For sheer asininity, it’s hard to top Juan Cole’s column comparing Sarah Palin to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Cole has to stretch to find any notable differences. After all, both are charismatic populists grounding their appeal in religion and, at times, bucking their own party elders.
His larger point, if it can be called that, is that conservative leaders have cultivated a following of people who think their religious and cultural values are threatened. The kind of person who supports Palin closely resembles the kind of person who is enthralled by Ahmadinejad: ignorant, intolerant, and clearly dangerous.
Right-wing populism is centered on a theory of media conspiracy, a “my country right or wrong” chauvinism, a fascination with an armed citizenry, an intolerance of dissent and a willingness to declare political opponents mere terrorists. It is cavalier in its disregard of elementary facts and arrogant about the self-evident rightness of its religious and political doctrines. It therefore holds dangers both for the country in which it grows up and for the international community.
Unfortunately, we have people like Cole teaching in our major universities. They have a significant following of people who can’t distinguish Palin from Ahmadinejad or Bush from Hitler and who find these glib comparisons enlightening and sufficient. Their viewpoint could only result from a cavalier disregard of elementary facts and arrogance about the self-evident rightness of their anti-religious and undemocratic doctrines.
Cole’s facile reasoning passes for serious thought in certain circles. Fortunately, most relatively unschooled gun-toting conservative boobs can see through the argument, even if your average left-wing Ph.D. can’t.
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Fitz, I think you may be giving undue credit by calling Cole’s spew “reasoning,” facile or otherwise. It does not rise to the level of reasoning but is mere invective name calling. If I wanted to respond in kind I could say that “left-wing pinko-ism is a media-fueled opiate for the nieve who derive some perverse pleasure from the party line of ‘everything my country does or has ever done is evil’ to its foolish end; masters of ‘facts’ and studious ignorers of truth, justice, and reality, it threatens to spread beyond our boarders and take the rest of the planet over the edge like so many lemmings . . . ” But then, I would be speaking the truth, would I not? EL STRAFERO OUT
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