I’ve been visiting New York City, the place where I grew up. I decide to take a walk to the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, never having been there before.

When you approach the Promenade you can’t really see what’s in store. You walk down a normal-looking street, spot a bit of blue at the end of the block, make a right turn–and, then, suddenly, there is New York:

And so it is for me. I take a turn, and catch my breath: downtown Manhattan rises to my left, seemingly close enough to touch, across the narrow East River. I see skyscrapers, piers, the orange-gold Staten Island ferry. In front of me, there are the graceful gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge. To my right, the back of some brownstones, and a well-tended and charming garden that goes on for a third of a mile.

I walk down the promenade looking first left and then right, not knowing which vista I prefer, but liking them both, especially in combination, because they complement each other so well.

All around me are people, relaxing. Lovers walking hand in hand, mothers pushing babies in strollers, fathers pushing babies in strollers, nannies pushing babies in strollers. People walking their dogs (a prepoderance of pugs, for some reason), pigeons strutting and courting, tourists taking photos of themselves with the skyline as background, every other person speaking a foreign language.

The garden is more advanced from what it must be at my house, reminding me that New York is really a southern city compared to New England. Daffodils, the startling blue of grape hyachinths, tulips in a rainbow of soft colors, those light-purple azaleas that are always the first of their kind, flowering pink magnolia and airy white dogwood and other blooming trees I don’t know the names of.

In the view to my left, of course, there’s something missing. Something very large. Two things, actually: the World Trade Center towers. Just the day before, we had driven past that sprawling wound, with its mostly-unfilled acreage where the WTC had once stood, now surrounded by fencing. Driving by it is like passing a war memorial and graveyard combined; the urge is to bow one’s head.

As I look at the skyline from the Promenade, I know that those towers are missing, but I don’t really register the loss visually. I left New York in 1965, never to live there again, returning thereafter only as occasional visitor. The World Trade Center was built in the early seventies, so I never managed to incorporate it into that personal New York skyline of memory that I hold in my mind’s eye, even though I saw the towers on every visit. So, what I now see resembles nothing more than the skyline of my youth, restored, a fact which seems paradoxical to me. But I feel the loss, even though I don’t see it. Viewing the skyline always has a tinge of sadness now, which it never had before 9/11.

I come to the end of the walkway and turn myself around to set off on the return trip. And, suddenly, the view changes. Now, of course, the garden is to my left and the city to my right; and the Brooklyn Bridge, which was ahead of me, is now behind me and out of sight. But now I can see for the first time, ahead of me and to the right, something that was behind me before. In the middle of the harbor, the pale-green Statue of Liberty stands firmly on its concrete foundation, arm raised high, torch in hand.

The sight is intensely familiar to me—I used to see it almost every day when I was growing up. But I’ve never seen it from this angle before. She seems both small and gigantic at the same time: dwarfed by the skyscrapers near me that threaten to overwhelm her, but towering over the water that surrounds her on all sides. The eye is drawn to her distant, heroic figure. She’s been holding that torch up for so long, she must be tired. But still she stands, resolute, her arm extended.

Yes, class is part of Palin-hatred for sure, but (especially in America) class can be mitigated by education. Look no further than Presidents Clinton and Obama for evidence of this; neither were aristocrats to begin with, but they became the equivalent of American aristocrats (or at least earned respect for their intellectual capacities) through their Ivy League degrees and their adoption of that all-important manner of aristocrats here: the speech patterns of the highly educated.

It’s true that Sarah Palin has been to college. But these days so much of the population goes to college that the mere fact of a college degree is nothing special in most peoples’ minds. And Palin most definitely went to the wrong school—or schools plural, which is even worse. What’s more, in her speech patterns, her cadence and rhythm and accent, she has stubbornly refused to adopt the bland and homogenized manner of the educated elite.

This is part of the reason for the idea that Palin is dumb—even though it’s clear she’s not. But she “reads” dumb to many people, because she’s working and/or middle class and doesn’t cover that fact up with erudite academic-speak. If she doesn’t, it must mean she can’t, in many people’s eyes; it can’t possibly be a proud and strategic choice, right? It’s as though Eliza Doolittle tried to go to Ascot without the benefit of Henry Higgins’s tutoring: how dare she! And why would she?

