Sarah Palin just doesn't get it

Sarah Palin’s video message denying any connection between the hateful rhetoric she’s helped to popularize and Saturday’s horrific attack in Tucson, AZ is disingenuous and disturbing. But not surprising.

Palin follows a simple formula that she and others have used over and over again to deny the existence of serious problems while at the same time capitalizing on them.

In her video (after the jump), she denies what many Americans know to be true: that there is something deeply wrong with our current political dialogue. She labels those who question the tenor of the debate “intolerant” and accuses them of “mindless finger-pointing”—all the while directing blame everywhere except her own doorstep. She also insists that violent rhetoric is not dangerous... unless that rhetoric is directed towards her.

Tea Partiers Are a Great Model of White Privilege

Tim Wise just wrote a post titled "Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black." It's a long thought experiment that pretty well documents the meaning of white privilege, as he explains as the end. Here's a small snippet, but it's worth the read:

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

An Attack on the Legitimacy of the State, Democracy, and the Law

(updated below)

Ok, so many of us either joke or cry about the Tea Party and the Great Republican Death Spiral. I've often personally speculated that eventually, this will shift us to two new parties - the Libertarians/Blue Dogs and the Progressives. But a couple of things have made me wonder whether the danger is greater than we imagined.