONEST SCRAP and inform them of these guidelines in receiving it.
Palin is both, reviled and revered for the wrong reasons. All that was discussed at VFR as well when she entered the political stage. But the hatred with which she is met now is not simple run-of-the-mill inflated criticism of a political opponent. I think it is very simple. Months ago, after the lost elections, I wrote: "Did they really think a woman like Palin would get them the women's votes? Don't they have the first idea about the female mind? Specifically about the American female mind? Could they really assume that an American female voting public, raised in a culture of sexual envy, a voting public that has undergone the gruelling experience of proms and "beauty pageants", would vote for a slim, pretty and markedly FEMININE looking woman like Palin? Couldn't they anticipate that everything about Palin, her looks, her relative youth, her husband, her children (HER FERTILITY!) would be the cause of intense jealousy? ... That Palin comes across as (at least to me) totally unbitchy, may have added to all this." Also, her good looks are not of a sort I (as a foreigner) would easily associate with AMERICAN looks. She hasn't got the blonde, toothy, big hair good looks of the American beauty queens who look (to me) all the same. She is SPECIAL. If I see that another strikingly goodlooking woman, Ilana Mercer, who has criticized her politics harshly, is justifiedly praising Palin's looks, I see that as a case in point for my theory that there is mainly simple, sheer and undiluted grudge behind that hatred. Whatever one may think of a woman and mother of X children in politics, Palin is a feast for the eye, seems happy, radiant and healthy and that is too much for only too many (mainly women) too bear. Grudge, jealousy, envy and spite should never be unserestimated when women are around.
I'd like to write about it at my anti-feminist blog, but as a foreigner I feel a bit out of my depth here.
I have to agree that a pretty good chunk of Palin-envy has to do with her unabashed femininity. But it's not just women who hate her over it. The fact that she's married to her (almost ridiculously manly) high-school sweetheart, while it can't do much to assuage the feelings of inferiority among women, also doesn't leave a lot of room for most men to view her as remotely 'attainable'.
Or even unattainable. She's a woman who's already been attained by a real man. Ouch.
"The fact that she's married to her (almost ridiculously manly) high-school sweetheart, while it can't do much to assuage the feelings of inferiority among women, also doesn't leave a lot of room for most men to view her as remotely 'attainable'.
Or even unattainable. She's a woman who's already been attained by a real man. Ouch."
Exactly! I couldn't agree more. From whatever angle we look at it, it's a strongly sex-charged topic. Thus the fascination. It just occurs to me and maybe I am overdoing it now: Such a sexually attractive couple together with the infant on stage was BOUND to evoke thoughts of how it came into being. Maybe that is the reason for the ridiculous accusations that the baby (I seem not to be able to remember the fatuous names of the Palin-children) was the eldest daughter's, and not Palin's, child. Women of both sexes can't STAND the thought of Palin having sex.
I'll say again what I've said before may times, although probably not here: I am under the impression that there is an unhealthy preoccupation with sex within American society. I don't think we have less sex in Germany, but it is taken as a fact of life, not something around which the world revolves. Why that is so would be a good topic for an entirely different thread. But it is so and it does a lot of damage, at least so I think.
Nora wrote:
I am under the impression that there is an unhealthy preoccupation with sex within American society.
From my point of view that statement qualifies to be among the top five or so understatements of the year. But thanks for showing reserve in your criticisms of American society at an American owned blog.
In my neck of the (American) woods, we tend to keep the bedroom stuff, well, inside the bedroom more than does the larger American society as a whole. But we still have our sex related problems here nonetheless. I hear tell, for instance, that certain 'ministers' of the gospel make it an occasional point to 'instruct' their congregations on the proper and acceptable ways of having sex, to include positions and whatnot. I won't go into any more detail on that particular point.
Anyway, so the consensus is that Sarah Palin is a sex object to most Americans, and because she's not a slutty sex object engaged in all manner of self-destructive, debasing behavior, Americans are insulted by her? Hmm. Yeah; I can see that to an extent.
Nora,
After reading your comment about not recalling the Palin childrens' names, I wondered how many of them I could recall. Here's what came to me:
Trig is the name of the baby. Piper is the little, self-confident cutie that spit-shined his hair on national tv at the RNC. Bristol is the eldest daughter who was pregnant with Levi's child during the campaign. The other two I can't recall offhand. One is a son who is a military member as I remember, the other is a daughter of about 13 years old I think.
