Here's the opening of the Sarah Palin article I wrote last week for the upcoming issue of The American Conservative:
Why, in one uproarious week of American politicking that not even H.L. Mencken would have expected, has the once unknown Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, outraged roughly one-half of the country and overjoyed the other half?
What intrigues people about elections aren't the platform planks. Deep down, political contests are about picking symbolic champions. Just as Barack Obama, recently of the Illinois legislature, has arationally excited tens of millions by his emphasis on his bloodlines, by his implication that national racial reconciliation is "in my DNA," the overstuffed life story of the caribou huntress and mother of five (and soon to be grandmother at age 44) embodies the oldest boast Americans have made about their homeland: the fecundity of the frontier.
Compared to Obama's much-lauded but tedious life, cautiously plotted in countless Chicago backrooms, the Alaskan-sized lustiness of Gov. Palin's full-throttle biography comes as a delight. The way the only-in-Alaska factoids about her keep piling up, like in an Old West tall tale, always leaves me laughing.
Consider, for example, Palin's husband Todd. What kind of man could be married to a woman so hormonally exuberant, with her dual archetypes straight out of a Camille Paglia reverie: half Alaskan Amazon, half Venus of Willendorf? Exactly the kind of man you'd expect: he works as both a North Shore oilfield roughneck and a salmon fisherman. He's also won the state's snowmobile championship, the 2,000 mile Tesoro Iron Dog race, four times, but only finished fourth this year because he had to ride the last 400 miles with a broken arm after being thrown 70 feet. Did I mention he's part Eskimo?
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
41 comments:
Really good, Steve.
I think we might have a bit of Braveheart here: the common person rises up to challenge the corrupt elites.
Steve Sailer: I'm always accused of having weird obsessions, but they seem to eventually turn out to be everybody else's weird obsessions, too.
Don't tell me - you've compiled a couple of 1MB+ Excel spreadsheets about the relative performance of East African -vs- West African snow machine racing drivers?
I know this is off topic, but does anyone know where I could purchase a "Vote Kodos and Kang in 2008" t-shirt?
Steve Sailer, why don't you write about the Israel-first takeover of FoxNews prime time programming in the personage of Dick Morris?
Dick Morris spent the entire summer of 2008 doing alternating kickoff-the-show fifteen minute one-on-one spots with O'Reilly and then Hannity & Colmes every week. Many of these spots lasted 17-20 minutes in prime time.
In other words, the most desirable publicity spots in the TV media for anyone on the American Right were gratuitously reserved for Dick Morris for months on end.
This went on day after day, week after week, and month after month. During this entire stretch, clueless Dick Morris promoted lifelong Democrat Joe Lieberman as McCain's best Vice-President pick.
Left wing liberal Democrat Joe Lieberman?!! Yes, Israel-firster and Democrat Lieberman was the strategic "no-brainer" VP pick for the Republican Party according to Dick Morris.
Imagine how that pick contrasts with the Sarah Palin VP pick. The obvious question to ask is whether Dick Morris had the Republican Party's or even the United States' best interest at heart in promoting Joe Lieberman.
Stever Sailer, you are asleep, out of touch, and removed from the political battles that are being waged on the mainstream media battlefield. These are the same battles that decided the fate of National Review, of course, which you supposedly cared so deeply about.
Whatever, dude!
" . . . he works as both a North Shore oilfield roughneck and a salmon fisherman"
Isn't the correct term "North Slope?"
Sorry to be pedantic.
Steve, does Gov Palin's Creationism impact on any of your Long-term obsessions? What you think about that is becoming one of mine.
Sarah and Todd Palin represent two themes that the leftists thought they had reduced to a museum piece: Unrepentant white people ("Caucasius Unrepentus"?), and white people making lots of babies. White women were to have been turned into Sex and the City clones with 1.2 kids and a chihuahua. White men were to have been turned into guilt-ridden beta boys worshipping and deferring to the culture and masculinity of "The People of Color Tribe".
The vision of Sarah and Todd, confident, unrepentant, independent, and making lots of babies who will follow in kind is highly unsettling to the firm of Soros and Sulzberger. The problem of the left in America has always been trying to overthrow a market-dominant majority. When they talk of "progress" and "we still have a long way to go" and we're not there yet", they are talking about overthrowing the dominion of white people in America and white western civilization in the world.