It’s exactly the sort of thing I believe that commenter “nyomythus” was referring to when he wrote yesterday (except for the fact that he doesn’t blame her; most people who say this sort of thing fully blame her):

…[I]t’s not [Sarah Palin’s] fault it’s the people that put faith in her and give her a false confidence. Her ilk is not fit to govern—stew potatos and pluck chickens ya, have a position of governance in the USA na.

Note the injection of the “ya…na” speech patterns, reminiscent of Palin and those odd folks in the movie “Fargo,” the kind of proletarian of the north country accent for which Palin has been mocked.

Liberals like to think of themselves as friends of the downtrodden masses, the uneducated and the working classes. But they prefer this to be a form of noblesse oblige—they are the enlightened ones reaching down in their great magnanimity to help the unfortunates, who will then be ever-grateful for the largesse. It’s okay, too, if a minority person pulls him or herself up from squalor and becomes a leader—preferably with the help of a nice Ivy League education, but even without it if the minority in question is seen as having being oppressed enough.

Sarah Palin shatters those rules. Her true bottom-up (as opposed to fake top-down) populist appeal, her whiteness, and her rejection of the veneer of academic elitism that she could take on if only she changed her speech patterns, have driven them wild from the start. It’s only been compounded by the fact that she is a member of a certain group usually seen as oppressed: women. But this small point in her favor has been easily overcome by all the other points against her: she not their kind of woman, and maybe not even a woman at all.

I experienced this phenomenon first hand, the very day after the Palin nomination was announced by John McCain, when I happened to be attending a party where most of the guests were highly educated ultra liberal women. They were discussing Palin, and even then—not twenty-four hours after she had first burst on the scene—-their attitude towards her was set and unanimous, and they hadn’t gotten it from the media or checked it out with each other yet; it was developing as I watched (silently).

To sum up their reaction: they were laughing at her. They didn’t bother to disguise their contempt; they thought her a stupid joke. It was something akin to the attitude they might have had back in high school if the head of the pom-pom girls (who also happened to be the class slut) wanted to apply to Radcliffe and be designated valedictorian as well.

Even back when I was a liberal I didn’t share this attitude towards the value of an Ivy League degree (or even a degree at all). I’ve never confused erudition with smartness, or the trappings of an Ivy League education with intelligence, or either of them with something as unrelated as an accent or speech patterns or even fluidity of speech (this was one of the reasons that I didn’t turn on Bush as stupid even when I was a Democratic and disagreed with his policies).

Of course, education and intelligence are hardly mutually exclusive; they sometimes coincide. But I know full well that they don’t invariably do so, and I knew that from early in life. I grew up as the child of highly educated professionals but we lived in a blue-collar community, and my parents had a varied group of friends. Some had graduate degrees (my father was both a lawyer and CPA) and yet some had never finished high school. Some were rich, and some lived in small apartments above stores; some spoke with the accents of the educated and some did not.

Because both my parents had grown up in the same community in which I was also being raised, and had known most of these people their whole lives, they know the back-story, as it were. My mother, who loved to talk, would tell me the history of this person and that person: he had wanted to be a gym teacher, but had to drop out of high school during the Depression to support his parents and ended up pushing racks though the streets of the garment district and then driving a truck. She had been pulled out of school after eighth grade by a tyrant father who insisted she earn her keep, and then married her off to a man she didn’t love. She spoke of them with sympathy rather than condescension.

My parents loved to entertain, and they would invite these people over often. Everyone would sit around a large table with cake and coffee, talking and talking and talking about everything under the sun, including politics. I was an observer and a sometime participant, and I never remember thinking that the ones with the big degrees had anything more or less worthwhile to say than those without them.

Later on I got my own big degrees, several of them, from a few highfalutin schools to boot. But I encountered a surprisingly wide variety there in terms of brainpower. There was book learning and then there was smart, and the one didn’t always have that much to do with the other, although sometimes it did. I also found myself thinking that the highly educated could be dangerous in their hubris if their schooling wasn’t accompanied by a deep thoughtfulness, because it could instead be accompanied by arrogance and the idea that because they had that elite education they knew far more than they really did.

