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With so much being said about Sarah Palin, I felt like maybe it would be a good idea to hang back after my initial post about her to see how the public’s reaction developed. In that time, what’s become clear to me is this — America, and the ongoing enterprise of the American Idea, are doomed. Sorry to seem like a downer, folks…. but between this and the economic developments in recent days, I can’t imagine anyone who can seriously claim otherwise.
For what kind of sorry-ass state of affairs is it where even after eight years under President Bush, not only could someone this unqualified be selected for the VP position, but where her very lack-of-suitability for the job is is still actually considered a qualification? A large swath of our citizens have failed to learn the folly of picking their leaders based on their resemblance to ourselves. You’d think that people would have learned that, instead of picking “someone they would like to have a beer with”, they should pick the smartest person they can find so that they can go out an have a beer — without worrying that the country is being treated like a frat boy’s rental car while they’re gone.
To many, it seems as if this Vice-Presidential candidate was selected not only to inflame a party’s base, but quite possibly to arouse them as well — let alone the almost-priapic response it has engendered from the Press (“If your coverage of Sarah Palin is painful and lasts for more than four hours, please call your doctor”).
And this ridiculous spiral into meaningless chatter continues while Rome burns.
While the Titanic takes on water.
Even before our Financial Market meltdown, the Press seemed more concerned about overflowing Levi’s than overflowing levees. Yet again, the Press failed to do its job because Republicans picked another candidate who activates all of those “hot-button social and cultural issues” — a euphemism for “prejudices and insecurities” — for people on the extreme left and right.
For the rest of us in the middle — people who actually try to judge each candidate on their merits — we are left in a wasteland where issues and positions aren’t discussed in any meaningful way. The horse race becomes the story….not the fact that much of each side’s ideology is long overdue for a trip to the glue factory.
Democrats are too cowed and fearful of another humiliating Presidential election loss that they turn the other way when Barack Obama abdicates his principles to cave on Immunity for Lawbreakers. Congressional Democrats, even with a majority, are promoting a platform of “change” — while trying to make themselves functionally indistinguishable from their Wiretapping, Oil-Drilling, Church-Going, Gun-Toting counterparts on the other side of the aisle. They argue that the decision of a teenage girl to have pre-marital sex reflects poorly on how her parents raised her. They rail against Palin who, in some ways at least, is a success story of the feminist movement. Very strange.
And deep inside Obama Headquarters, you know that a cadre of highly-paid consultants continues to press for a “drive to the middle” in the General Election fight.
“You can’t change anything if you don’t win!”, some might say.
I think they have it backwards.
Meanwhile, John McCain — a man historically renown for changing positions depending on which way the wind blows — wears the face of a man suffering from a dreadful realization: Whatever legitimacy his “Country Before Party” reputation had before this election has been snuffed out by the creeping Stage IV Shit-Eating Sickness that infected his soul when he decided to win at any cost. (His reversals on financial policy this week alone deserve — and shall receive — their own post.)
Hardline Republicans, who once called this war hero “a traitor” for not toeing their party line, pretend that they loved him all along — once he picked the hockey mom to go to the prom with him. In September 2008, Republicans are arguing that Teen Pregnancy *isn’t* the end of the world. Some are even tripping over themselves to intervene against market forces, providing multi-billion dollar bailouts to companies that have failed. Say what you will — at least it’s a consistent position against Darwinism across the board for the G.O.P. … but it is also very strange.
Up is down. Day is Night.
Is the press on the case, reporting on these stunning reversals? Not really.
They’re too busy coming up with snazzy headlines like “Mystery, Alaska”, “Juno, Alaska”, and “Palin-tology” … and discussing how well Tina Fey lampooned Gov. Palin on SNL, proving only that imitation really is suicide when it comes to satire.
Two wars.
Our Economy only days away from a total collapse.
Hurricanes batter large parts of our country.
The gyre widens and the center does not hold….
The center yawns — paralyzed and underinformed — and slouches towards the November election…until it’s time to pull the lever that they had decided to pull long ago — for reasons that many can’t reasonably explain and don’t fully understand .
We may feel father apart than ever from one another but, in that respect, maybe we are more alike that most of us realize.
