Will The Real Sarah Palin Please Stand Up?

Not being part of the "lamestream media," perhaps Demi-Governor Sarah Palin would mind explaining to me, a member of the "Main Street" that she speaks of so often, just what she stands for. I'm serious. I am not a political pundit, not a talking head, not even affiliated fully with a political party (save having worked on Election Day in 2008 as a Democratic Party poll challenger at my local polling place). Being a lover of reason and logic, though, I am often troubled how she seems to say one thing, then say something else that does not mesh with something she previously stated.

Take, for example, fiscal responsibility. From what I gather, she is all for government having to pay for the things it does. Well, who doesn't? We'd love the Federal government to have the funding necessary to pay for things without driving up the national debt. However, if that is the case, then how come she is advocating for the continuation of the Bush-era tax cuts, tax cuts which had no funding source behind them? That would seem to be contradictory to her message; if we do not collect enough in taxes, we will not have enough money to pay for necessary government programs.

Of course, that would lead naturally to her position against big government. The problem is: she has given no indication as to which parts of government are no longer necessary, and how much it would cost to shut them down, because it's not just a question of letting everyone go and closing the doors and turning out the lights. Then there would the problem of all these people being suddenly unemployed; of course, they could simply pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

There are her constant statements about her belief in, and the need to defend, the Constitution from the current administration, which is busy subverting it. Mind you, she has not told us how it is being subverted, nor can she point to one thing she has done to prevent the "subversion" from going on. It may be that her mere presence in the public arena is enough to keep the administration in abeyance, so that when people inconveniently point out that no subversion is going on, she can claim credit for it.

Also, when it comes to her love of the Constitution, she seems to have a hard time accepting that the provisions of it apply equally to all Americans. Take her opposition to the Muslim Community Center to be built two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City. Despite the fact that the developers have every right under the provisions of the First Amendment to build their center, to promote worship of Islam and better relations with other religions, Mrs. Palin is vehemently against their exercise of their rights. Such a contradiction must not have escaped her notice... or did it?

She is very big on freedom of speech, especially where that speech is hers. Strangely, again at odds with her persona as "Defender of the Constitution," is her opposition to those who protest against The Tea Party at rallies. What does she have against the right to peaceably assemble and express disagreement with the positions The Tea Party holds? Does she honestly believe that all those who do not agree with her are not entitled to voice their opinion?

While we are on the subject of personal freedom and liberty, can we discuss her opposition to abortion? Now, abortion is not a good thing, in and of itself; the fact is, there should be no necessity for it, but in the world we live in, it is a necessary evil, owing mainly to the machinations of men who do not have the honor for or the respect of women to do what is right, or whose intent is malevolent and malicious. Add to that an imperfect system of sexual education, and you have a prescription for increased abortion. It is a choice we hope a woman never has to make, but if she finds herself in such a situation, it is a choice she should have, as master of her own body. Unless, of course, you live in Sarah Palin's world. She, who chose to bring a child to term with a developmental disability, would seek to remove that choice from other women, and at the same time, make it harder for them and their peers to get the education necessary to prevent unwanted pregnancies from happening in the first place.

Let's not even get started on her desire to "Drill Baby, Drill"; she would tie us even further to a finite resource that is becoming harder and harder to obtain without extreme measures or without selling ourselves politically to other nations who hold the supply. An expansion of solar, wind, water, and nuclear power would severe our vulnerability to the whims of foreign powers, who could cripple us through the mere choking off of our fuel supply. As the recent Gulf Coast Oil Disaster pointed out, the lengths we must go to, to secure energy independence through drilling for more oil, will lead to even more wide-ranging consequences than trying to wring a depleted resource out of every nook and cranny of the Earth.

It is clear from her rhetoric and her staunch belief in the righteousness of her "cause," that she is not subject to self-doubt or self-analysis. The contradictions of her positions, and the hypocrisy they represent, show that, rather than being the "savior" of America, she is yet another in a long series of political busybodies whose goal is to impose her view upon the rest of us, running roughshod over the civil liberties that we all enjoy. She is unwilling to address these issues, preferring to blame her lack of critical reasoning on attempts by her opponents to discredit her. She would rather deflect criticism than meet it head-on. She believes that she knows what is best for us, and what is best for us is to cede control to her and her cronies.

