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Just when I think I've seen everything...
For the record, I don't think John McCain is a terrible man, I think he's just clueless. Perhaps his mind is starting to go. While some politician's remain sharp and vibrant into old age (Tony Benn is some years McCain's senior and still going strong), some are unlucky enough to be subject to the ravages of old age. There's no shame in that, old age just makes you likely to suffer from a variety of illnesses and I am honestly of the opinion that John McCain is suffering from the onset of various age-related mental disabilities and the Republican party is manipulating a confused old man.
One of the ways I think he is being manipulated is the selection of his VP. The more I check Sarah Palin's record, the more I become scared that Palin is one walking manifestation of pure evil. Now, I don't like to throw the word "evil" around very much (although I've called Cheney such several times) because I think the word "evil" is overused. With the exception of cops, lawyers and perhaps paramedics, most of us don't come face to face with true evil very often. The result is that we tend to think of evil as some rampaging cartoon monster or Jack the Ripper, skulking the shadows with knife in hand and yes, that is one form that true evil can take but there is another form of evil which comes by day, wearing a suit and just doing it's job. At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, most Nazis were not actively engaged in the massacre of civilians that we call the Porajmos, Jews call the Shoah and the world refers to as the Holocaust. The Nazi shovelling bodies into the ovens, he's unquestionably evil but what of the man whose job consists simply of moving numbers around, who decides that X number go to Aushwitz while X number go to Bergen-Belsen. Is he truly evil? That depends on your moral code, of course, but by my moral code, if he knows what he was doing (and it's interesting to note how patchy information was, even within the Nazi party), he is just as guilty.
The point of that rather long digression is to illustrate the many forms which true evil can take and how easily it can escape notice. Is John McCain as evil as the Nazis? No. Is Dick Cheney? Possibly. Is Sarah Palin? I doubt it but there are myriad forms of lesser evil, a hundred tiny evils which someone can commit and still not be as bad as the Nazis, still be allowed in polite company, still be abiding by the law even. True evil doesn't reveal itself all at once and never at first glance. Sometimes, evil can have a pretty face.
Sarah Palin supported charging rape victims for being examined. If you don't know what a "rape kit" is, it's a collection of sterile instruments used for gathering evidence from victims after they have been raped and, because the kit must be utterly sterile, it can only be used once. Cost, about three hundred bucks. Wassila, Alaska was one of the very few towns which charged victims for cost of the rape kit used to collect evidence from them. Now, in fairness to Sarah Palin, she didn't originate the law and, having trained in law, I can see how that law might have got onto the books as an oversight and escaped notice. the complexities of the law are so labyrinth that stupid or even cruel laws escape notice and stay on the books all the time. However, once that law was brought to Palin's attention, she didn't repeal it, ask for it's repeal or even order it's non-enforcement. Palin's police chief in Wassila actively supported this law. When the Alaskan Congress found out about this, they passed a law preventing it (and while they should be praised for that, it's pretty much a no-brainer). A similar law made it's way to the US Congress because, while unusual, Wassila wasn't the only town doing so. The bill was sponsored by Joe Biden and, you would think, would have been opposed only by Jesse Helms and similar people. In the event, it was opposed by John McCain. While I know it won't happen, I'd love for some daring reporter to ask McCain about that vote because I'd love to hear, even if he misunderstood, what possible reasoning he could have had for voting against.
Sarah Palin supports aerial hunting of wolves. Now, I've been hunting many times and I've been a target shooter for my entire adult life so I'm not anti-gun or anti-hunting by any means. Thing is, a responsible hunter should have two major objectives: 1) Ensure the safety of yourself and your party; 2) Cause as little pain to the animal as possible. The ideal of number two is the one-shot kill (and personally, I won't take the shot unless I can be sure of that). Different hunters have different moral codes, of course, but pretty much every reasonable hunter I've spoken to is opposed to causing unnecessary suffering. In firing from a helicopter though, there is no way to avoid unnecessary suffering. The motion of the vehicle pretty much rules out a clean kill. I'd imagine that was the reasoning behind the federal government ban on the practice. So, if the federal government has banned the practice, why does Sarah Palin allow it? Well, although I don't know all the details (and if anyone does, I'd be obliged if you could share), she seems to have found a loophole. So while she manages to avoid violating the letter of the law, she is in clear violation of it's spirit.
