by Rosa Blackwell

Created on: October 15, 2008   Last Updated: October 27, 2008

I don't dislike Sarah Palin because she's a moron. I dislike her because she wears her ambition more proudly than her flag pin. She uses her homegrown, outsider persona to promote herself as the last bastion of American success-and, therefore, the only person capable of restoring that America. Because she's a hockey mom. Because she's Governor of our biggest state. Because taking advantage of any opportunity that presents itself is what America is all about.

Yet, she desires a national political career without any national experience. She craves respect as a foreign policy expert because she can see Russia from her back porch. She equates herself with John McCain in "their" bid for the Presidency while vilifying the top half of the opposing ticket. She enthusiastically speaks as the mouthpiece of a party she denounces, incites supporters to call Obama a "terrorist" and a "traitor," and touts herself as the champion of working class while wearing $150,000 in designer clothes.

Wall Street takes that same approach to capitalism.

Since the introduction of Reaganomics in the 1980's and the successive deregulation of the banking industry, the investment firms that rule Wall Street have driven America's banking system by the adage "Greed is good." They lowered standards on mortgage-backed securities to feed the appetite of foreign investors, creating high-risk loans for people who could never afford to pay them back. Why? To take advantage of untapped opportunity. In their America, any other option is un-American.

Sarah Palin fervently condemns Wall Street for bankrupting Main Street, yet echoes its style. She derides the ego of bankers who operate above the law while she fires a cabinet member for refusing to fire her former brother-in-law. She scorns them for using the bailout money to send their executives on lavish getaways while letting her party spend $150,000 in campaign funds to dress her. She exhibits the same need to succeed that has caused this country to fail.

America is hurting right now. It is so far removed from its hard-working, blue collar reputation that it seems almost impossible to reclaim it. To a nation in need of unity and leadership, to a nation as respectable as the America that Sarah Palin believes she embodies, she offers herself as the solution. Not because she embodies those qualities, but because she paints all other options as un-American.

For Sarah Palin, greed is good. For the rest of America, greed is a luxury we cannot afford.

Learn more about this author, Rosa Blackwell.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.