Perhaps that’s why I was predisposed to listen to politicians in a different way, to not be swayed by a surface glibness or academic-speak. Palin is not my favorite candidate, and I never was at all sure that she could run and win in 2012, but I have always seen her as intelligent and courageous, and I’m awaiting her next move, which I imagine will be interesting. She’s been consistent in showing a remarkable ability to surprise people—whether they be her supporters or her enemies. And she’s doing so now.

Possibilities abound, a run for the presidency in 2012 being the leader. But then, why resign so soon?

Another is that she’s just fed up with all the invective winging her way and wants out. But that doesn’t sound like Palin.

Perhaps Andrew Sullivan is finally about to prove whatever it is that he’s been so deeply concerned about with her son Trig and her reproductive organs. But somehow I doubt it.

Or perhaps some new and wretched revelation is at hand.

But if Palin is running for president, perhaps she sees the danger facing us in the Obama presidency as so powerful and so imminent that she wants to devote more time and more speeches to fighting it in a very public way. Or perhaps not.

Your guess is as good as mine.

[ADDENDUM: Here’s the full text of her resignation speech. Doesn’t sound like she’s quitting public life, at least on first skimming.

Here’s an excerpt:

Political operatives descended on Alaska last August, digging for dirt. The ethics law I championed became their weapon of choice. Over the past nine months I’ve been accused of all sorts of frivolous ethics violations - such as holding a fish in a photograph, wearing a jacket with a logo on it, and answering reporters’ questions.

In the words of General MacArthur said, “We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”

Don’t know that it will be a run for the presidency, at least not for now. Starting a new organization and raising funds? Becoming head of the Republican Party? Something quite different? Whatever it is, it sounds as though it will be public, it will be national rather than local, and it will be related to politics. And it sounds as though the Left will have Sarah Palin to kick around some more.]

In the final months of the 2008 presidential campaign, my concern about Obama increased. This time the subject was economics. His remark to Joe the Plumber was important because it was spoken in an unguarded moment, something rare with Obama. Off the cuff remarks tend to be far more revealing than scripted ones, and Obama’s carefully constructed mask had slipped for just a moment to reveal the income redistributionist underneath. At the time I wrote:

…I believe that by his seemingly casual words Obama revealed his deep commitment to a philosophy of redistribution of wealth in order to further equality of outcome, and that he either doesn’t think equality of opportunity is enough or he believes this country doesn’t offer it.

As a direct result of the “aha” moment of the Joe the Plumber encounter, I began to use the term “soft socialist” to describe Obama. “Socialist” still seemed too far-fetched, although it was gaining in my mind as well (and by the way, for anyone who says I was blind to these possibilities until recently, my words at the time contradict that notion, although it’s true that I did surround my musings with qualifying “I thinks” and “somewhats”):

Obama, of course, would be a statist, of the “soft socialism” type. Look to Europe for the template. And look to the British or Canadian health care systems for a preview of just how well it works…

I think it’s even worse than that, however: I’ve noticed Obama showing signs of being at least somewhat simpatico with hard socialism, of the Hugo Chavez type.

Around the same time I noticed (and was outraged by) card check, and then a few weeks later I became aware of Obama’s older (and originally overlooked) interview from January 2008, in which he said his proposal for cap and trade would “bankrupt” new coal plants and send America’s energy costs “skyrocketing.”

This was worrisome on so many levels, not the least of which was that by that time we were just a few days from the election and Obama was ahead in the polls, and the press was not taking this and running with it (a fact that no longer surprised me, but it still outraged me). Also, these statements of Obama’s concerned, not some shady association in the past, or even some way in which he was handling his present campaign (like the aforementioned broken promise about campaign financing, or the shenanigans about foreign contributions on his website), but policy proposals for the future. These were his stated intentions. They were concrete, they were detailed, and they were alarming.

But when I tried to speak to a few friends about card check or cap and trade, only my two lone conservative buddies had even heard of them; the others looked at me blankly. Attempts to explain to a couple of the more receptive of them were met with a thoughtful “hmm, that’s interesting.” But clearly, the revelations were far from a vote-changer for them.

