Ethics

Balko on Palin and Faux-Populism

By Ed Brayton

Radley Balko absolutely hit the nail on the head about one of the most annoying aspects of our political system:

This growing anti-intellectualism on the right is alarming. It isn't that Palin is dumb. I don't think she is. It's that she has no interest in learning, no interest in reading or experiencing anything that might challenge what she already knows she believes. She thinks with her gut, as Steven Colbert might put it. She's a female W. And they seem to love her for it. The GOP has gone populist. Knowledge, worldliness, and learning are to be shunned, swept aside as East Coast elitism. It's all about insularity, earthy values, and simpleness. Remember the beating John Kerry took in 2004 for daring to use the word "nuance?" There's no room for complexity on the right anymore. It's good and evil. Black and white. Us and them.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on October 07, 2008 (boomark / email).