SARAH PALIN'S JUNIOR ANTI-SELF-INTEREST LEAGUE

Sarah Palin has taken to Facebook again, this time to tell union workers in Wisconsin that true worker solidarity requires self-betrayal:

Union Brothers and Sisters: Seize Opportunity to Show True Solidarity

... My message ... to good union brothers and sisters is that you have another option. You don't have to kowtow to the union bosses who are not looking out for you, but instead are using you. You can join millions of other union members in a commonsense movement to help fight for the right causes in our great country -- for budgets that share the burden in a truly fair way and for commonsense reforms that take power away from vested interests like union bosses and big business lobby groups, and put it back where it belongs -- with "We the People." ...

Two thoughts in response to this. First, we're reminded yet again what a pure product of wingnut media Palin is. Absorb enough right-wing TV and radio and you develop conditioned, Pavlovian responses to so many words and phrases: I say "union," you automatically say "union bosses who only care about their own power!" It's automatic.

Second, I just can't wrap my mind around Palin's belief that union workers would think it's in their self-interest to utterly reject their self-interest -- as a show of solidarity with their fellow workers, they should all get together and sell one another out! It's illogical -- though it also reminds me of perky religious conservatives desperately trying to persuade teenagers that they don't really want sex or drugs or alcohol, that they'd really feel so much better drinking soda pop and having chaste single-sex pajama parties. It just comes off as pathetic.

Palin wrtes,

Real solidarity means everyone being willing to sacrifice and carry our share of the burden. It does no one any favors to dismiss the sacrifices others have already had to make -- in wage cuts, unpaid vacations, and even job losses -- to weather our economic storm.

Yeah? Tell me about this when the business community shares in the sacrifice. (And no, I don't care whether it's technically wrong that the carrots tossed to business in Waker's budget aren't the real reason for the shortfall, as PolitiFact insists -- the carrots may not kick in until the budget that follows this one, while the sticks for the unions kick in now, but it's still the case that the carrot recipients aren't giving up their carrots. Why isn't Palin addressing a pleading Facebook post to them?)