The key to the leftist project is seperating white women from this market dominant majority and convincing them to feel and act like one of the minority victim groups. The intent is to isolate white men as the bourgoise and create a marxist revolution. That's why the polls showing a huge shift in support from white women to McCain/Palin has them in a state of panic. The sight of White Woman standing shoulder to shoulder with White Man, together and confident as one tribe, represents the end of the leftist project. It might give white women around the country funny ideas that they should identify and support their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons and not collaborate with the socialist Brazil society that Obama/Soros/Sulzbegrer/CNN/MSNBC/NBC/ABC/CBS/PBS/IVY League have been pushing for 40 years.
The frog has decided it does not wish to be boiled, slowly or otherwise.
Quite astonishing, isn't it, that liberals have made so little of Mr Palin's being of mixed race?
Palin was round to AIPAC to be checked out and given the six-sided star of approval before you could say "Amen Corner". She already had a little Israeli flag peeping out from behind the curtains in her office at the mansion.
Never been to the Promised Land-- heck, never had a passport till she got the call-- but that doesn't stop her swearing eternal fealty to the you-know-whos.
And how firm is she against uncontrolled illegal immigration? Don't suppose many peons try to break in via the Bering Straits.
But maybe Mad Dog Johnny is going to take over the foreign affairs portfolio which apparently Condi Rice outsourced to the VP. So Palin, who knows nothing of the Washington snake pit, is going to reform it, cut out the pork and earmarks, quell the special interests and save us billions.
Yeah, no problemo.
Can we please put this psychometric, imagistic and symbolic crap aside for just a second or two?
Think about the real and all but insuperable obstacles to peace and prosperity the Republic faces. Is this woman is the ideal stand-in for a senile old warmonger with cancer?
I don't give a good goddam how many retards she's birthed or not, or how much polar bear her old man eats for breakfast, or whatever.
Until Steve drops the highblown Oprahfied commentary he began with Barack and Michelle and talks about matters of substance concerning the desperate peril the USA is in, he can whistle for this reader's money.
Scales,
I find your analysis to be highly logical and relevnt. One question though: how do you view African Americans? As fellow citizens-or something else? Afterall, they are here and will continue to be, and in many cases have been here longer than most White Americans? Your thoughts, please?
Thanks!
Salaam
Mu
I think Obama's problem isn't with white people per se but with white WOMEN. He hated Hillary with a special venom & Palin really sems to have gotten under his skin. She's white....and very fertile.
Is it off-limits to ask the potential VPILF whether she intends on getting pregnant again?
Anonymous,
If the Israel first neocons are so all-powerful, howkum they didn't succeed in getting Lieberman picked as Veep?
if this election is decided by Sarah Palin's (admittedly awesome) persona, then I have truly overestimated this country.
scales fall,
I like your comment because it is true. You want to know what else freaks our enemies out?
http://mansizedtarget.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/red-state-family-values/
She's pretty good, isn't she?
Scales Fall ~ excellent comments! You really nail it, esoecially here: 'When they talk of "progress" and "we still have a long way to go" and we're not there yet", they are talking about overthrowing the dominion of white people in America and white western civilization in the world.'
...and here:
'The intent is to isolate white men as the bourgoise and create a marxist revolution. That's why the polls showing a huge shift in support from white women to McCain/Palin has them in a state of panic. The sight of White Woman standing shoulder to shoulder with White Man, together and confident as one tribe, represents the end of the leftist project.'
Just brilliant.
Good comments;first to 'lucius vorenus'--I hope thats not pronounced like 'luscious'--funny comment!I only hope you Didnt hurt Steves feelings:"heck this stuff's important!!" And to 'scales fall' I strongly welcome your comment and agree. It recalls Hillary's bizarre stories of her Quest to Express her Manhood,these phoney little tales like how she called Nasa and asked to become an astronaut and those mean guys said,"We're not taking women." Oh boo hoo! And how she was gonna go to Harvard Law and was at a cocktail party (wow,she really is an up by the bootstraps girl,aint she?)when she overheard some evil male say.'We have too many women at Hahvad,we dont need any more." She went right over to Yale! The sickest of all is her trying to join the Marines story.Again-denied. Reason? She's a WOMAN!! Now I was pretty young when Viet Nam was goin' down,but I do recall that it wasnt much fun,with battles on TV every night.There were lots of college students violently opposed to the war,but I didnt know that there was at least one hyper-privileged white woman who wanted to actually GO there and get in the trenches with those working class guys and fight it out with Charlie! I wouldve taken Hillary for someone who hates working class guys and was more likely to spit in a vets face than stand shoulder to shoulder with 'em.
