DNK had to listen to Palin for 45 minutes. DNK went into mild shock so I took over. Some sort of overload, he can only handle so much at once. He'll be back in a few days.
Okay, so what critical thinking do you want from me? I'm trying to approach this from a "this person is possibly going to be president soon". I don't know what you're expecting from me. I try not to be too negative, but I mean, sometimes I really just feel nothing but negative about someone. Some politicians drive me nuts. She is one of them, she isn't presidential material, I cannot see it anywhere in her - this isn't the rhetoric getting to me, this is my genuine response to her "performance" (and it really was one). I don't even care that much about the mud that's been thrown on her, I suspect most of it is garbage. No, just looking at her, listening to her, her approach, what she was actually doing, rather than what she was saying. Anathema to what I think politics should be. This is my critical thinking being outraged by what it just saw, knowing full well it will win votes. My critical thinking saying it shouldn't.
The system drives me nuts sometimes. This is one such time. I watch decent politicians get thrown out of office because, despite being respectable and extremely moderate and intelligent, and following what their constituents want on important issues, they have the wrong letter by their name - that simple, and they don't bother polishing their image all the time so no one cares, "that other guy, he has an image I can relate with, I'll vote for him instead, whatever." People with experience (not Obama or Palin experience, mind you - the actual kind), people with decency, with respect for the office and power, at least relative to the rather low norm.
And then there are politicians like Palin, McCain, Obama, and I assume Biden is one but I haven't paid much attention to him. At least Obama gives lip service to ideals, even though I doubt he'll follow through on much. Obama and Biden make some effort, even if it is just a facade, to up the level of discourse compared to where it's been. For me, these are the primary issues: the culture, focus, and nature of discourse, attitudes towards politics, the media, etc. RvW, gun control, Iraq. The differences between the candidates don't bother me much. How they come into this does. There are other "platform issues" of mine, of course too.
So I watch this debate, and I hear it in every sentence Palin makes, it doesn't sound like she really understands anything, like she's repeating half-sentence arguments. Really, I've never heard someone talk like that before in such an important setting. I can't explain it that well, it's all subtleties. What's worse? So, so much of it is pure rhetoric. I understand there wasn't any real substance, no issues were really delved into, on either side. But there is a difference, to me, between trying to at least explain policies and discuss issues in whatever amount the format allows for and just "playing the soccer mom and stating generic things like, 'free market, yay'". I cannot, cannot, cannot stand that sort of politics because I know it works, and it is backwards, it's fake, faker at least.
In Palin, I saw the focus on her image, not on her policies, even though generally politicians' policies are just image, marketing covering up the garbage that runs through Congress on any given day. But that's the envelope, you know, where we are, and Palin was there just pushing back, not forward, to the other end of the thing. It's a popularity contest with her, a "see I can do it" not a "here's why I should seriously be VP". Or "why I want to be VP". Where in that entire "debate" did she say anything that struck you as passionate, denoting a sincere desire to help people? Canned rhetoric, to me, signifies someone that just wants more power, and doesn't really care about the people or laws she will serve. I want leaders with passion, who have some sort of reason for getting into that Office, or who at least fake like they have it. Palin showed neither, and yet so many people think she "won". The fact that this approach is not only acceptable but commendable...
I'm sick of this election. I took a few months off near the end of the primaries because of it, and I come back in and I'm just the worse for wear. I can't stand American politics. Every ounce of my reason is revolting from it. I'll just move on to some other thread, I'm not going to be able to make any serious contribution here I know. I think I've made my opinions about the contestants clear enough. But when I get pissed off about something or someone, I don't easily hold it back, especially when it's coming from a principled revulsion, and sometimes that takes a rather unprincipled form of attack.
I just normally don't get that pissed. But this month has been a ride... I just want to get things back on track, moving in some sort of forward direction, rather than the slow dismantling of any respect I had for this country's politics and government.