"But thanks for showing reserve in your criticisms of American society at an American owned blog."
Thank YOU for acknowledging it. As I said, it would make an excellent topic for further discussion, however, it doesn't quite fit into any of my blogs and it isn't really up to me to start anything like that.
Yes, the names of the Palin children! I remember "Willow" because it's such a pretty word, but I always thought that the cute little one was called that and now you say she's Piper. Since the advent of the grandchild I remember Tripp and Trig. I think this confusion is only natural and part of the problem. Do you think we'd suffer the same amnesia with names like David and George, Caroline and Victoria? By giving them such oh-so-original names they have rendered their children, in a way, faceless, and that when their goal was clearly the opposite.
"Women of both sexes"...heheheh.
I guess that a peculiar obsession with sex is the natural result of the increasing disjuncture between sex and love.
It is (probably) not the case that Americans have too much sex, but that they suffer from a lack of love, both given and received. Of course, one cannot overstate the role of birth control, both prophylactic and abortive. When the sex act becomes inextricably bound to some expression of contempt and rejection towards one's own progeny, it is certain to diminish love rather than increase it.
This has its fallout in the increasingly brutal objectification of the sexually attractive. They exist in the popular mind to be denigrated and abused, stripped of fertility and personality. Americans, fed on an anti-progenerative idea of sex, are inclined to feel disgust at the thought of having children.
The same thing happens in societies where children are valued only for their utility, of course. To think of one's children as nothing more than slaves is just as exclusive of love as to think of them as...tumors. Either tendency will serve to make sexual interaction an expression of contempt for weakness and vulnerability.
Humans instinctively seek after sex to feel love, love for and from children and a mate. A society fundamentally deprived of both these primal sources of love will seek sex all the more aggressively, but when the sexuality which society promotes is inimically hostile to such affection...it's vodka to a man dying of thirst.
"It is (probably) not the case that Americans have too much sex..."
Oh Chiu, you've got me wrong! I do not think Americans have too much sex, I think they are obsessed with it because they have too little. And although your theory regarding loveless sex (and the rejection of one's own progeny by birth control) is excellent and certainly worth further discussion, it is beside my point. I was talking about sex and sex only, without the love aspect. The sniffing in bedrooms by certain clerics (Terry mentioned it) or, even more influential, more vicious and more damaging, feminism, are answerable to that. Now to the differences: German husbands and fathers have "men's rights" websites as well. However, it's more about their children and their right to be fathers, not so much about being blackmailed by the owners, controllers and peddlers of sex (women) with their merchandise, which suggests that they are getting it at least somewhere.
Then you have the intensely sex-conscious prom- and beauty pageant culture, which is designed to breed jealousy and contempt between women. And again, we have that ridiculous (and I think dangerous) contradiction: On one hand, those girls, a lot of them very young, are strutting their stuff like expensive hookers, on the other hand it is emphasized that they are "honest", even chaste. If I'd show you pictures of the beautiful, lively, spirited teenage daughters of my friends, you wouldn't think that they come from the same breed.
"An amusing "Demotivator" reads "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent...but you'd be a fool to withhold that from your superiors." A comical statement, but also a fundamental truth recognized by all rational beings. If someone is really better than you in some way, the obvious logical response is to acknowledge one's inferiority."
So true! Everybody is inferior to somebody in some respects and not to acknowledge it is a sign of deep-rooted insecurity. Don't we all know the sad nitpicking losers who obsessively dissect those who are OBVIOUSLY better in every respect than the nitpicker? Another female (although not exclusively female) trait. By the way, Ilana Mercer, who is very critical of Palin's political persona, has a lovely appreciation of Palin's looks somewhere at her blog. It's related to that article in the running magazine Auster quoted at VFR too. Well... Mercer is no dog either, which I consider a case in (my) point.
When the sex act becomes inextricably bound to some expression of contempt and rejection towards one's own progeny, it is certain to diminish love rather than increase it.
Yes, I suppose that having sex (you know, "love-making.") for the sake of having sex has its place, but when it becomes THE ruling principle for sexual relationships, then you have problems bub.
