You’ll notice (well, you won’t but others have) that I used a literary trick (that’s a thing you do with writing) to spur people to notice the “I’m special” thing (as you did) and then to take it one tiny step further (you little brain didn’t handle this part well) to note that I’m talking about everybody who lives anywhere …. being special in their own relationship to their land, their history, their grizzly bears, whatever.

(Imagine for a moment the next step that perhaps only a few of my readers noticed and that I did not point out …. the four-eyed clumsy easterner visiting the dude ranch or the alaskan bear country or whatever. And how that person has to have a little fucking humility about their knowledge and experience with the possible consequence of lacking such humility being the consumption of said dweeb by a griz, falling off a horse, etc. etc. But I digress. A digression is where the writer goes off on a topic that seems unrelated though most writers/speakers are not really digressing when they say they are. Just letting you know.)

Anyway, Sarah Palin being ignorant of our nation’s history is not acceptable for two reasons. 1) She wants to run the thing (the nation) and no, she can’t do that well if she has no clue and 2) she and her followers, after her total botching of this, went to the next level of embarrassment of denying it all and making up versions of history to match her mistake rather than just saying “oh, well, yeah, that too” (at least). She wants to run this thing (the nation) and that approach will get us all embarrassed (well, not you, you’re probably not capable of that) on a near daily basis. She might be worse than George Bush Jr. in this regard.

Her popularity symbolizes a rejection of a world view that SAT scores are what make people valuable and loved.

Yes, sadly, there has always been an element in American politics that prefers the ignorant. And it is growing as of late. But these things come and go.

Go being the operative word here, Andy. Or am I being too subtle?

The extended bragging about your youthful tours of Revolutionary War sites is cringe-inducing. What’s next: you’re going to show us your photo album and copies of your middle school history exams? The bubble of your superiority is burst by your snide comment that Palin “can see Russia from her Living [sic] room”. Of course, she never said that, but I guess you wouldn’t known because you haven’t had a picnic in Alaska or some such silly connection to authenticity.

And not for nothing, Sarah Palin is one dumb fuck.

She offends me because her views are simple on everything. Her knowledge goes 1 inch deep and this is why she does poorly when debated or someone trying to have an substantive discussion with her. She speaks in sound bytes and appeals to the ignorant.

Lastly, what I am angry at and what I suspect most that dislike Palin is not Palin herself, rather we are angry that America is stupid enough to be falling for Ma Kettle for President. Who is putting dumb juice in our water?

There, I said it!

We were all taught that this was history, and as valid as anything that Longfellow wrote; far superior to that dry stuff that we had to learn out of textbooks. Primary sources and testimonials of witnesses, what are those?