First, the daughter's pregnancy. So what? Nothing that many families haven't been through. Obama's response was the classiest: leave families out of it. (Of course, maybe we should reconsider the effectiveness of abstinence-only education).
Second, Palin's alleged abuse of power in trying to get a state trooper fired. It looks like the trooper -- Palin's one-time brother in law -- was armed and making death threats against Palin's sister and father, and even her own family. The question may not be why Palin was trying to get him fired, but why bad cops are so entrenched in the blue wall that even a state's governor can't get them out. If this guy was threatening to kill his father-in-law and the state's governor, how does he treat ordinary people at traffic stops?
But then I saw this.
Jeremiah Wright, I can handle. He's just mad at history. I understand where he's coming from. And we can dismiss him as a nut. His star is sinking.
But, the Huffington Post reports, Palin's pastor Ed Kalnins, a northern strip mall Machiavelli, is a much scarier fellow. He believes that we are living in the end times, and that his church -- in which Palin grew up -- is God's instrument in helping to bring on those end times. And he has been praying for Palin to rise to power.
Palin herself doesn't have an opinion on Iraq policy -- but she believes that Iraq is a mission from God. This is reminiscent of the Vietnam-era Special Forces slogan, "Kill em' all, let God sort 'em out."
Here's Palin in June 2008 -- three months ago:
"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God," she exhorted the congregants. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."
Pastor Kalnins believes his people (Jesus first, America second) are engaged in a holy war for their faith (the Arabic term for this is, I believe, "Jihad.") Jesus -- the messiah formerly known as the Prince of Peace -- "operated from that position of war mode." Parishioners who voted for John Kerry in 2004 were doomed to hell. Likewise those who question President Bush -- or the pastor:
"I'm not going tell you who to vote for, but if you vote for this particular person, I question your salvation. I'm sorry ... If every Christian will vote righteously, it would be a landslide every time," Kalnins maintained in 2004.
"We see his hand directing all the affairs of the country. A movement has started for us to occupy ourselves with our global responsibilities."
Oh, wait -- that last part wasn't Kalnin or Palin. It was Mahmoud Ahmedinejad -- referring to the Twelfth Imam, and not to Jesus.
Even Palin's energy policy is based in evangelicism: "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said, referring to the long-coming Alaskan gas pipeline.
Perhaps this is all a breathless panic, quotations decontextualized to make everything seem much scarier than it really is. Maybe when Palin says Iraq is god's work, she means it like selling Girl Scout cookies is God's work -- it's a barucha, a blessing, as we Jews say. Not in the "we're helping unfold God's plan to bring the righteous fires of death on all the Muslims and Jews in our time" way that her preacher sees to mean it.
And maybe when Palin asks God to help build the pipeline, she means it in the same sense as the bumper sticker I once saw on the wall of the Red Dog saloon in Juneau: "God, please send us another oil boom. We promise not to spend it all on booze this time."
Certainly, the GOP will use it to their electoral advantage when "Christians" (and I was reminded just yesterday by a student of this stripe that when evangelicals say "Christian," they don't include Catholics or Baptists or Lutherans or Presbyterians) interpret liberal panic about Palin as part of the perceived war against their faith.
And here we are, locked again in Rovian Holy War, with the Republicans spreading the meme that Obama is the anti-Christ, and liberals shouting from the rooftops that Palin is the Christian anti-everybody-else.
McCain either didn't know this about Palin -- in which case, he's a boob -- or he knew it and unleashed this holy war fervor purposefully -- because it's only with the 4% support of evangelicals that he can, like Bush, tip an otherwise tied electorate. In which case, he's a complete asshole who'll rip the country apart to win, introducing his little nuclear option while grinning behind a podium that says "Country First".
Yet maybe all this end of times stuff is real prophesy. It sure seems to be unfolding that way. And perhaps Bush wasn't the fool who brings it on, either, by Nostradamus' prediction.
Perhaps it's the guy who delivers unto Palin -- who is aligned with both the Christian Fascist movement and the oil industry, likely without even knowing what fascism is -- the Keys to the Kingdom: America's nuclear codes.
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