"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." — Sarah Palin, to donors Saturday at a private airport in Englewood, Colo.
Sarah Palin made this idiotic statement Saturday because apparently at some point, Barack Obama shared planet space with 60s revolutionary William Ayers, one of the founders of the Weather Underground.
I'd hate to think that any of us, especially those of us who were politically active would be nailed to the cross because of someone we might have been in the same room with at some point in the distant past.
But let's go a few layers deeper on this.
Twenty-first century capitalism requires a docile, compliant population, subject population. "Consumer" is put forth as the ideal type, as the model for individual and mass self-identification. It is the population Sarah Palin continually appeals to.... "Joe Sixpack". Her homesy, folksy presentation is generally directed at those who barely graduated high school, who can be found sitting on his or her couch, drinking beer, watching TV after working at some unappealing, soul-crushing job all day. He or she is strictly a consumer.
A consumer is not a conscious creator, not an activist, nor a real decision maker. Instead, consumers are deferential recipients of someone else's wares and services, someone else's choices or a pre-selected range of choices, someone else's ideas or permitted spectrum of ideas, of someone else's rules and manipulations.
But he's the hero in a market society.
And every hero has to have a nemesis, every type its antithesis. When all else fails to strike fear into a compliant population, someone starts throwing around the word "terrorist".
Yes, terrorist. The demon in consumer heaven, disrupter of law 'n' order, killer of innocents, movie villain supreme.
The terrorist... bullets sprayed indiscriminately... bombs exploding like prehistoric meteors. Consumer serenity shattered.
No wonder someone like this most manipulative woman would start throwing a word like that around to win people to her side. No substance, no validation. She is appealing to emotion.
The terrorist: murderer, plunderer, marauder, pirate, bogeyman, barbarian.
The terrorist is as mysterious as he is menacing because he devotes, even sacrifices, his life to something beyond his material interest, to something transcending his own personal gratification. To an idea. To a cause. A nation. A people.
Not that I am condoning terrorism. That would be a violation of everything I stand for, everything my life is about. Hopefully, that is stating the obvious.
But in this case, I am calling "baloney" because the definition is completely arbitrary. Even Ronald Reagan said that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. It all depends on the politics of the time. The US has a long history of turning freedom fighters into terrorists when they no longer serve its own ends.
So is William Ayers a "terrorist"? I am aware of the fact that he engaged in some destruction of property.. but I am not talking about malicious vandalism. I'm talking about terrorism. I'm not even saying he's a nice guy. He was a lousy tactician. I'm saying he is not a terrorist. Do I think the Weather Underground expressed themselves politically in a good way? No. But that's a tactical discussion. Simply. I don't believe William Ayers fits the standard and accepted definition of a terrorist.
The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant (1) targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience. (Operational definition for the Central Intelligence Agency)
Sarah Palin is engaging in her own form of ideological terrorism. She is deliberately stringing words together in such a way as to strike fear in her target demographic. I happily call her on it and challenge her to come up with some substantial evidence that Barack Obama has engaged in anything even close to "terrorism" and how being in the same room with someone who was a 60s revolutionary (there were thousands of us in those days) is a serious concern.
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