John of London wrote: "Steve, does Gov Palin's Creationism impact on any of your Long-term obsessions?"
I can't talk for Steve, but perhaps I can explain how someone else (I) can be a fan of Gov. Palin while not being a creationist.
I think that the traditional sort of morality that Christianity has historically espoused is very useful to a society's long-term survival. This morality makes practical sense even when decoupled from the (to me) mythological aspects of religion. Secular, liberal, non-traditional kind of morality tends, on the other hand, to be harmful towards long-term survival of societies. Look at Europe's suicidally-low birth rate, for an example. What's to blame? Women entering the workforce en masse, the severe weakening of the family, selfishness - all traits usually associated with secularism.
I've never believed that the world was created in 6 days or that a snake ever held any conversations with a guy named Adam or anything else of that sort. However, such questions have very little impact on the daily life of most people. Besides nerds like me (and perhaps you), how many people have the capacity to be genuinely interested in such abstract, irrelevant to man's social life topics as cosmology? The answer is "very few". I've sometimes seen Steve ask the question "how many people are genuinely interested in truth?" He meant the truth about human biodiversity, but this applies to anything abstract. Consciously the average, non-nerdy person is not interested in such truths. They're simply irrelevant to him. People act as if they subconsciously know the truths about human biodiversity AND religion - theists seem to fear death as much as atheists - but the split between conscious and subconscious thought is another topic altogether and is beyond the scope of this comment.
The point I'm actually trying to make is that for a society's survival it is much more important what politicians and media moguls think about the traditional family than what they think about cosmology. Cosmology is boring to anyone but geeks anyway. As long as Mrs. Palin is not running for the leadership post of that new superconductor thingie in Switzerland, her stance on Genesis does not bother me too much. The fact that she is a Christian increases the chances that she'll support pro-family policies, and that's much more important.
Scales Fall: White women were to have been turned into Sex and the City clones with 1.2 kids and a chihuahua.
The Sex & the City numbers are actually far, far worse than that:
Sarah Jessica Parker
imdb.com
nndb.com
wikipedia.org
BORN: 25 March 1965
WOMB: near-barren or barren
NATURAL CHILDREN: 1 [James Broderick]
Kim Cattrall
imdb.com
nndb.com
wikipedia.org
BORN: 21 August 1956
WOMB: barren
NATURAL CHILDREN: 0
Kristin Davis
imdb.com
nndb.com
wikipedia.org
BORN: 23 February 1965
WOMB: near-barren or barren
NATURAL CHILDREN: 0
Cynthia Nixon
imdb.com
nndb.com
wikipedia.org
BORN: 9 April 1966
WOMB: near-barren or barren
NATURAL CHILDREN: 2 [Samantha & Charles Ezekiel Mozes]
TOTAL FERTILITY RATE: (1 + 0 + 0 + 2) / 4 = 0.75
If anyone on this board doesn't know demographics, then be assured that that's an extinction-level TFR.
I don't see anything delightful about Palin. It remins me of the movie Idiocracy. Remember that movie? It takes place in the future where everyone, even those in high positions, act like trailer trash, because all the high IQ genes had been bred out of humanity.
Palin's "creationsim" is a little more nuanced than what many Leftists have made it out to be. I believe she said humbly that she doesn't understand where we come from, but that not any one dogma should be taught in class.
Steve has written much on the provincialism of both the Left and the Right regarding evolution. One is in danger if they challenge the elite's position (always the case, right?): Leftist provincialism. See Larry Summers and James Watson for recent examples.
And how firm is she against uncontrolled illegal immigration? Don't suppose many peons try to break in via the Bering Straits.
