When Sarah Palin declared that she would vote for presidential nominee Newt Gingrich in this week’s South Carolina Primary–prompting him to say that she could play a ‘major role’ in his administration if he became the next President of the United States, the rumor mill starting churning overtime with possible, political scenarios for what that major role might be. And to the disdain of many progressives and even a few conservatives, the possibility of Palin being asked to once again become a vice-presidential candidate just might not be as far out into left field as political wisdom would suggest, and Gingrich’s enthusiastic gesture for Palin’s ability to contribute politically appears to be the one and only catalyst for it. So, the question now becomes: is Sarah Palin destined to be the next Dan Quayle?
As vice-president, Dan Quayle served under the first President Bush and was not a very popular pick from the beginning. And unfortunately, his poor image only took more hits once he became the vice-president by liberals, Independents and even some conservatives. The late-night comedians and comedians abroad had numerous field days raking Quayle over the political coals, as he became a punch-line all to himself. His bloopers and gaffes made him legendary.
In fact, his one defining moment and the image that will probably last forever within the minds of all who were able to witness it was an incident that I like to call “Potato-gate,” where Quayle went toe-to-toe with a 12-year-old student named William Figueroa and overwhelmed the savvy youngster with his intellectual prowess. Sitting next to a blackboard, Figueroa had spelled the word potato correctly, but that wasn’t quite good enough for Quayle, as he demanded that Figueroa add the letter E to the end of it—making it read as ‘potatoe’ instead of potato. It was arguably one of the worst cases of misinformation of all-time perpetrated by a sitting vice-president, and no other politician reminds me of Quayle quite like Sarah Palin.
But despite Palin’s goofy persona, she is a fierce campaigner and a loyal foot-soldier to the cause. During the 2008 campaign against Barack Obama, Palin injected a high voltage of political enthusiasm into the tired, antiquated storyline of a dismal GOP, because John McCain was certainly no political Fabio. Now his decision to pick Palin as a running-mate was considered to be radical at the time, but in the end there were many Republicans who blamed the McCain team’s inability to properly utilize Palin’s assets as the number one reason why the McCain/Palin ticket was defeated by the Obama/Biden ticket, because Palin was able to set much of the right wing world on fire, which is the good news.
The bad news is that once Palin got beyond her exceptionalism of preaching to the right wing choir, she turned out to be just another one-trick-pony. Within the rhetorical confines of the conservative base, her Cinderella persona was like a Ronald Reagan, but once she stepped outside of those friendly barracks and the political clock struck midnight her ball carriage became a gaffe pumpkin, as she morphed back into
Dan Quayle, and this is the dilemma that Gingrich will be faced with if he decides to make her his running-mate. Yes, she can rally and personify the anti-Romney base like no other, and yes she can attack President Obama insistently, but on the other hand she can’t make diddly-squat with Independents or Jon Huntsman-Democrats, and no she does not strike any real, political fear in the hearts and minds of the Democratic Party. Let’s face it. President Obama and Vice-President Biden won’t be up at 4:00 in the morning pacing the Oval Office floor over another challenge from the ‘hopey-changey,’ half-term governor.
By even mentioning Palin as a possible part of his administration, Gingrich is just pandering to his base by trying to corner the hardcore, conservative, anti-Romney vote, because Palin has been accused of a lot of unflattering charges like idiocracy and dishonesty, but the charge of being a Mitt Romney, Massachusetts moderate/liberal is not one of them, and Gingrich knows that. So if Palin can help Gingrich pull the anti-Romney upset in South Carolina and possibly beyond, don’t be surprised if she finds a way to weasel her way back into political contention through the Gingrich administration.
But think about this. When the first President Bush was in office, the only bipartisan theme was about how everyone hoped and prayed that he would always remain in good health without getting deathly ill through disease or violence, because no one, not even most conservatives, trusted Dan Quayle to be president or wanted Dan Quayle to be the president. And if the Gingrich/Palin ticket becomes a reality and wins the White House in November, history will repeat itself as those same concerns for the first President Bush will be front and center for Gingrich, as the world cringes at the mere thought of Sarah Palin assuming the duties of the presidency. So go ahead Gingrich—choose Sarah Palin as your running-mate and make my progressive day!
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Author: Bryian Revoner
Welcome to the ideology of the Realacrats, where the anticipation of the future defeats the reminiscence of the past, where the dreams of one can change the lives of all, where understanding is a gift that can only be understood when it is applied, where we realistically search for what we will realistically find, and where the narrative you write will be penned in the ink of your own individuality. We will not ask that you believe in God, but we will ask that you believe in yourself, because many of the treasures we seek lie hidden in plain sight, but blinded eyes led by filtered ears will prevent many from finding them. Realacrats will ensure that it does not prevent all, for the fear of being challenged will not go unchallenged by what will come to be known as the Realacrat ideology! I am Independently Democratic, and I am Democratically Independent. I am the Realacrat, and this is the Realacratic mission statement!
