‘Death panels’ are back - and that’s good

The giveaway on Palin was her sensitivity concerning Rahm Emanuel’s colloquial use of ‘retard’; she erroneously thought Rahm might be indirectly referencing the mentally disabled, including her infant son. From that and other strong clues, I can see why the GOP is so testy on family issues: they correctly assume no one cares much about their families, so they want to push themselves as high up the food chain as they can in gaining more resources so their families live longer & better. But as free agents, we naturally don’t have to be roped into their demagoguery; it’s not as if those such as the Palin family will ever be reduced to selling apples on the street.

If you really want control over what happens to you and who can make decisions for you if you become incapacitated, you need to talk to an attorney and have him/her draw up a Power of Attorney for Health Care. This document can include an advance directive spelling out what kinds of life-saving measures should or should not be taken.

>From that and other strong clues, I can see why the GOP is so testy on family issues: they correctly assume no one cares much about their families, so they want to push themselves as high up the food chain as they can in gaining more resources so their families live longer & better.

According to cognitive scientist George Lakoff, conservatives assume a “Strict Father” view of morality, based on the perception that we live in a dangerous world and we need authoritarian fathers (and their enablers like Sarah Palin) to discipline the family and make it self-financing, otherwise survival becomes problematic. So, yes, your observation seems pretty much on target.

Palin herself appears to be a decent person and politician, she is in a position to do something substantial for feminism; however the irony, as you probably know, is she is not only an enabler but also a victim as well, trapped by the scripts she has to read. What can she do? tear up the scripts and say to her millions of followers: “let’s kick over the traces and start over; ditch this white trash religiosity and become more real”—it wouldn’t sound too good on FOX news. She probably doesn’t have the time to think much at all on what it is all about anyway and her role in it so she thinks God wants her to continue in the trajectory she has been in for years. Plus by our old-fashioned conventions she is nobody’s fool, she will pile up a portfolio enabling her family to be well-off forever. It was on display in the Bushes the last decade, and I got confirmation from Rove himself, sending an email to his address at National Review. I asked “if you disliked the self-seeking of the Kennedys so much, why did you tolerate such an unattractive trait in the Bush family?”. A few weeks later Rove wrote back : “what’s the matter with you, you don’t like families? are you cold and heartless?” There’s no gainsaying Rove, except to have written back, “cold & heartless like George Herbert Walker Bush?” Yet to no purpose a second attempt, Rove would have ignored it.