WorldChanging: Waiting for the Whirlwind: "What you get when you swallow too much change too quickly isn’t a mass outbreak of twitching, hebephrenic breakdown, nor some neo-Amish wave of technological renunciation. You wanna know what it looks like? A hockey mom and former beauty queen with an upswept ‘do and a pregnant daughter in high school. Sarah Palin is future shock personified.
On 15 August 1945, Japanese Emperor Hirohito redefined “understatement” for all time when, in his broadcast to the nation accepting the terms of unconditional surrender, he famously described the “war situation” as “ha[ving] developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”
That’s the phrase that leapt to mind when I thought about Palin and about what significance she might hold as a symbol of larger forces in the culture. But this time it’s not anything as concrete as a “war situation,” a disposition of forces and potentials around a theater of conflict. It’s the entire future that’s shaping up as hostile. Or at least I can easily imagine it seeming this way, if the equity you’ve fought to build up in your house is circling the toilet, if your medical bills are spiraling out of control, if the media culture seems purely inimical to all attempts to raise your children with any set of values you’d recognize as sane, if you’ve still got to face the question of what to do for (and with) your parents as they age.
Sure, I bet it feels like the future’s one long hard slap in the face when all it means is city-killing storms and literally crumbling infrastructure and the (nonexistent, but easily enough ginned-up) specter of know-it-alls like Al Gore showing for interviews with an ITYS smirk. There’s not a whole hell of a lot your Crackberry can do about any of that - in fact, all the high-tech trinkets only make it worse, more acutely felt and harder to get away from."
Yes, another cut-and paste post. You know, I've tried to not hate anybody I haven't actually met. I don't trust anybody, especially any media to give me a good enough picture of somone for that. It just doesn't fit my personal ethics. So, what I'm trying to do here is to seperate hatred of a person for hatred of what a person represents. This article and the previous one do a good job of pointing toward what I hate about what Sarah Palin represents.
Actually, I find that I can only approach politics and politicians based on what they represent. Trying to look at someone who has survived any time in the political arena in the same way I would someone in my personal sphere is just a guaranteed loose for them. Once one has taken on taken on the tag "politician", from my perspective one has then lost the ability to be seen as forthright.
Oh, and for what it's worth, I knew I was going to vote for Obama for president if the chance came up after his speech in 2004. He's done a fairly good job so far of representing what I'd like my country to represent. That said, since he's a politician I see him as being along the same continuum as sociopaths, and the media.
(Apologies to any of my friends reading this who are in politics. As I said, it's not you, it's what your group has come to represent.)
I think it'll take more than Lessig's Change Congress to change these associations...
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