As I said at the time to one friend, who had originally been a Clinton-supporter but now planned to vote for Obama (although she admitted she’d been paying little attention to anything except an uplifting speech or two), it would take me many hours to put before her the evidence I’d amassed that made me believe that this man just might be the most dangerous major party candidate for president that I could recall in my lifetime. For her to listen to and to read that evidence and weigh it would require time and energy on her part.

I think of this particular friend as an fair-minded Democrat who was willing to at least consider that what I said might be true. But she simply did not have that sort of time, and/or was unwilling to expend that amount of energy, to find out.

Was she afraid of what she might discover? She’d seen me walk down that path, and knew it had caused social problems for me. Or did I already appear to her as though I’d gone off some sort of deep end? Did I sound too frazzled, too driven; did I look too wild-eyed? Did she, in the final analysis, want to believe in Obama, because it made the world a kindler, gentler place?

I’m not sure. I know that I sent her a few articles, and I think she even read them. But she voted for Obama anyway (at least I’m pretty sure she did; I did not go into the voting booth with her). Most of my other friends were starry-eyed over Obama, and so I knew I’d be wasting my time by even talking to them.

The day after the election—and the expected Obama win—I decided it was time to accept the situation and hope for the best. This did not mean I was blind to the possibilities. But, as I wrote in Part I, it was time for watchful waiting; Obama would reveal himself soon enough, by his actions.

As for the rest, my blog tells the tale, or at least some of it: first a lull, and then increasing evidence (and increasing concern) on almost every front. The stimulus. The budget. The census. Card check. Cap and trade. Insulting Britain. Apologies for America around the globe. Drumming up class war at every opportunity. Rewarding the unions. Bowing to the Saudis—literally. Expensive and inefficient health care proposals. Israel. Iran. Honduras. Korea. Weakness. Appeasement.

When I look at politics and world events, I try to be a person of reason and restraint as well as fairness. I don’t feature knee-jerk demonizing, and I like to back up everything I say with solid evidence. But that takes time; it can’t be done in sound bites.

But at this point the jury is no longer out on Obama—he has revealed enough of himself that we can conclude that what he’s doing is bad for America and even for the world, although we’re still not entirely sure of his motivations. But his reasons matter less than the damage he is causing, and the need to figure out how best to counter it and to prevent more and even greater damage in the future.

Unfortunately, as events progress, we who oppose Obama sound increasingly shrill, and the gap between us and those who support him (even feebly, like my friend) has widened to something approximating the size of the Grand Canyon. How can that be bridged?

The problem we face is the same one I faced with my friends back in October/November of 2008. In some ways it’s worse, because there’s more to say. But in some ways it’s better, because I sense some doubt in all but the most extreme Obama supporters.

However, they are still not paying attention, and attention is required. They’re not reading about this in the mainstream media. So, what is my role? I need time and a receptive willing audience to make an argument that could be persuasive, and if people aren’t willing to give the issues the energy necessary, then I run the risk of sounding to them like a raving maniac if I do bring it up, someone easy to put in the category of 9/11-truthers or Holocaust deniers. And now that Obama is in office until 2012, it has also become even more threatening for people who once supported him to even consider that what I’m trying to say may in fact be true: there’s the guilt, plus the fear that the hand on the tiller is purposely steering us in the wrong direction.

So there’s even more reason for them to reject what I say. I can’t bridge the gulf; it requires flooding people with information, which they don’t wish to receive. In my email “drafts” box are several notes with titles like “please read, very important,” that contain lists of links to well-reasoned and informative articles. But I haven’t sent them, except for one time—and that one only featured a meager two links, as I recall. I got not a single response to it, and I doubt that the recipients (a few good friends) even read the links. Now I’ve become even more reluctant to nag them by bringing it up again or sending more links; I think it would only be counterproductive.

This is an urgent matter. But becoming a pest can’t be the answer. And on this blog I fear I’m only preaching to the choir. The comments section here is great, but we are talking mostly to each other, and the rare troll (who’ve become more numerous again lately).

How can we reach the greater community? Do you speak to Obama supporters you know? What is the response if you try to explain what you think has been happening?

