Camille Paglia, a supporter of Barack Obama, gets it (emphasis mine):
As a libertarian and refugee from the authoritarian Roman Catholic church of my youth, I simply do not understand the drift of my party toward a soulless collectivism. This is in fact what Sarah Palin hit on in her shocking image of a “death panel” under Obamacare that would make irrevocable decisions about the disabled and elderly. When I first saw that phrase, headlined on the Drudge Report, I burst out laughing. It seemed so over the top! But on reflection, I realized that Palin’s shrewdly timed metaphor spoke directly to the electorate’s unease with the prospect of shadowy, unelected government figures controlling our lives. A death panel not only has the power of life and death but is itself a symptom of a Kafkaesque brave new world where authority has become remote, arbitrary and spectral. And as in the Spanish Inquisition, dissidence is heresy, persecuted and punished.
The reaction from Obama supporters? Misogyny and calling Paglia a self-hater. People too self-impressed to realize that they are verifying Paglia’s explanation of their intellectual intolerance and dishonesty.
I think we finally have found someone more hated by the Left than Sarah Palin.
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Related Post: An Inconvenient Truth About The “Death Panel”
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Comments
Paglia was always a maverick in thought. She is generally correct in her observations as well.
Paglia is brilliant, but even she is either intellectually dishonest or incoherent when it comes to Obama. She is vested in him and refuses to see him for what he actually is, instead blaming all his errors, stupidities, absurdities and flagrant anti-American policies on the thugs and Marxists surrounding him. Either he is responsible for this disaster or he is a puppet. Either way, he is indefensible! She refuses to deal with the facts and the evidence and draw logical conclusions. Her emotions are still ruling her.
That said, she is masterful at dissecting the "clothes with no emperor" and the myriad failures already stinking up this administration and Congress. I respect her to a point; then she loses me.
Paglia, stop working so strenuously to maintain your lefty bona fides and deal in raw truths with honesty. You cannot maintain the respect of the Left by praising Obama while annihilating Obama's thugs and goons and the nihilistic policies they are using to punish good Americans like those you grew up with in your industrial/working class hometown. The Left will never love you and the Right will agree with much of what you say but write you off as I do: intellectually incoherent and dishonest, when the rubber meets the road.
Or perhaps you admire these nihilistic policies and just detest the miserable methods and results. That is even worse and more incoherent.
What did you think we would get when you voted for this man, and how come this surprises a supposedly intelligent person such as yourself? How come many of us supposedly lesser lights saw this huge train wreck coming about 18 months ago?
Thank you for covering the Left's reaction to Prof. Paglia's column. I updated my post about it at A Conservative Lesbian to praise her courage and link to this post.
Sociopathy explains Obama's charm, mutually exclusive promises and alliances and the fact all his promises have hidden expiration dates. In my post about Prof. Paglia's column yesterday, I matched the points where she is beginning to see what Obama really is with his sociopathic behaviors. The more people are able to see the unifying explanation for Obama, the better.
Sometimes my links to your posts don't make it into the trackbacks, so I am commenting to let you know about the link.
William, thank you for this blog. Thanks to you, I always have something to talk about on Facebook!
She recognizes that the emperor has no clothes, but keeps blaming it on the incompetence of his retinue.
Paglia has been writing some really good material but she is not always factually correct. Specifically her reference to the Spanish Inquisition and the Inquisition itself is incorrect – could it be that she never studied what actually happened.
In the Spanish Inquisition it was not "dissidence" that was the problem because what in fact occurred related to Spanish politics, and not Church matters to a very large degree. At that time, in Spain, Jews were not allowed to have government positions, and there were people who wanted the power – so they became Christians by being baptized. However, they then went home and had an "unbaptism". This was the driving force behind the Spanish Inquisition. At the same time these same Jewish families were sponsoring the activities of the Muslim Moors, which was another reason that Queen Isabella instituted the Spanish Inquisition.
Even the original Inquisition is a lot more involved than "dissidents". The people who were the target of the earlier Inquisition also pretended to be Christians. They were nothing of the sort – they were Dualists believing that there were two gods. They more or less believed that all matter is evil and they denied the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. On top of that they were Anarchists and they indulged in certain practices that did not fit Christian concepts.
On the other hand the only real dissidents have been what we term "Protestants".
I think that Paglia would have been better looking for other better examples for her comparison, such as how Catholics were rooted out by the Puritans and the Protestants, and then how the Puritans faced the same kind of thing when they fell from power etc. etc. In modern times there are even better examples such as Soviet dissidents, Iranian dissidents, and in fact any dissident where there has been an established dictatorship would make far better examples than the comparison to the Christian Church in the Middle Ages.