padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
other thoughts, which may get into some of the above questions
a major point that you didn't mention at all was the initial roots - predating Palin - of the Tea Party as a fake grassroots movement astroturfed by the Koch bros - i.e. FreedomWorks, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Sam Adams Alliance, etc - and others in the GOP establishment. Obv that was quickly overwhelmed by the deep well of real and volatile feelings it tapped into, which the comet of Palin streaking across the night sky set ablaze. But you're underselling I think the level of the GOP establishment - or elements of it - setting its own destruction in motion by cynically unleashing a tiger, thinking it could be ridden to victory and then basically discarded/ignored like Reagan and the Moral Majority in the 80s. the Palin VP pick is particularly cynical and damaging instance in the long tradition of the GOP elite (and an even longer tradition in the American political class more generally) exploiting a sincere belief in that Tocquevillian view of America to its own ends.
one of the most important points you make, I think, is Palin grasping that crucial distinction between heterogenous social movement and political (or specifically GOP) enthusiasm long before I think any other major political figure or most of the press, precisely because as you say she did share and understand their feelings and core beliefs. but, there's something about the inability of the Tocquevillian view to survive contact with the reality of politics. the Palin/Trump relation is only aberrant in scale - it inevitably winds up ceding responsibility to and even actively enabling the worst kind of cynical, self-serving elements.
For me it's an inability to grasp what "the swamp" actually entails. It's like the medieval convention of avoiding directly attacking the king by blaming everything on his evil counselors. You can't separate the swamp from American politics. It is American politics. That was true in the 1790s - all the Revolutionary heroes having to climb down from Mount Olympus into the muck and slime of day-to-day to politics is one of the most interesting facets of the post-revolutionary period - and it's true today. For people with such a cynical vision of centralized authority - which I generally share tbc - they have a shockingly optimistic view of individual behavior, linked to (yr typical left/anarcho types like me would probably say) a misplaced quasi-religious faith in the infallibility of markets.
Really it seems like you could say Tocquevillian/Jeffersonian/Jacksonian conservatism is essentially a centuries-long rearguard action in a fight that Hamilton - as historians have long-known and theatergoers recently discovered - already won in the 1780s and 90s.
a major point that you didn't mention at all was the initial roots - predating Palin - of the Tea Party as a fake grassroots movement astroturfed by the Koch bros - i.e. FreedomWorks, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Sam Adams Alliance, etc - and others in the GOP establishment. Obv that was quickly overwhelmed by the deep well of real and volatile feelings it tapped into, which the comet of Palin streaking across the night sky set ablaze. But you're underselling I think the level of the GOP establishment - or elements of it - setting its own destruction in motion by cynically unleashing a tiger, thinking it could be ridden to victory and then basically discarded/ignored like Reagan and the Moral Majority in the 80s. the Palin VP pick is particularly cynical and damaging instance in the long tradition of the GOP elite (and an even longer tradition in the American political class more generally) exploiting a sincere belief in that Tocquevillian view of America to its own ends.
one of the most important points you make, I think, is Palin grasping that crucial distinction between heterogenous social movement and political (or specifically GOP) enthusiasm long before I think any other major political figure or most of the press, precisely because as you say she did share and understand their feelings and core beliefs. but, there's something about the inability of the Tocquevillian view to survive contact with the reality of politics. the Palin/Trump relation is only aberrant in scale - it inevitably winds up ceding responsibility to and even actively enabling the worst kind of cynical, self-serving elements.
For me it's an inability to grasp what "the swamp" actually entails. It's like the medieval convention of avoiding directly attacking the king by blaming everything on his evil counselors. You can't separate the swamp from American politics. It is American politics. That was true in the 1790s - all the Revolutionary heroes having to climb down from Mount Olympus into the muck and slime of day-to-day to politics is one of the most interesting facets of the post-revolutionary period - and it's true today. For people with such a cynical vision of centralized authority - which I generally share tbc - they have a shockingly optimistic view of individual behavior, linked to (yr typical left/anarcho types like me would probably say) a misplaced quasi-religious faith in the infallibility of markets.
Really it seems like you could say Tocquevillian/Jeffersonian/Jacksonian conservatism is essentially a centuries-long rearguard action in a fight that Hamilton - as historians have long-known and theatergoers recently discovered - already won in the 1780s and 90s.