Anchorage will have a Mexican consulate opening this fall:
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2008/08/anchorage_to_ge.php
Anchorage and Fairbanks are Sanctuary Cities:
http://www.sanctuarycities.info/sanctuary_state_alaska.htm
Palin has no public position on illegal immigration:
http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/002935.html
More on Palin's non-position on illegal immigration:
http://blogs.chron.com/immigration/archives/2008/09/post_165.html
(...)
So that leaves a certain moose-hunting governor from Alaska up in the air. Journalists and others are now probing her record and speeches to uncover her views on immigration. So far, there's not much, according to a Hill report:
Palin's record on immigration, as recorded by Nexis and Google, is practically nonexistent, and everyone from bloggers to members of Palin's own party seemed unsure of her views.
"She's never made any statements. I don't recall really any positions that she's taken," said Mara Kimmel, a political science professor at the University of Alaska at Anchorage who specializes in immigration issues.
Kimmel, whose husband is the Democratic candidate for Alaska's lone seat in the House, said immigration hasn't been a dominant issue in the state, even though she suspects there were proportionally as many undocumented workers in Alaska as in other states.
Even when the issue has surfaced in Alaska, Kimmel couldn't recall Palin weighing in on it.
A spokesman for McCain's campaign did not respond to a request to describe Palin's views on immigration.
No doubt that Gov. Palin will adopt McCain's position. But it would be helpful to know if she's forced to modify her positions for political purposes.
Scales Fall said:
It might give white women around the country funny ideas that they should identify and support their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons and not collaborate with the socialist Brazil society that Obama/Soros/Sulzbegrer/CNN/MSNBC/NBC/ABC/CBS/PBS/IVY League have been pushing for 40 years...
Everyone picks on poor Brazil. But their demographic problems are like the U.S. South's, not of recent origin but due to an astonishingly poor immigration policy four centuries ago.
Late 19th- and 20th- (and presumably 21st-) century imigração to Brazil has been largely drawn from mother Portugal, northern Italy, Germany, Spain, Christian Araby and Japan. The IQ level is probably a good 10 points above our post-1965 wave. In other words, like our own 1924-65 wave, but all the time. Small and select.
Mexico's policy is similar. One has to earn well above the median wage to move there. We should stop complaining about their hypocrisy, and copy it.
Until Steve drops the highblown Oprahfied commentary he began with Barack and Michelle and talks about matters of substance concerning the desperate peril the USA is in, he can whistle for this reader's money.
Fertility is one of the main subjects of Steve's blog, and nothing is less erotic than the tired rantings of old paleos and conspiracy theorists -- men who are literally and/or figuratively impotent. I want more Sarah Palin!
I don't see anything delightful about Palin. It remins me of the movie Idiocracy. Remember that movie? It takes place in the future where everyone, even those in high positions, act like trailer trash, because all the high IQ genes had been bred out of humanity."
I think you've strayed into the wrong blog--you want the Whiterpeople Blog--they're the ones who mock white people who have more than 1.8 children.
Actually I think you have strayed from an Obama blog.
One more time: what is "trashy" about Mrs. Palin? She is smart enough to wing it after she lost her teleprompter. With a little more education, this obviously very quick study will know enough about foreign policy to debate with the best of them. Obama will never be able to do that.
Her husband works two jobs and is a loyal supporter. Her kids (even the pregnant one) seem to be good looking and doing fine. Well, there is the Downs baby. Personally I wouldn't have done that one, but that's just me. Could have happened to anybody.
The only real question mark is the future son-in-law. But at least he plays hockey and not basketball.
What, pray, tell--and I am quite serious on this--is "trashy" about this family? Actually, what exactlyis "trashy"? What is in the White House NOW is idocracy. McCain alone COULD be idiocracy. But not Mrs. Palin. Not by a long shot. Nobody has made the comparison, but I see her has a sort of Harry Truman, a million years difference in age and gender, but similiar in certain essential ways.
I just hope the war mongers don't pickle her brain completely.
Palin trash? You sound desperate.
Palin is a Westerner, and more importantly, a different figure than McCain.
McCain's power base are the agribusiness growers in Arizona, and the construction industry, both which want cheap labor. It's no surprise he favors it, given his backers. That's who sponsored him.
Obama today has said he WILL pass Amnesty, it's part of his platform and he will deliver on that, given a Democratic Congress.