Somewhat relatedly, I've often wondered (if we could get straight facts on the matter) how much and what kind of damage 'the pill' does to women. There's yet another good subject for conversation that gets both deep and wide...
As someone who has actually read the warnings on the package, I can tell you that most women are not aware that they must go off the pill for at least one year in every three or there is a risk of becoming permanently infertile and having other problems. My doctor at the time seemed to think I was odd for having read the insert and questioning him about it and told me "don't do that, if you read the warnings on these things you would never take them."
Add to that the fact that those on the pill are far less likely to use condoms, and we have a recipie for widespread contraction of STDs.
It's an interesting question though.
My sister is always collecting horror stories about young women who had serious problems starting families because of the standard birth control methods.
A lot of women think their case is unique, or at least rare. Because the alternative is accepting that doctors don't really give a damn about women's actual health concerns. Not if it requires criticizing birth control, at least.
Anyway, on the nit-picky side of things, that does tend to be more of a feminine trait, most men would rather avoid talking about it at all when they feel inferiorated...or whatever you want to call that.
Chiu, are you questioning my masculinity? ;-)
Nah; but I am concerned about women's health. Particularly those women who are closest to me.
Anyway, getting back to the main topic, the discussion continues at VFR under a new-er entry with some interesting perspectives added. I think what we're seeing is that people have numerous reasons for hating Sarah Palin. Some are gender related, some ideological, some class related, etc. In Sarah we seem to have the fatal combination; she's obviously very good looking, she's not a radical feminist but something of a sellout, she's not by any means an "idiot," which is also very obvious (yes, even to those who say such things about her -- they don't fool me), she's very "conservative" by most everyone's standards, she IS, I believe, a "pitbull in lipstick", though we haven't begun to see that side of her yet in national politics (as I've said before, I think the likes of Chuch Schumer are deathly afraid of her, and he ought to be in my opinion.), etc... And did I mention her good looks? LOL
Ah, that was to what Editrix said about "obsessive dissecting" pattern inferiority complex. Most men (and most women, really) resort to generalities rather than specifics when denigrating an obviously superior individual.
I personally prefer to avoid criticism of individuals as such, most failings are hardly unique enough to warrant making some given individual the poster child, after all. I prefer to criticize the failing rather than the person, though sometimes that causes me to forget that some people are personally attached to some failings. Thus I'm often rather insensitive to how my comments can appear.
"I'm not talking about you personally."
"Then who are you talking about?"
"Just whoever does [discussed failing]."
"I do that! You're talking about me!"
"Oh...but I wasn't thinking of you as a person...."
I've had this exact turn in so many conversations...but it's just how I tend to think about things. Since I don't really have opinions about individuals as individuals, I'm limited to opinions about characteristics that are not generally unique to any individual (with some very notable exceptions--as you would expect for significantly unique persons).
Which is how I regard Palin as well, naturally. To me, the most interesting (closest to unique) thing about her is that she is so clearly not a politician, despite having a very successful career in politics. That represents the cross-section of two very small minorities in politics. Very few politicians are really successful, even fewer are not politicians.
Everything else about her is...well, not essentially that interesting to me. Her looks, while good, are a little generic. Her views are unremarkable, if better informed than most (which is not intended as faint praise). Her education is neither Ivory League nor lacking. Her family is...normal.
She's so normal it's a little weird, but I suppose that's how a non-politician ends up getting elected. I've always had mixed feelings about that, I naturally trend towards the "Great Man" theory of history. Palin doesn't strike me as a leader.
But, I don't hate that.
"She's so normal it's a little weird, but I suppose that's how a non-politician ends up getting elected."
I'd say that she is so "normal" that she comes across as an oddity among politicians.
No, what makes her odd among politicians is that she's had a very successful political career without gaining any of the traits that set politicians apart from regular people.
I mean that, looking at her as an example of turn of the century Americana...I wasn't previously aware that such a thing existed in this day and age. It's like meeting someone who grew up on Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars. Like, not the books, but on the planet imagined therein. It's like..."Wow...I can tell how you got to Earth--your advanced technology and physiology are most impressive, but I didn't think that your planet was a real place."
She's so...American.
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