“Today has been set aside to honor the victims of the Tucson massacre. And Sarah Palin has apparently decided she’s one of them,” – Josh Marshall.
According to Sarah Palin in her speech today (thereby politicizing what was supposed to be a national day of mourning):
a) Words do not contribute to violent crime: that responsibility belongs exclusively to the criminal.
b) However, the words spoken about her on this issue are equivalent to the “blood libel” against the Jews — which, of course, led to pogroms, mass murders and genocide.
c) Finally, according to Palin, people just talking about these issues will foment still more violence.
Palin’s rogue logic: Words aren’t dangerous when I speak them about you. Words are dangerous when you speak them about me.
Here’s a quote from Frye that covers this: “Hypocrisy is more dangerous than crime; self-deception is more dangerous than hypocrisy.”
Michael, what you say is accurate, and I agree with you. Self-contradiction is the nature of evil. Palin is smart, but she uses principles without any respect for consistency and without any attempt at self-criticism–taking whatever principle is close at hand as a convenient weapon to bash her opponents, unconcerned that she is condemning herself more and more at every turn.
The whole North American right-wing political attack machine is like this, taking advantage of the masses who are not capable of criticism and who cannot see hypocrisy even after it has picked their pocket.
We often cynically say that we shouldn’t expect truth in politics, but truth,in the long run, is not optional in any sphere.
That Palin and her colleagues profess Christianity makes the hypocrisy even worse. Hypocrisy is the worst sin in Christ’s eyes, a sin against the Spirit of Truth, that can result in nothing but condemnation. How can we be saved when we have rejected Truth? What is left to save? “For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” Christianity has at its core a inescapable mandate for self-criticism.
What bothers me most is the Palin’s false equivalence of criticism and incitement, both, apparently, being equally uncivil, as if civil society were possible without widespread criticism or with widespread incitement. If would even say that for Palin, criticism is the worse evil. Jesus incited violence against no one, even though that is what his followers expected of him, but he sure as hell criticized a lot of people who were abusing their power.