See, I was raised in a country with no army, where education and health when I was growing up had the level that only industrialized countries had. Still, Costa Rica, where I was born, has better indicators of quality of life than many Latin American countries. The trend for people like me, educated yet underprivileged by many accounts, is to dislike the U.S.. Sympathy for Castro's Cuba and Che Guevara t-shirts abounded in the Social Sciences faculty where I got my undergraduate degree. But I had had early experiences in the U.S. that marked me for life. Part of my father's family migrated here during the 60s and raised their families here. I visited for the first time when I was 10 and I encountered a world that I can only summarize as "better". Of course, the city that I visited was New York, which is very different from the surroundings that I was used to.
Long story short, I was inspired to come to study to a place where standards where simply higher. Where things work in the way that they are supposed to, and if they don't then somebody is going to complain, and somebody is going to work to fix whatever is wrong.
I did not know the intricacies or the complexities that abound in American political life, just as they exist everywhere else.
But I have learned one thing. I have learned that in life an in politics ideas, skills, values, should come first. Not emotions. And I don't mean to understate the importance of emotions for everyone's life. What I believe is that emotions necessitate to be enclosed in a container forged with intelligence. That loose emotions, and particularly fear and anger, need to be processed in order to make a contribution to political life and to everyday life.
I have witnessed the most shameless display of hatred and fear mongering in the speech of Sarah Palin last night. I am not a religious person but I feel that I am very knowledgeable about Christian thought. Palin does not practice the doctrine of Jesus. Period.
I really don't want to get into the details of what upset me, and what is wrong, according to me and the civilized world, with Palin's speech. I cannot do that at this point. The reason being that brain should come first.
If emotionally I am at a state of anger, of fear, or any other emotion that can overcome me, I am probably not going to be as eloquent. I am probably not in control of the production of my thoughts. I need to settle down and calmly describe my ideas and why I feel they are important. Note that I write why I FEEL they are important. And there are rationales for why some things are important to me, and there are also some things that resonate with my feelings and therefore are important. But in any case, emotions should be aligned, contained, shaped and translated by our thoughts. Otherwise we become very manipulative and very manipulable.
Palin's speech last night was an attempt to appeal to emotions known to decide previous elections: fear of terrorism, fear of people that do things differently (or look or think differently), the fear that moms have of "not doing their job right", fear of community organizers (they might want to move the homeless to our gated communities), etc.
I have things to do so I cannot continue this rant for now. But let me just summarize, in a very visceral, not "brain first" way my impression of last night's speech, in the hope that I can later develop a more articulated posting.
Sarah Palin = Dolores Umbridge; RNC= Death Eaters ; DNC= Jedi Council
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