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Why Is Palin Such a Good Liar For God?, October 6, 2008
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McCain and Palin are two very different people. McCain was never able to energize the Evangelical base because the base knew that as a world-weary, philandering, gambling-addicted, hard-living fly boy, politician McCain lacked the sincerity of fundamentalist conviction. When trying to speak their language of absolutist morality McCain's words rang hollow. But Palin is the real thing.
Palin is by the very nature of her beliefs a born, in fact eager, liar. She can do no other. She must lie or admit she is wrong, about just about everything she believes in, from a young earth, to dinosaurs roaming the planet alongside men, to the nature of global warming, to Israel's place of primacy in the prophetic "End Times" and, lately, as to the causes of the economic meltdown. Get inside Palin's head and you'll hear a little girl telling herself biblical stories where she's always the hero. Palin's fantasy world is about being "called" -- Esther-like -- to "save" her people. And lying for God is okay, in fact it's good. Her biblical heroes (King David, Samson, Queen Esther...) all lied for God when they needed to in order to defeat God's enemies.
Palin is the female version of Bill Murray in the movie Caddyshack fantasizing... "A hush falls on the crowd..." about her destiny of insane godly glory. Only it's not insane, but real, real as McCain's calculated I'll-win-at-all-costs ploy in choosing a fanatic as a running mate.
The election of 2008 is best be understood as (what I and all sane Americans hope) is the last gasp of the desperate born-again religious movement that that has been running America into the ground for the last eight years. A pessimist might see it otherwise. Maybe it's the first shot in the next phase of our internal wars of religion, otherwise known as the culture wars, wherein an ignorant hate-filled, frightened American minority is trying to impose on the United States its own version of religion, in the same way that Saudi fanatics have imposed strict Islam on their unfortunate fellow citizens.
Palin was actually correct when, in her debate with Senator Biden, she said we need to stand up and "fight for freedom." What she didn't mention was that the greatest threat to American freedom is coming from the unhinged religious fanatics who are feeding on her poisonous lies, re-energized by a vision of overt "he's not like us!" racist politics on behalf of their God.