September 9, 2008--Sarah Palin: Third Thoughts

I promised myself that I would move on. No more from me about her. Not even in the guise of listening in on the dinner conversations of the ladies of Forest Trace. Well, I lied.

This is too important an election to be blogging about the self-indulgent habits of the mega-rich or the religious fanaticism of various fundamentalists. Unless of course when the mega-rich are the out-of-touch Cindy and John McCain and the religious fanatic is none other than Sarah Palin.

McCain’s masterstroke was to select her so he could change the subject from him to her. We’ve stopped talking about his five or six or eight houses; we’ve stopped noticing Cindy’s parade of $5,000 outfits; we’ve stopped wondering what it means about Senator McCain that he dumped his first wife who stood by him all the years he was a prisoner in Hanoi a few days after he took a look at how disfigured she was after her near-fatal auto accident; and we’ve stopped talking about his political career—how though he may have been “right” (whatever that means) about the so-called surge in Iraq he was wrong about the much, much more important decision to invade and occupy Iraq; and though he wants to maintain and expand George Bush’s tax cuts and breaks for the wealthy and corporate elites that have ruined our economy and whose one trillion dollar war has brought us the cruelest tax of all—inflation and now rampant unemployment, not to mention millions of foreclosures and the loss of equity in everyone’s homes.

Next to Barack Obama who wants to raise taxes on those earning more than $250,000 a year George Bush, John McCain, and his even more conservative running mate are the most radical income redistributors in history. In their case, not from the wealthy to the struggling but from the working and middle classes to the rich. Talk about taxing and spending and class warfare! The Republicans in this regard have put the Democrats to shame.

But, no, we’ve ceased talking about any of this in our current obsession about her and have been seduced into viewing this election as a contest about who is the real change candidate—John McCain and his Hockey Mom or that old-fashioned Liberal with the funny name.

Thus I want to talk about her some more because if McCain is elected she is likely to become our president before the end of his first term. I’ve cited this grim fact before—he is 72 years old with a serious form of recurrent skin cancer. Even if it doesn’t get him between now and 2012 there is a much better than 50 percent chance that it will reappear again and disable him.

As the media vetting of Governor Palin continues, in spite of the McCain campaign waging all-out-war against the media (a war unlike Iraq, by the way, that they are winning: MSNBC just fired Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann as their presidential debate and election anchors—see linked NY Times article), as reporting about Palin’s career in Alaska continues we are learning additionally disturbing things about her. Some of it gossip but most of it well within legitimate reportorial bounds.

She told the country last Wednesday that if she becomes vice president families with special needs children will “have a friend and advocate in the White House,” though while governor, before she had her own child with Down Syndrome, with a sister who has an autistic son, she had not been such a friend and advocate up there in Juneau. She only reluctantly signed legislation initiated by others to increase funding for children with special needs.

We have also been learning about her interest in Jews for Jesus. These are folks who are working hard to convert Jews to Christianity in preparation for the End of Times, when true Christians will be Raptured (lifted directly by God to heaven) as a signal that the Antichrist will soon appear, Jesus will return to earth, there will be the Millennium, and then finally the Armageddon.

Palin believes all of this is imminent. It has long been rumored that George Bush does as well and, if true, would help explain his Middle East policies—the reoccupation by all of the world’s Jews of Greater Israel, which includes Iraq, is a precondition for these allegedly-prophesized occurrences. And though we may speculate about President Bush, there is no doubt about Sarah Palin—there is much videotape circulating on the Internet, and now being picked up by the traditional media, that shows her speaking with passion about these biblical matters.

She has even said that Alaska will be a privileged and secure place to live come the End Days. And she has repeatedly claimed that God has been directing her political career and her policies, including drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the construction of another pipeline across Alaska.

I suppose that if God is guiding one’s policies that may be more important to voters than whether or not a candidate for high office is a hypocrite or knows anything on her own about the world. But to any even casual students of history this must sound familiar--the last time divine-right claims such as these were in widespread circulation was in the 1790s during the Ancien Régime and last days of King Louis XVI in France. And, of course, Marie Antoinette.