Palin's power base is the working/middle class of Alaska. It costs a LOT of money to live there, while you can make a lot of money, you spend it too. For example, Fairbanks has no water mains to most of the city -- it would simply freeze in the Winter. So water has to be trucked in. Remote communities (to anyone who has watched National Geographic's "Tougher in Alaska" with Geo Beach) pay more than $12 for a jar of Skippy Peanut Butter.
Palin's small-town backers, who operate part time businesses, on the backs of their own labor (well, like herself and her husband) mostly, and work seasonal jobs, DEPEND ON EXPENSIVE LABOR.
They literally cannot make enough money to stay in Alaska if the state is overrun by cheap Mexican labor, depressing fishing and oil drilling wages. Deadliest Catch on Discovery has AFAIK no Mexican nationals on the featured boats. Crewmen can make around 50-60K IIRC.
That's Palin's base. While it is possible she could sell them out, it's IMHO fairly unlikely, any more than Lincoln suddenly turned anti-Railroad when he took office.
That McCain picked her shows the reality of the Republican coalition, mostly demanding expensive labor (and cheap land). McCain and his backers may not like this, but it is the reality they face.
1/ Good for you, Steve, I was hoping there would be a pro-Palin writer at AmCon, besides Buchanan. Somebody has to balance things off against anti-Palin writers like James Howard Kunstler and Paul Craig Roberts (and reading the comments here possibly others).
2/ About SATC. Its interesting that the most fecund of those 'girls', Cynthia Nixon has become a lesbian.
I know that there is a juicy sense of sex...plus the frontier thing...plus libertarian/conservative views. And that generates so much interest. But I think you all are missing out on understanding a few things about Palin. She is obviously very driven, poised and able to look people in the eye. Watch all the Alaska debates she was on. She is ambitious and in some ways reminds me of certain corporate women.
Palin's record on immigration, as recorded by Nexis and Google, is practically nonexistent, and everyone from bloggers to members of Palin's own party seemed unsure of her views.
There's an old saying that goes, roughly, that 'any politician not deliberately and actively conservative is liberal by default' - because governments tend to bloat and expand without active conservative effort to rein them in. If Palin's views on immigration - the biggest issue this country faces - are not known, then she is for open borders. Either personally, in a "because that's what Jesus would do" sort of way, or politically, or because she's a multicult member, or because she wants the backing of big business and the open borders lobby.
If excessive immigration isn't important enough to her to take a stand against, then she's for it.
I thought Sarah Palin was at the very least a shrewd political pick by McCain. But I caught her speech at the Fairbanks airport last night and realized that she's been giving us the same schtick since she was nominated. It's nice stuff by way of introduction, but she has yet to get into the meat of her policy positions and if she fails to do so her star will fall pretty fast.
Palin's power base is the working/middle class of Alaska.
Calling Alaska the "power base" of a woman who is now a national politician is like saying "I'm gunna power this 747 with this here go-cart engine."
Your Alaskan analysis is wrong for the same reason it's wrong in Arizona, California, and Pennsylvania: Hispanics can work cheaper because they have lower living standards, because anything in the US is better than what they were getting in Mexico. It's just as easy for them to pile a house 4 families deep in Alaska as it is in Georgia. Easier, in fact: think of all the extra body heat going around and how much that saves on the year round heating bill.
Alaska, with it's natural resources economy, is especially vulnerable: Young & Rubicam isn't gunna open an office there, nor Google nor Intel. Almost ALL the whites could be replaced in that economy - not just some of them.
"Concerned said...
If the Israel first neocons are so all-powerful, howkum they didn't succeed in getting Lieberman picked as Veep?"
Liebermann would have been a disaster for the GOP. I think even the Neocons realise that. What's the point of having the Neocon “dreamteam” and then lose the elections? After all, Neocons and AIPAC have full access to both the GOP and the Dems so why should they care who becomes prez. It’s just a formality for them anyway. I think McCain had Palin in mind all along. Liebermann was just a ploy to distract the dems and cause them to make the disastrous Veep pick, meant to placate working class white America. Even though McCain is a disaster for conservatives, the Palin pick was a clever ploy; you have to give it to him.
"dearieme said...