Sarah Palin is pro-life in all circumstances. She's not just pro-life, she's "shoot the abortionist" pro-life. Most people on the pro-life side are not terrible people. Contrary to popular belief, most of them aren't knuckle-dragging lunatics who think a woman's womb should be state property. For the vast majority, they have a moral disagreement about when life begins or when it is worthy of protection and that's an issue on which reasonable people may differ which is why any number of otherwise liberal politicians are personally pro-life but vote pro-choice (most obvious example, John Kerry) and that is why the vast majority of pro-lifers will make an exception for rape and/or incest and especially for both (I hope I don't have to draw you a picture there). Sarah Palin is not one of those reasonable people. There is a scene on the film Goodfellas where Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta) is laying out the unreasonableness of the mob where every arguement ends with "fuck you, pay me". One could easily reimagine the complaints of Palin and those like her in the same manner: Raped? "fuck you, have the kid", screwed by daddy? "fuck you, have the kid", forcibly gang-banged by daddy's buddies? "fuck you, have the kid". This is a level of unreasonableness usually only shown by the small portion of the pro-life contingent who are knuckle-dragging misogynists, who view a woman not as a being in her own right but purely as a birthing chamber for children. Being a woman doesn't immunise Sarah Palin from being misogynist any more than it immunised Margeret Thatcher.
Sarah Palin is for abstinence-only education. Now, this one requires some clarifying. Abstinence really does prevent STDs and pregnancy. Abstinence-based sex-ed which essentially says "you guys should abstain but if you absolutely must have sex, here's how to protect yourself". There's a reasonable discussion to be had there and, if it's taught properly, that approach can work (although morally, I think abstinence is a non-issue). Abstinence-only sex-ed simply doesn't work. It rests on demonising sex and, usually, lying to students. Proponants of this approach often argue that the abstinence-based form undercuts it's own message and yet, the message outlined above is very simple. I honestly can't think of a time when I was both physically capable of sex and unable to understand that message. Granted, I'm a genius (not a boast, I have the paperwork to prove it) but applying the same criteria to my siblings (one of whom is autistic), I can't think of a time they'd have problems understanding it either. Saying "you should abstain but here's how to protect yourself if you don't" is not a complicated message. In contrast, abstinence-only sex-ed usually relies on vastly exagerting the dangers of pre-marital sex. Now, what kind of message do you think those kids get when they discover they've been lied to? That's right, they distrust everything else you told them as well. And why should they trust you? You lied to them. Sarah Palin actively supports this approach.
Sarah Palin has some batty religious views. I try not to take issue with people's faith too much because, as a man of faith myself, I'm all too aware that my own religious views might look batshit to an outsider. So I'm not going to take issue with Mitt Romney's magic underwer. Sounds crazy to me but what the hell, takes all sorts. And if Sarah Palin was a mainstream Christian, no problem. If she followed one of the more reasonable minority variants (Quaker, for example), fine. If she were, say, an Orthodox Jew or a Muslim (except the Wahabbi variety), no big deal. Sarah Palin though, supports teaching creationism. Not old-earth creation or it's bastard offspring "Intelligent Design" (quotes because as a theory, it's totally lacking intelligence) but literal, Genesis-style creationism.Now, I can understand the person who believes that God started evolution, that's fine (that's my own position actually). I can understand the person, usually a scientist, who quibbles with the exact details or the specific timescale. But literal young earth creationism? I'm sorry, I can't vote for you and I don't think anyone else should. Palin's denomination believes in "speaking in tongues", where a believer is supposedly overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit and rolls around on the floor babbling like a toddler. This is apparently a great sign of divine blessing but to the rest of us, it looks like insanity or, possibly, rabies. Sarah Palin has told congregations to pray for an oil pipeline, that the pipeline is "God's will" (watching Pat Buchanon deny this was hysterical when we'd just seen the video). That's called abusing the faith of the congregation, it's something dictators do. I'm not going to hold Palin responsible for the anti-semitic comments of a guest speaker at her church (he described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God’s “judgment of unbelief” of Jews who haven’t embraced Christianity) but it is worrying that she hasn't denounced those comments, especially in light of how Obama was virtually crucified (pun intended) when his pastor made far milder remarks. She tried to ban certain books from the local library on religious grounds. This too is a hallmark of dictators.
You might notice that I've left aside her family issues here. I've left aside the recurring rumour that Palin greeted the news of Obama's victory in the primaries with "so sambo beat the bitch" (I apologise for those words but I believe in confronting such language) because that's unproven. I've even left aside her economic record. Even leaving all that aside, Sarah Palin's record says she is not just far-right, not just one on the thug-like wing of the Republican party but actively evil. And true evil like that can't be reasoned with, it doesn't recognise boundries or laws. When true evil gets a taste of power, it doesn't stop until it gets total power. John McCain is a confused old man. He needs to be beaten in this election but once that's done, he needs to be quietly retired somewhere. Sarah Palin, though, is evil and she must be stopped.
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