Arash Kamangeer, an Iranian-American who grew up in Iran, and left it to avoid living in a theocracy sees eery parallels between Palin's performance and what he saw while in Iran during the Iran-Iraq War.
I wanted to alert Kossacks to this poignant, but also alarming article that I read over at antiwar.com. The gist of it is a vital one to understand -- that Sarah Palin's role in this campaign fits like a velvet glove over the iron fist of right-wing theocratic populism and that her persona echoes the same television phenomena that the author saw in Iran.
Check this passage out and the rest of the article:
One of the problems the government faced was opposition from legions of mothers whose sons had been maimed or died in the war. To confront this problem, the government-controlled TV would parade a mother whose son had died in the war in front of the TV on a regular basis. Invariably, this "show mom" would be carrying an infant child and a few other siblings with her. And invariably, she would say something to the effect that "I have given one child to this 'sacred' war, and I am ready to give the next one." Almost always, there would be an adoring crowd who would follow her statements by chants of "Allaho-Akbar" (God is Great). And again invariably, her statements would follow by a not-so-veiled threat from her and the adoring crowd. She would say something like "I and my family would not tolerate traitors and betrayals to the faith and country". Then the crowd would break into several standard chants such as "Death to traitors" or "War, war, until victory."
This is the impressions of one person who lived through such a theocratic revolution. In America, others have been ringing the alarm bells as well. Here's some resources:
Theocracy Watch web site
A 2005 blog post by Max Blumenthal
Chris Hedges' American Fascists
Kevin Phillips' American Theocracy
By the way, Phillips was an advisor to Nixon who saw the rise of the religious right and its capture of the Republican Party.
List some more works of theocracy below!
And a final comment from the author:
And then I wake the next morning and read that Sarah Palin is quoted as saying that the Iraq war is a "task that is from God." It’s like déjà-vu all over again.