Sick and Scared of Sarah Palin

Yes, I know this is a family blog--I hope to somehow print and keep this diary of our lives and all of the pictures so the boys can cherish them for years to come. I also feel that it's important for them to have a picture of the history of our times and their parents' take on important events...so with this justification in mind, here goes...

I read an article in Newsweek tonight that effectively articulated the feelings of fear and dread I've had about this campaign for the past few weeks. In fact, my husband has strongly discouraged me from watching the news these days (perhaps it's a sweet gesture to protect me from the anxiety attacks I've been having after the coverage of the antics and smear tactics of the Republicans. Maybe it's to spare himself for the inevitable rants that come after wards, or maybe he just wants to protect his precious television from the objects that may come flying at it).

So, I'm going to quote some of the highlights of this essay by Sam Harris:

...Palin may be a perfectly wonderful person, a loving mother, and a great American success story--but she is a beauty queen/sports reporter who stumbled into small-town politics, and who is now on the verge of stumbling into, or upon, world history. The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. "They think they're better than you!" is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical ) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. "Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!" Yes, all too ordinary.

We have now witness apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter's microphone, saying things like, "I'm voting for Sarah because she's a mom. She knows what it's like to be a mom." Such sentiments suggest an uncanny detatchment from the real problems of today. The next administration must iimmediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure, and Internet security...the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them.

Palin's most conspicuous gaffe in her interview with Gibson has been widely discussed. The truth is, I didn't much care that she did not know the meaning of the phrase "Bush Doctrine." And I am quite sure that her supporters didn't care either. What I do care about are all the other things Palin is guaranteed not to know, or will be glossing only under the frenzied tutelage of John McCain's advisers. What doesn't she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin's ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth.

What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents--and her supporters celebrate--the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world's only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth.

"Governer Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child's brain?"

"Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I'm an avid hunter."

"But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind."

"That's just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink."

The prospects of a Palin administration are far more frightening in fact than those of a Palin Institute for Pediatric Neurosurgery. Ask yourself, has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with.

I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex and dangerous with each passing hour, and our position within it is growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity and from empirical reality as to unite the entire world against us.