~The Fear of Being Challenged
This is the website, www.iuniverse.com/Bookstore, where The Fear of Being Challenged is on sale now as an E-book for $9.99, and I implore everyone who is interested to go the E-book route, because the actual book is much higher in price. All you have to do is go to that website and enter the title or my name in the iUniverse search engine, and you will be able to see or buy the book. Again, I suggest the E-book.
The Fear of Being Challenged, Democratically Independent; I Am the Realacrat! That is the title of the book in my profile picture. The actual book is not yet completed, but the E-Book is available through iUniverse, just in case there is anyone out there who wants to know about this. As many of you know, I wrote a few articles and essays on Facebook. I was splitting time between writing my articles, and writing my book. Sometimes I would work on both projects simultaneously. I was forced to do all of this independently, because none of the publishers liked what I had to offer. Many of them said that I was too radical, too controversial, too naïve, too hopeful, too political, not political enough, too liberal, not liberal enough, too conservative, not conservative enough, too pro-Black, not pro-Black enough, too anti-White, too welcoming to Whites, too inclusive, not inclusive enough, to pro-Democratic, not Democratic enough, too anti-Republican, not critical enough of Republicans, too partisan, not partisan enough, too ideologically simplistic, too ideologically complex, too rudimentary in sentence structure and thought progression, and too multidimensional in sentence structure and thought progression.
So if I had to summarize the entire body of work; based on all of these different elements of assessment, I’d theorize that the prodigious sentiment connecting them all would have to be the intrinsic polarization of the differentiations of a highly-induced opinionatedness that cannot be collectively avoided by the reader, which means that in all likelihood; this venture will not be a boring one under any stretch of the imagination! I can’t sit here and convince you that I am able to solve all of the world’s problems within the confines of this book, but I will attempt to convince you that the cognitive absorption of this material will stir the emotional stew that boils within you. I’ll admit that this is not a "Kum Ba Yah" moment, and I’ll admit that this is not a Bryian R., feel-good, fan club convention either. I didn’t write it to keep you as a friend, and I didn’t write it transform you into an enemy, but I did write it to inspire you to think about your dreams and to coax you into re-evaluating your fears of being challenged, because no matter how much of a bad ass we all would like to be; everyone has feared the challenged on some level!
Outside of the Facebook world, I was continuously confronted with this mass confusion regarding the ideology of my subject matter, from the numerous publishers that I submitted it to, to the many editors who stated how they just didn’t like the way that I write or the way that I idealize. I had publishers and editors who loved me and published many of my articles, but I also had the same number of publishers and editors who despised me and eventually overrode other publishers and editors and even yanked many of my already published articles.
For example, I was writing for this organization as an Op-Ed, and I had a couple of articles published through that organization. After about the third article, one of the higher ranking editors sends me an email explaining why he yanked my articles. He said to me: “I’ve got news for you buddy! Just because you’ve been given the nod of approval by our editing staff, it does not mean that you’ve been given the nod of approval by me! They accepted your material, but I am now rejecting it, and I have the power to overrule the entire editing staff. So your little run here is done! I suggest that you create a diary for the kind of work that you do, because it’s too personal! No one cares about your personal ideologies, your personal views, or your personal experiences. You simply are not that important to anyone outside of yourself.”
And for the record, the subject matter that was in question was entitled “Conversation with a Tea Bagger,” which was published on Facebook and is in The Fear of Being Challenged. Ironically, there were other book publishers, who eventually turned me down about the Fear of Being Challenged, who voiced similar complaints about what I do in a writing capacity. Like many of my Op-Ed critiques, book publishers that I attempted to woo were also highly-uncomfortable about what they referred to as my ‘over-the-top, narcissism’ of my own self-worth. One of the publishers said to me: “Who in the hell are you to be espousing such rhetoric? Who do you think you are? You’re not Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin. You not Obama! Your rhetoric speaks as if it’s coming from somebody who’s significantly boisterous, but the lack of recognition surrounding your bland name speaks to the exact opposite! You have achieved nothing that would afford you the luxury of trying to conjure up such leadership qualities, and you certainly have no legitimate reasons to believe that you deserve any form of an audience. You’re, sir, are a nobody! You’re not Malcolm X, and you’re no Dr. King. Those guys were famous. You are not. You think you have an ideology, but trust me, my friend, when I say this to you. You will never end up sitting on Oprah’s couch with these unrealistic, yet honorable, ideas you’ve concocted. It’s obvious that you’ve put a lot of thought into this project, but surely you weren’t gullible enough to actually believe that you could be heard,” and then they laughed at me, and hung up on me.