It is clear that Demi-Governor Palin chooses not to see what is so clear to the rest of us -- that America is stronger for a diversity of opinion and for the ability of any citizen to live as they would, protected by a strong government, which will not allow others to usurp or invalidate their liberties. Given her myopia, the idea that she and her compatriots in The Tea Party are somehow going to "restore America," is as laughable as it is ludicrous. America does not require restoration; it does require strong and reasoned leadership, and that is something Mrs. Palin has proven that she cannot provide.

The Long, Dark Tea-Time Of America

I must admit some fascination and an admiration for the Tea Party movement, albeit a small amount. That it represents a group of Americans who are tired of politics as usual and want to see lower taxes and a return to the Constitution, is commendable. That those messages come attached to meaningless and nonsensical arguments, specious reasoning, and a general ignorance does not do them any favors. They are, frankly, no different than the parties they have split off from, more about the message than about concrete and reasonable results.

If there's anything that irks me most about them, it's that the more moderate among us, those of us who are well-intentioned, reasonable, compassionate, and capable of compromise, are not making the same amount, if not more, noise that the Tea Party. For all their bluster and bravado, the resounding sound that emanates from a Tea Party rally is a cacophony of worn-out phrase and quarter-baked ideas, most of which have been recycled from the over two hundred-year history of our nation, and have been found to be as wanting in the past as they are now. Yet the moderate Americans, the ones who think for themselves, and who are the eventual swing voters in every election, are not looking upon these people with the decent amount of horror they should, and reacting accordingly. Some of us have taken to blogs and newspapers and web sites trying to sound a rallying cry, yet hearing only crickets.

America is beautiful for its freedom of speech and religion and press and justice for all, but mixed in with all that is the undercurrent of restlessness that attends people who see all of that as the province of a few, not the many, and believe in it only by their rules. The beauty in our Republic is that by using a representative system, we can hold at bay those who would seek to impose their will on all of us only for the reason that it is their will. This is not to say all the ideals they hold are somehow wrong, but many are nonsensical. They are mere sound bites and party plank tropes that are simply uttered every election cycle as if they were powerful incantations that could force us all under the thrall of the chanter. When you hear "smaller government," "lower  taxes," "getting government of our backs," and the like, it stirs a passion, but when you look behind the words, you see very little substance that would give the phrases any power. No one can define just how big the government should be, or how much money should be made available to run it. No one can explain how having regulatory agencies that oversee the safety of all Americans, both physical and financial is truly detrimental. No one can explain why it is all right for the government to tell a woman she cannot have an abortion, while at the same time saying it is wrong for the government to tell us what foods we can eat or what drugs we can take or how safe our cars should be.

Anyone can see -- or should be able to see --  that the solutions to the problems we face in this country are not solved by simple platitudes and shouted exhortations. Nor are they solved merely through foxy, down home wisdom, nor the rallying cries of centuries past. The problems that exist now, are problems of our making, constructed by a headlong technological rush into the 21st Century without a consequent social growth. We are still mired in issues that have been extant since recorded human history began: war, disease, pestilence, racism, sexism, poverty, and scarce resources. We continue to tread the same paths as so many of our ancestors have, because we have been unable to uncouple ourselves from the tired philosophies of the past. It is not enough to advance technologically; we must, concurrently, take the advantages technology gives us, and use it to make normative changes that advance us as a society and a species. To do less is to recycle the past, and tinge it with new illogic and ignorance.

If we want change in America, true change, then it starts with us. It starts with deciding to lay down pat answers and party favoritism, and sitting down at the table and seeing where we are at. We must bring all our minds together, and we must take a reasonable look at what we have and what we need, then proceed to map out a strategy for correcting the long-running ills of society. Whatever path it takes, we must be willing to put aside whatever ideas we may have clung to in the past, to give these new ideas a chance to work. Until we are willing to relinquish our grasp on futility, and place our energies toward truth, compassion, and action, the Tea Party and all other parties will simply go down as a continuation of the same treadmill we have been running on since the country's inception. Let us work together, that all might rise.

Weeping

I weep for...

Birthdays missed
Anniversaries not celebrated
Appointments not kept
Births unattended
Promotions missed
Prayers unanswered
For those who jumped
Those who burned
The heroes who rushed in
Everyone who watched
Leaders feeling helpless
Companies destroyed
Empty cubicles
Last messages on voice mail
Passengers uncomprehending
Passengers unyielding
Soldiers undaunted
Those who stayed
Those who ran

I weep.

