Republican Ressentiment

Conservative Cabbie

Alex

I agree that conservatives are a little too happy to play the victim, but to some extent they are justified, they are constantly having to fight the media, having to go on the defensive whilst struggling to get their message across. After all, during the election, the American media were (can't remember the exact stat) about three times more likely to run a positive Obama story than a positive story about McCain and were similarly much more likely to be negative about McCain than they were about Obama. And this post helps to prove the bias. In a week when the story is all about disunity in the Democratic Party, you're posting a negative piece about the GOP (and I note that two articles down, you're trying to spin events as a positive for Obama). A microcosm of exactly my point.

Frank S

Resentment? Contempt? Emotive stuff. What kind of person feels contempt for a demonstrably talented, open, honest, hard-working, good-looking, lively, decent, engaging, charming, intelligent, and perceptive woman?

Not me. I think she's the best thing in American politics since they had that revolution way back when.

Snowman

Shall I tell you why Sanchez’s fuming, and you bravely join in?

Palin’s the first of the genuine unwashed that tasted power, and there may be others to follow, (I very much hope there are), and if there’s anything the pseudo-liberal loonies sitting on their warm pontificating arses dislike and feel contempt for the great unwashed it is. She’s a challenge to you by just being around, you hate her because you fear her, and those who her phylum, you will never give up being irritated by her, and no, other conservatives would do, she’s unique.

And another thing: The meretricious chap Sanches has never got anything right, your pandering to him says more about you than Palin or the conservative lot.

rj

Oh snowman, you prove Julian's point. Your case for Palin is based exclusively on the fact that she isn't like the so-called elites who you claim hate her. Then you conclude with a baseless, ad homenim attack on Sanchez, based on nothing but your say-so. Aside from your inadvertent proof of ressentiment, you have said nothing about her ideas or her ability to govern. The world is not richer for your comment.

Snowman

rj: am I wrong? Hmm. It made me chuckle reading your last sentence though. Me, a poorly educated Slav enriching the world? What has the world come to?

In a sense, you are right, it seems that I have inadvertently endorsed Sanchez’s take on Palin and the great unwashed she stands for but only because my command of English failed me.

Picking on ressentiment as the illuminating prism in the rep versus dem sparring errs on the futile, to start with. An act of clever casuistry on part of Sanchez, I reckon. Isn’t ressentiment ever a feature? The feeling of hurt, and victimhood (stolen election, remember?) was visible when the dems were out of power, too.

Here we are talking about a different animal: the battle between the anointed pseudo-liberal elites and Palin, the great unwashed heroine. No other candidate would do. The great institutions, political and cultural have failed and became hostile to and despised by many because their occupants have subverted the spirit injected into them by the founding fathers. That goes for dems and reps, both guilty. Palin stands for the spirit, but sadly lacks the meat. She embodies the purest form of antithesis (so far anyway) of what the pseudo-liberal elites philosophy encapsulates, she’s a glimpse of the vivication of the spirit of old America, proud, uncertain, rough, hungry. Were she perceived by the anointed as yet another victim of political infighting, nobody would bother with her.

(In a definition of America as ‘a country that moved from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization’ she gets close to barbarism, the anointed to decadence. Bad example perhaps, but it makes the point better, and I should have thought about it before ranting on).

I have to confess I rather enjoy Sanchez. Together with Steyn, he’s on my regular daily prowls, and it may indeed be rather unfair of me to accuse him of being meretricious and getting things wrong. He does though, as does Steyn. Before the last year’s election, Sanchez said (on his blog or somewhere, cannot remember) that he didn’t vote, but if he did, it would be for Obama only to erase Bush’s militarism, trampling on human rights bla, bla. Well, Obama has been in for over a year, and I don’t see much change. Renditions go on, Guantanamo keeps ticking (after closure, some of the prisoners still in a US jail, no trial), Afghanistan’s turning into Vietnam fast and stuff like that. Good judgment on Sanchez’s part, you reckon?