Churchill was thought to be crazy during the 30s, obsessed with his warnings about Hitler, who didn’t appear to most of the rest of Parliament to be such an awful fellow. Maybe the nature of the beast is that such warnings cannot be heard, that they seem excessive until the most dire things actually occur. Most people almost instinctively reject what seems like an extreme point of view unless they’ve arrived at it themselves through personal awareness, step by painful step, or through a dramatic and possibly life-shattering single event.

We’ve had experience with incompetent presidents and/or deceptive presidents before. But I submit that we’ve never before had a president with such malignant and radical designs who also was so deceptive in such a profound way. Nixon, for example, was deceptive about many things as well as malignant towards his “enemies,” but he was still well within the mainstream of American political thought regarding defending freedom around the globe, keeping America strong, and the economy. Also, Tricky Dick seemed tricky; we knew about this characteristic of his even before he was elected.

Obama does not seem deceptive on the surface—at least, he doesn’t to many people, and that’s what’s important. And yet he has been deceptive about something far more basic than Nixon ever was: who he is, and his underlying vision for America.

To Obama’s credit, over time he has become more honest about all of that. Perhaps not so much in his rhetoric, but in his deeds.

And by his deeds ye shall know him.

The United States is opposed to enacting a new set of financial sanctions against Iran that are due to be discussed in the G8 summit next week, diplomatic officials in New York reported Friday…

American officials expressed concern that a decision to enact harsh steps against Iran during the G8 meeting could badly hurt the prospect of Tehran agreeing to renew negotiations with the permanent Security Council members.

I’m getting tired of—let’s be blunt here—Obama’s obsequious and timid ass-kissing of the fanny of nearly every tyrant on the globe. I’m also getting tired of trying to read Obama’s mind, and of constructing these “either/or” explanations for its workings.

“Either he’s a fool or a knave” would cover almost all of them. In this case, either he is so deeply narcissistic/naive that he thinks these “dialogues” have a chance of working (especially with no teeth at all behind them), or he doesn’t care because he has absolutely no interest in defanging Iran.

Or perhaps the report is incorrect and the Obama administration will actually support sanctions against Iran. One can always hope.

The Worst Press Secretary Ever. In a class by himself.

Gibbs has abandoned any pretense of giving out information of any veracity. His performances are entirely composed of equal measure of spin and smirk—almost like an-only-slightly-more-cleaned-up version of bloggers who specialize in juvenile snark.

Why is this man laughing? I haven’t a clue. And if any Obama supporter can explain why someone as wonderful as Obama chose someone as abominable as this man to be his spokesperson to the world, please let me know.

As for Helen Thomas: although I ordinarily find her despicable, and despite the fact that I think in this case her ire was roused by what she considers a paucity of due obeisance to august journalists such as herself by the Obama administration, I can’t help but cheer her on here. She doesn’t take Gibbs’ horse manure for an answer; she just hones in on him with all the outrage her eighty-nine feisty years can muster.

And Gibbs treats her as condescendingly as humanly possible without actually spitting in her eye. But that’s not just because she’s a woman, or even because she’s an elderly woman, or even because she’s the invariably annoying Helen Thomas—it’s because he’s that way to everyone.

[NOTE: Ooops! I just noticed that Gerard Vanderleun said this all first, and better.]

Think it can’t happen here? Think again. These people set up this group on Obama’s inauguration day. I’m fairly certain it’s a very small movement now. But this can grow, depending on how much money they get to spread their message. It’s a move for Zelaya-style “democracy” in this country.

Who’s really behind it? You can bet your bottom dollar it’s not the group they themselves describe:

Launched on January 20, 2009, the day of Barack Obama’s first inauguration, END22.com was founded by a group of ordinary Americans: Democrats, Republicans and Independents, who found common ground in their belief that the Twenty-Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is unnecessarily restrictive and takes away the basic right that we may select the person of our choice to lead us.

We do not believe that it is wise, particularly in a time of great crisis, to prohibit the American People from choosing a President that can help guide us out of that crisis. As Franklin D. Roosevelt lead us out of the Great Depression and through World War II, Barack Obama now leads us through a new Economic Crisis and is the Commander in Chief in our War on Terror.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.