The Towers Fall Again

September 11th is being trampled on. It started with the conspiracy theorists and their wild, ridiculous, and unsupported accusations. It continued with an invasion of Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the attack. It was sullied by Rudy Giuliani's insipid and infuriating use of that day as a rallying point for his Presidential bid. It has had dirt cast on it by the ignorant and hate-inspired ramblings of those who would oppose a Muslim cultural center in the same general area as Ground Zero, even though it would not be visible from the site, and would be there to promote peace and understanding. And now, as a pièce de résistance to the creeping morass that engulfs the day, a pastor of a fringe "Christian" sect has been allowed to co-opt the narrative with his reprehensible and ridiculous idea to burn Qurans on the anniversary, which has only served to inflame the passions of devout Muslims with its offensiveness.

The World Trade Center Towers, symbols of American preeminence and pride, linchpins of the lower Manhattan skyline, victims of hatred and hubris, are being torn asunder once again, not by planes loaded with volatile fuel, but people filled with volatile rhetoric. Unlike when Francis Scott Key was moved to write The Star Spangled Banner, this moment, which could have been made the rallying cry for further unity of purpose and of people, has been turned into a divisive and discordant event. The shock, and dismay, and grief of the day, has been replaced by hyperbole, bigotry, and hypocrisy.

Why?

I was there, in that city, on that day, miles from the epicenter of destruction, but still tied to it by the company I worked for, which had a large amount of office space in the World Trade Center, and by memories of the very first job I held in New York City, not far from it. I had lunched amidst their tall shadows. I had marveled at their sheer height, and bulk, and beauty against the sky. I had shopped in the Borders bookstore there, and still have the bookmark I received when I made my last purchase there. Those buildings were as much a part of me as anyone, for beneath them I had heaved a sigh as my first job in Manhattan went away, the company shriveling up as so many did at the end of the Dot Com bubble. On the day I filed for unemployment, I walked all the way from Midtown to Downtown, just to stand near them, and try to absorb, even minutely, their strength. Ever night, when I walked along the heights across the Hudson River in New Jersey, I would look longingly toward them, towering in the dark, hoping I would return.

Then they were gone.

As much as one can feel for those who lost loved ones that day, and my heart is forever scarred by the thought of the pain they suffered, especially those whose family and friends had to experience the suicidal plunges of the planes they were riding on, the death those people suffered was merciful and at least they know that those they loved are in a better place, brought to peace. For those of us who lived, even those of us who were not covered in dust, showered in concrete, or standing amidst the paper falling from the sky like snow, the death is slower, more tenuous, and more painful. For though we bear not a physical scar of the day, a part of us died that day, too. A small part, to be sure, but in us lies the death of our innocence and the world we know. Hopes, aspirations, peace, tranquility, shattered just as sure as steel was shattered by the force of an airplane impact.

Perhaps it was good that our naiveté died that day, that, not unlike Pearl Harbor, we were brought back to the reality of our place in the world. However, the price we paid was the opening of Pandora's box, loosing a new round of the evils of humanity into the daylight. Bigotry, hatred, intolerance, ignorance -- all these things that had lain dormant, not cast back upon the wind, to rain down on a hapless and anxious country. It was not long before those who lived by these negative associations began to absorb them, and turn them to their purposes. The end result: a country that could have used such a horrific event to fuse itself together even more tightly, is, instead, tearing itself apart and chewing itself away.

If the mass death of the innocent is not enough for us to demand better, if we do not see this as the opportunity to unite as one, stand atop our loftiest principles, and say to our foes "you cannot hurt us while we have our freedom and liberty," then the anniversary of that day is a sad one indeed, because beyond the toll of mortal beings, and the remaining collateral damage of those of us who still suffer with the memory, there is the damage to the American spirit. By casting aside that which made us strongest, our dedication to our principles and our belief in our Constitution as the blueprint for a truly democratic country, we cease to be an ennobled. If we wish to wallow in the mud of our enemies, so be it, but that removes any honor in our actions; to do precisely what our enemies say we do, is to hand them victory in their nonsensical and reprehensible war against us.

