The Serious Failin' of Sarah Palin.

I don't think I've ever been so obsessed with a woman. I've never spent so long on the internet, googling a woman's name, checking out her facebook page, seeing if she has a Myspace, wondering if there are any clips of her on YouTube. And I definitely have not felt so strongly about a woman before that when other people I know tell me they like her, I feel an almost irrestible urge to vomit over them and bludgeon them to death with a rock.

And more sadly, I've never felt more dissapointed in a man I used to strongly admire. But the metamorphasis of John Sidney McCain the Third from a man who valued principles, ethics and bipartisanship to a sad caricature of everything intelligent free-thinking human beings loathe about American conservatism was complete with his bone-headed, reckless and downright disastrous selection of Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidental pick for the Republican candicacy.

What was he thinking? Did he think that turning on the LHC would end the universe, so was kinda fucking around,thinking his VP choice wouldn't matter? Did the routine operation to remove malignant melanoma tumours from his head, accidentally remove his brain too? How do you justify putting a woman with less foreign policy experience than ME (hell, I've taken a class in Foreign Policy Analysis at university), just one 73 year old 'heartbeat' away from being President of the United States? Has this woman even BEEN to Washington?

I'm desperately hungover, and am struggling to tone my bitter invective to a level where I will not upset small children, or get 'A word on Failure' placed on the CIA's watchlist (although,...then would I know at least one person was reading it). So I decided that someone far more qualified than me should discuss Ms. Palin, and could explain why you should be terrified.



But sometimes...the best argument against something...is to come in contact with the thing itself.



Surely, someone running as an 'agent of change' and a 'maverick' against the last eight years of disastrous failed policies and failed idealogy should probably know what it is that she is attempting to change. And Miss Palin is lucky I am hungover, because it means I am too lazy to find footage of where she claims to have fought against 'pork-barrel' politics (the idea of conducting politics according to what is in the immediate interest of your state, and your voters rather than in the greater good of America) despite the large subsidies recieved by citizens of her state of Alaska. Worst of all is her claim to be a staunch supporter of the 'pro-life' movement, holding up her choice to give birth to her special needs son, Trig, as evincing a committment to the cause. Firstly, Sarah - don't wax lyrical about your ability to make the right moral choice when this is a choice you seek to deny to all other American women. Secondly, what kind of monstrous bitch invokes the decision of whether or not to abort her mentally disabled son, on account of his mental disabilities, and actually uses this as a way of picking up votes within the religious right?

Lastly, the Palin pick is disturbing not for the serious issues it raises about John McCain's judgement and the ability of Sarah Palin to be ready on day 1, 2 or 1076...but for what it says about America. Because to my horror, the Palin pick has not been laughed off by the American electorate as some bad joke pulled by the closest thing US politics has to Grandpa Simpson....in large swathes Palin has been embraced, legitimised, even energising the conservative base with her committment to guns, god and foetuses. I have been told that Roe v Wade and the Second Amendment continue to have a noxious influence on the America psyche and 'the culture wars' but I never expected it to be so damaging (or depressing). In a year where the fall on Wall St is as damaging to the idealogy of capitalism as the fall of the Berlin Wall was to communism, where the Middle East dissolves further into a fractured, broken basketcase, where Putin reminded us all why Russians make the best Bond villians...the idea of democracy according to huge numbers of voting-age Americans is that elections should not be decided by who has the best plan to solve very real, very scary issues but instead by who you would rather have a beer with, and who you think best shares your 'values'.

Sarah Palin, may, as has be noted be America's very first VPILF. But if the American people are stupid enough to have her one step away from answering the red phone at 3am this time next year, then not just America, but the world...is fucked.

Alex.