I don’t care how much Sarah Palin gushes with approval about the America that emerged after the Civil War, what she says to Sean Hannity about Barack Obama in the clip below is just astonishing (emphasis added):
SARAH PALIN: … He is bringing us back, Sean, to days that — you can hearken back to days before the Civil War, when, unfortunately, too many Americans mistakenly believed that not all men were created equal, and it was the Civil War that began the codification of the truth that here in America, yes, we are equal and we all have equal opportunities, not based on the color of your skin. You have equal opportunity to work hard and to succeed and to embrace the opportunities, God-given opportunities, to develop resources and work extremely hard and, as I say, to succeed. Now, it has taken all these years for many Americans to understand that gravity, that mistake, that took place before the Civil War, and why the Civil War had to really start changing America. What Barack Obama seems to want to do is go back to before those days, when we were in different classes, based on income, based on color of skin. Why are we allowing our country to move backwards instead of moving forward with that understanding that, as our charters of liberty spell out for us, we are all created equal?
There’s so much here. I’ll start with a small bit: the Civil War gave all Americans the “God-given” right “to develop resources”? Does Sarah Palin think the Civil War was fought so we could drill in ANWR?
She also seems to think that it created a classless society — or, at least, a society that was classless until January 20, 2009. (Though I’m rather amazed that she says the Civil War “began the codification of the truth that here in America, yes, we are equal and we all have equal opportunities.” That’s an insult to the Founding Fathers! To the men who wrote the Constitution! Can you imagine what she’d say if someone else — Obama, say — tried to argue that we didn’t begin a move to equality until decades after the time of the Founders?)
But what’s really going on here is Palin (and Hannity and the audience) all agreeing that they’re becoming America’s oppressed blacks. And, to them, not being able to drill in ANWR really is as bad as slavery and lynching and Jim Crow and the Birmingham church bombing all the way down to a racist drug war and racist stop-and-frisk policies and on and on.
It’s either that or these people are simply jealous of black people because black people won some white sympathy for their plight. Wingers want the rest of America to feel sorry for them, too! Bill Maher makes fun of them! Sandra Fluke criticizes them! That’s as oppressive as slavery and Jim Crow, right?
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)