One-Dimensional

‎"Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative." - Kurt Vonnegut

If there can be said to be one overriding reason for the political chaos that seems to grip the United States, it is that political partisanship is the order of the day, and the American citizenry has all but ceded their skepticism to the major political parties. People are very happy to wear party affiliation as some badge of honor, and are more than willing to take up their party's talking points as sword and shield to defend the political turf they claim as theirs.

It was George Washington, in his farewell address to the country when he stepped down as President, who said of political parties:

The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.

He knew from experience, that factions in politics would prevent the fledgling nation from overcoming inertia and making the bold moves that would keep it alive. Any malaise on the part of government would be exploited by foreign nations, and could lead to invasion by a foreign power. The precarious position of America at the time called for unity of purpose.

America is in no less precarious a position now. True, the idea of foreign invasion is fairly laughable, but our vulnerability is not necessarily such an overt one. Our economic power is weakening in the face of foreign competition and cheap labor, our energy supply is at the mercy of foreign powers who can cripple us by cutting off our supplies of oil, our economy is a shambles due to our over-extension of debt and the loss of jobs, and the freedom and liberty of all Americans is under attack by those who would see their brand of "morality" and "values" foisted upon the rest of us.

This is all due to the partisan bickering and sniping that has replaced civil discourse and compromise. It appears to be far more important to both the Democratic and Republican parties to fight over the spoils of democracy, plunging our Republic into stagnation and spiraling debt. It is far too important to maintain leverage, to scrap over every seat in Congress, to be able to try and enforce their agendas, than to govern the country in a spirit of fellowship and good will. It is important for one party to sabotage the President when he/she is of the other party, in hopes of derailing progress and making the President look weak. Procedural tricks and traps are used to stall, delay, or push through legislation, in an attempt to gain the upper hand. It is no longer about legislating, it is no longer about the general welfare, it is about power and who will wield.

Reaching this point is the failure of the citizenry, either through indifference, which causes us not to vote, believing we have no control over the process, or hubris, believing that we have overcome many of the country's social difficulties, or even through ignorance, allowing the major parties to do our thinking for us, lapping up their waves of dissonance and dissent. Relinquishing control of our nation, by shirking our duty as Americans, has led us to a point where we no longer truly control our own nation. We have sold our vote to the highest bidder, to the largest corporation, to the biggest braggarts and liars. Our complicity in our own political slavery is enough to make even the strongest person weep.

We are so removed from the rough-and-tumble of this nation's founding, that perhaps complacence was inevitable. The threat of loss of our newly found and hard-won freedom energized our founders, making them work together toward stabilizing and strengthening our nation. They knew that a central and strong government was going to be essential to hold the fractious colonies together, now that the imminent threat of British domination was removed. The States were going to have to be shepherded, cajoled, and in some cases forced, to maintain their cohesion, which was still new and raw. The Federal government would need broad powers, to ensure each State would treat every American equally, and to hold the Republic together through further potential strife and crises. They could not anticipate every change that would occur, every event that would influence the country, but they knew they had to put systems and rules in place to allow America to weather any potential future storm. It was their hope that common sense and common decency would carry us forward.

We take all of this for granted, now. Rather than populate Congress with representatives who can both represent us and our views, and use their god-given intelligence to do what is best for all Americans, we repeatedly elect the same power-hungry self-aggrandizers to occupy the halls of power. We have turned the election of representatives into the anointing of royalty, the creation of American barons and lords, who are loathe to relinquish their lands and titles back to the commoners. We refuse to exercise the simple act of questioning their accomplishments, of measuring their progress, of holding them up to their claims and comparing them to reality. Rather than determining what is best for ourselves and our fellow citizens, and electing people to carry out what we feel is needed, we let them dictate to us what we believe and think, and applaud them rabidly for their staunchness in the face of those who are looking to "cram things down our throats."

When you go to complain about the state of the nation, it is best to look in the mirror, for you and I and our neighbors and everyone in this country with the appointed responsibility to form a good and working government has had a hand in in it. We must shake off our complacency, we must rise, and we must demand better of our public servants. We cannot be so eager to accept everything they say at face value, and we cannot allow them to become entrenched in their seats, lest we turn them into lords and ourselves into vassals. The blood of the American body politic must occasionally be refreshed from the pool of the citizenry, as decent people stand up to take their hand at guiding the nation, just as the Founding Fathers intended it.