Quite astonishing, isn't it, that liberals have made so little of Mr Palin's being of mixed race?"
1/14 Eskimo. That-'s really heavily mulatto isn't it? Come on!. Even Adenauer, who was identified as an arch-conservative German, has obvious Genghis-Kahn type traits probably stemming from the time of the Mongolian invasion of Europe. To some extent everybody is a mongrel. It’s just a question of degrees and even then you have grey areas. Obviously Todd lives by the European mindset so that slight facial trait is not going to be noticed. In the end it’s about culture and not skin colour or even race.
"One more time: what is "trashy" about Mrs. Palin?"
Do you truly not get that a pregnant teenage daughter and drug-using children is trashy?
The fact that she has 5 kids and a grandkid is right out of the first five minutes of Idiocracy.
So half sigma says Palin reminds him of "trailer trash."
"Trailer trash" never means black people, of course. (Who in fact inhabit nearly all the crappier trailers rusting in Georgia, for example. I worked for a collection agency and know this only too well.)
It's a code word for White people. For non whiterpeople.
This election, for me, is coming down to race and the status of Whites in the popular ethos. Forget policy: the essential differences between the two leading candidates are actually miniscule. Only wonks take seriously the details of campaign promises (how gullible can they get?? how many times can anyone be willing to be rooked?? or are these wonks actually not gullible, but something more sinister?).
The election is really about whether White people are morally sanctioned by the government and the general popular culture, i.e. whether they have permission to live, prosper, and grow and be themselves - or whether they do not and must be beaten back even farther and exploited and drained into the bargain, being (allegedly) the villains of "intolerance," "racism," and all the other pejoratives excreted by the ADL in every classroom in the country.
Most elections of the Demopublican party are about symbolism, never about policy substance. John Obama or Barack McCain have the same attitude toward amnesty.
And the symbolism this year is: antiwhite vs. anti-antiwhite. If you think the blacks voting 90%+ for Obamba see him as the candidate who "transcends race," I have a farm in Zimbaubee I'd like to sell you.
Vote for McCain and Palin, the anti-antiwhite ticket!
Notice how the whites in Alaska and Iceland both have about replacement level fertility?
"Quite astonishing, isn't it, that liberals have made so little of Mr Palin's being of mixed race?"
Mixed race is only an issue in America when African heritage is involved.
"Palin trash? You sound desperate."
Agreed, I would describe Palin as perky, hard-working, somewhat accomplished (although a noob on this level of play) and colorful. She reminds me a little of Regan. She said practically nothing during that interview last night, but she said it very well.
Palin has a nice family and anyone who calls her 'trash' is probably a parrot democrat. She has, for the most part, made good choices in her life.
She doesn't, to me, come across as being particularly bright or intellectual, but that's a little passe in America anyway.
If I made a highly-amateur guess at her IQ, taking into account her schooling and accomplishments, I would say it was right around average (100) maybe a few points higher or lower; but hey, I must admit, I like the little urchin.
Quite astonishing, isn't it, that liberals have made so little of Mr Palin's being of mixed race?
Have you ever heard them celebrating the Vice Presidency of Charles Curtis? Curtis was three-eights American Indian, spent a good part of his childhood on a reservation and spoke the tribal language of the Kaw.
Steve, you are an educated man. How could you possibly support a woman like this for Vice President? She clearly had no idea what the Bush Doctrine was in that ABC interview. She instead masked her ignorance my bellowing some lusty war cry about the need to slam other countries a-la Iraq, etc.
And imagine her husband living in the White House. I'm sorry, but "working class" is the first thing that comes to mind when you look at him. Do you really want this couple hob-knobing in Europe at WTO and G7 meetings?
God save us.
Good article here:
http://kennysideshow.blogspot.com/
She can blink, but she don't think
"In true psychopath fashion, Sarah admits to being 'wired' in such a way that self-reflection has no role in such important, monumental decisions. Why would she stop for one nanosecond? To consider whether this might be good for her family? To consider whether she deserves to represent the American people in this way? To consider whether she can do this job?"
"Mixed race is only an issue in America when African heritage is involved."
Just the way the left likes it. If it were any other way, all the big hurdles for "mixed race" people to cross would already have been crossed, and the part-black people who seek to cross them now wouldn't get enough free publicity.
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