THE CRUSADERS HAVE BREACHED OUR CITY GATES

Sarah Palin, like George W. Bush, is stupid in at least two classical definitions: Closed to the challenge of thinking for oneself, and unable to think flexibly. She is by her own admission not a reader. Her inability to speak with clarity or consideration is most on display when she is placed in a non-scripted situation, which she consequently avoids at all costs. She opens her mouth mostly to earn a fee, and she has (mostly) learned to allow others to tell her what to say.

She is quintessentially the dimwitted beauty queen who is sullen about being asked questions instead of the swimsuit competition sufficing, just as Bush was the rich frat boy claiming a cowboy heritage not his own because he saw cowboys as likewise inarticulate, small-minded, and not expected to observe social niceties (an outsider's patronizing view that too many urban Texans-by-migration gleefully embraced as well).

So when one of these mouthpiece symbols makes a horrific blunder in the course of a teleprompted speech -- as Bush did when he called his invasion of Iraq a "crusade" and Palin has now done invoking the vile Jew-hating phrase blood libel to express outrage at being questioned about the consequences of her targeting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords -- it is not as simple as another example of their stupidity on display. Nor can we explain it away solely as their existing in an elite theocratic bubble where such fundie hate phrases are bandied about in conversation, leaving dimwits such as Palin and Dubya to later use the language without comprehending what it means.

No, someone who is paid to design messages inserted those two words into Palin's carefully crafted video, which was (as always) intended to keep her in the money-making public eye without expecting actual work from her. It was not miss-speak. This is bolstered by Andrew Breitbart, that Goebbelesque liar, also using the same phrase in recent days.

What was its dogwhistle intent, then?

For fundies, it reinforces the simultaneous martyrdom they cling to -- the delusion that Christians are the only genuinely persecuted group in our culture, because we refuse to allow them to convert and control the rest of us in Jesus's name -- and the rationalization that Jews have it "coming to them" because they killed Christ. It is a coded reinforcement of anti-Semitism which is intrinsic to Christians who believe they have the right to kill as part of G*d's will.

In short, that gunsight leveled on Giffords was, actually, justified.

Study the rest of Palin's commentary. She asks when political debate was ever less heated, revealing she operates in the End-Timer maelstrom of constant fear and rage. She speaks of praying but not of finding resolution or growth from prayer, because her ilk believe they have already heard from G*d and will not ever require a course correction. And she whines about the apportioning of blame, but never mentions the word responsibility.

Because responsibility implies the possibility of error, something Christian soldiers never have to worry about.