As I have mentioned before, this is the kind of penetrating analysis I have come to appreciate from Rich Lowry. Commenting on the gap between Sarah Palin’s argument for saying goodbye to Alaska to serve Alaskans, versus the clear opportunity for her to serve her family with her national platform, he simply says, “In all likelihood, Palin is going to embrace her political celebrity with gusto, freed from the burdens of the geographic isolation of the Alaska governorship and its (relative to national politics) petty distractions.”
I have not been following the Palin situation carefully, but this narrative does seem to hold the data points together, at least those that I have heard. But this post is not about Palin per se. I don’t want to assume I know about her motives or rationale behind the decision to resign and the odd rationale she used to explain it.
This post is about what I think Sarah Palin says about American politics at present. Lowry is right to assert that Palin’s ascendancy show that the culture wars are not over, tjhat they “still burn hot.” I think Lowry is also right to see her as an affront in the eyes of the liberal elite, because of “who she was: a working-class, pro-life woman with decidedly red-state mores. Conservatives loved her for the same reason. She had a true magnetism. The more she repelled one side, the more she attracted the other.”
Because of who she was? From the liberals? Those who have argued so effectively against any form of discrimination? Could it be that equality is not actually their end game, and that the wave of popular support for Sarah Palin last fall revealed that more than any other type of person could?
I think most people who supported Palin would agree with Lowry on this point, and that the the drivers on the left are not fundamentally about equality, but using arguments for equality to suppress conscientious opposition. And if that perception from the right is right, then that says a lot about liberals in America, and where the progressive agenda is taking us right now.
But more than that, the deep divergence between love and hatred for Palin is itself an important indicator of where U.S. politics is today, and why the current polarized ideological political environment is more than about the different ideas held by liberals/progressives vs. conservatives. It’s about two massive social movements that feel they have a claim to the crown, who want to take all of us forward into certain visions of social life that the totality of Americans will never agree to.
The word the comes to mind is possession.
The culture wars are not over. There remains what Thomas Sowell described as a conflict of visions, one that pits the constrained vision of human nature against the unconstrained vision. If you want to really understand that, read Sowell’s book, and then look at the culture war with new eyes. Unpossessed eyes. Conscience-driven, not fear-driven, eyes. Eyes to see a conflict that will persist until a new narrative emerges that can contain and constrain the two. (FYI, I think Dennis Peacocke is right to be pursuing a new narrative, and someone to watch for what that new narrative may be.)
Sarah Palin seems to get the current war. And perhaps she is, as Lowry suggests, experiencing the temptation to financially capitalize on her unique position in it. That is a matter of conscience, ultimately between her and God. It is unfortunate that we simply expect such behavior from our public leaders. If true, that would be utterly common, and unfortunate in every way. But that is the world we live in. Maybe someday we will get past “the old narratives,” but not yet. This generation seems to radicalized and committed for that.
This gives us a glimpse into the future: If Sarah is positioning herself to do battle, that means her haters will position themselves to oppose her. And that means more drama, more money given to political candidates and campaigns touting themselves to be saviours, a continually divisive political media ecology, and very likely all that means bigger and bigger government.
Damn it all! There is so much more common ground that we give ourselves credit for having.
My prayer is that a new narrative will emerge before then. Otherwise, I am concerned that this conflict may play out in a way those of us in the solid center do not want.