A Modest Proposal

For those of you who think Ms. Heartbeat Away has been beat up enough by people like me, find something else to do.

However, if you think that the last eight years ought to provide more than sufficient reason to be skeptical—very skeptical—of putting a person whose capacity for reasonable, intelligent thought are, to say the least, limited, in charge, or one step away, from running what is still the most powerful country on Earth, then read on. And consider checking out the sites below: Krugman's editorial today, as well as two blogs that contain plenty of good reading.

About Ms. Heartbeat Away. And what she's like. This woman whose social views are the farthest to the right of anyone who has held the office of Vice-President of the United States.  

What we know: there aren't enough lock step Republicans out there to win this election, and the Democrats aren't going to vote for her ...

So, whether we have a more youthful version of Phyllis Schlafly (who remarks in this week's New Yorker, in "The Talk of the Town," that Ms. Palin is just that, a "youthful version" of her) as our next Vice-President, or a person with thirty-plus years of experience as a senator, with estimable foreign policy credentials, is going to come down to convincing those who don't care much about politics to care at least enough to put someone in the job who knows something about the job. 

Who cares about government, be it big or small; who thinks it ought to be, at the very least, good and competent. Not just another venue to help the already rich and strong.

It will involve, I think, convincing a critical mass of people that Sarah Palin, quite ironically, wouldn't have a chance in hell of being in the position she is currently in if she didn't hold some arguably insane ideas on how our world was created, and what sort of say a woman ought to have when it comes to what goes on with her womb.

Her being a woman really doesn't have that much to do with the phenomenon of Sarah Palin.

Anymore that having a father who was black has much to do, really, with the phenomenon that is Barack Obama.

Their appeal can't be explained by either gender or race. Though both sides are acting as though it can.

A better question perhaps: How did both get to where they are? Each with relative swiftness.

One graduated from Harvard Law School and became a United States senator, and wrote, without help, two books. Another, with a more modest education, quite a lot more modest, believes that the story of creation told in Genesis should be taught as science (and, trust me, couldn't write a book on her own if her life depended on it), and, using her beliefs in a local election, first, where those beliefs would have no impact, became Mayor of a small town, then governor of a state.

Is it too strong of a statement to say: One got there by appealing to intelligence, another by appealing to ignorance?

One phenon believes that a woman ought to have to, by law, give birth to and raise the child of her rapist, or brother—anyone who gets her knocked up, really, regardless of the circumstances—and another who believes that, while such an exercise might lead to love of a transcendent sort, that not everyone is capable of that sort of thing, and shouldn't be forced to be by law ...

And that, just maybe, we shouldn't be making assumptions on what God is willing to happen to others, especially when it comes to another person's suffering, or when horrible things happen to that person, because if you've ever had something really horrible happen to you, you know, or should, that it can be really hurtful to put up with a lot of ignorant judgment to boot.

And so it really isn't very Christian, or decent, or civilized, to have laws that make a woman, in this case, suffer the consequences, regardless.

Is it?

I would venture to say most people agree with me on this. Men and women. In this country, and most others.

And so what, other than her strange beliefs, does Sarah Palin bring to the table? Because we know what Barack Obama, despite his limited experience, brings to the table. Everyone does, whether they like to believe it or not.

Who of us would be intimidated talking with Sarah Palin about, say, the nuances of foreign policy?

Who of us, then, would be intimidated talking with Joseph Biden, or that upstart, inexperienced Barack Obama, about the nuances of foreign policy? 

In all three cases: why?

Would you be comfortable going to court with a lawyer you thought you could out-argue?

Question: What kind of crazy Republican would want to overturn Roe v. Wade? 

Answer: One who doesn't know where his or her bread is buttered.

You want to see a person with the sensibilities of Sarah Palin become utterly irrelevant, overturn Roe v. Wade ...

But they'd just find something else, wouldn't they.

So forget that.

We don't have time for that anyway.

So, if we just get, say, 75% of voting women to vote for the ticket that doesn't have someone on it who believes a woman, by law, ought to have the baby of her rapist or brother simply because it wouldn't have happened in the first place if God didn't want it to, I think we're in good shape. 

Very good shape, probably.

If we got just three out of four women to agree ... that Ms. Heartbeat Away has little to recommend her to high public office other than some extreme and scary beliefs that, for reasons that can't be easily explained, appeal to the supposedly Christian base of a party whose guiding principal derives from the founder of Evolution, Darwin—Survival of the Fittest, we, Obama folks, would be in good shape.

We wouldn't have to pray so hard for the republic.

Maybe.

But I'm telling you: We're either tuned in to a nervous breakdown in progress among our friends in the Republican Party, or we are, at this point, a country by and large content to let the lunatics run the asylum.

Three out of four women, though, and we aren't having this argument. 

Check out the sites below. And thank you, Linda. Thank you, Molly. More like you.

Mudflats blog, courtesy of The New Yorker.

Have good weekend!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/opinion/12krugman.html?ex=1378958400&en=c086f0651fb9c71b&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

http://womenagainstsarahpalin.blogspot.com/

http://mudflats.wordpress.com/