This is precisely why I sub-titled this book “Democratically Independent; I Am the Realacrat,” because in my view; the power of realism allows anyone to be a Democratically Independent Realacrat; meaning, the realities of our existences affords all of us the right to engage the freedoms of our democracy through the paths that we choose and the right to individually and independently question and theorize the universe that surrounds us on those paths. And in my opinion, you don’t have to be anyone, outside of the person that you are, to be a part of a genuine, authentic participation, because I don’t believe that worldly possessions, abstract or physical, are tangible enhancers of the human perception. I think the potential character of the human DNA is priceless; regardless of the number of followers who get behind it. If there is one thing that I have learned from all of this, it’s that everyone has a voice that deserves to be heard, but the availability of the megaphones tend to be more elitist, but the absence of a megaphone should not mean the absence of your voice. It might not be as loud, but that in no way means that it is any less important, whether you’re a truck driver, a ditch digger, the Governor of Alaska, or the President of United States. If the Constitution or the Founding Fathers intended to imply anything at all, that notion has to be it, because there is nothing American or Democratic about the selectiveness/elitism of opportunistic distribution through genetic or ideological entitlements.
I haven’t done anything in this book that all of you are not capable of doing on your own, which is seeing the world through my eyes, and describing the possibilities of that world in my words. It’s a process that I would like to see more people get involved with on a major level. Some of the best things in our lives have often arisen from those unlikely contenders and contestants who weren’t lucky enough or popular enough to be awarded a pageant crown or a megaphone. When we allow ourselves to become mesmerized by the proverbial Red Herring, we can easily become blinded to the undecorated usefulness of common sense. As a Realacrat, I try hard not to fall into that trap.
Now politically, I touch on everything that’s underneath the political sun, from Israel and Palestine to Rush Limbaugh and President Obama. I talk about Women’s Rights, American jobs, Democrats and Republicans, green technology, religion, racism, sexism, homosexuality, poverty, street gangs, abortion, the failing education system, immigration reform, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the size and relevance of government as a whole, September 11th, China, the middle-class, the media, all-around hypocrisy, and the Fear of Being Challenged on many levels.
This was only intended for my friends on Facebook. I never had any intentions of going national or worldly with this Realacrat ideology. I only had in mind to share my views with all of you, not necessarily the entire world. So no, I haven’t had any hopes of ever sitting on Oprah’s couch. I’m not Sarah Palin, and I’m not Glenn Beck. I’m just an obscure individual from Facebook, and I’m realistic enough to accept that. Unfortunately, it’s not the relevance of the ideology held by the individual. It’s the relevance of the individual that holds the ideology, and that’s just the world that we live in. I’m not naive enough to believe that I can change it, but I’m also not naïve enough to allow it to change me, by convincing me that I have to accompany it, and that is the crux of being a Realacrat and the antithesis of the Fear of Being Challenged! In the end, you will leave with more than you arrived with if you decide to challenge the Fear of Being Challenged if you decide to read this book. It’s not perfectly done, but it’s ideologically as good as I could make it as an independent author.
The fear of being challenged was really the fear of someone else’s success, the fear of my own possible defeat, and the fear of losing my influential grip. As long as I had the entire world playing from my rigged deck of cards, I was always in complete control of who won and who lost, which is actually a fear of the freedoms of democracy and the fear of being challenged! Scripted-Capitalism is a very lucrative venture for the person who writes the script, but it crumbles like the Berlin Wall when a new script is introduced, because someone dared to seek change!
~The Fear of Being Challenged
Bryian R.
I’d rather learn about all of the things that I fear, instead of fearing all of the things that I could learn! ~The Revoner
I’d rather walk alone with the truth, as opposed to leading the crowd with a lie! ~The Revoner
9:55 pm
Sarah Palin WILL be our next President for it is the word and will of God Herself! If Obozo wins in 2012, Palin WILL win in 2016 and 2020!
8:05 pm
As much as I don’t like Gingrich, (and I really do not like him) one thing is clear…he is not dumb. Thus, there is absolutely zero chance that he would choose Sarah Palin as his running mate. Gingrich has respect for intellect, which leaves Sarah Palin out of any significant role in a Gingrich administration.
11:01 am
Gingrich/Palin: a comedy pinata waiting for an aluminum baseball bat.