Time Immortal

Leave it to a British journalist to catch the deeper significance of the electoral victory of Barack Hussein Obama. The sane Hitchens brother notes:

I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America’s beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street — which runs due north from the White House — the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important. I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a suburb where Spanish is spoken as much as English, plus a smattering of tongues from such places as Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan.

As I walked, I crossed another of Washington’s secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.

They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.

Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.

These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.

They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?

The main problem with a progressive demagogue taking office is that the changes he brings about tend to be of the sort not easily dislodged from the public scene. Think of Pierre Elliot Trudeau and how he gave Canada its Charter, which purports to defend the rights and freedoms of Canadians but which, in effect, does almost the opposite. Think of nationalized , or nationalized Education, or the welfare culture extant today in most Western democracies. Think of the irregularities and insecurities that plague Immigration laws in many nations, Canada and the U.S. included.

Now imagine how it might come to pass that those things could be undone again? It’s impossible to envision, isn’t it? Or, at least, nearly so?

Even in what could be called the best-case scenarios (either a disastrous Obama presidency that swings the American populace strongly back toward an invigorated, staunchly conservative Republican party, or an Obama presidency in which Obama himself is forced by circumstances to channel the spirit of Ronald Reagan), the social changes that the Obama administration is (if only at first) going to be anxious to implement will be of the same lasting character.

And who knows who will then pay the price for such progressive excess? The unborn almost certainly will, but I doubt it will be just they who suffer.

…when one considers that most of them seem to be concerned only about control of the vagina and uterus (and not zippers or skirts) as the fundamental rights of womyn. Someone who may potentially become the ideal of classical feminism — breaking barriers, opening new options, heck, I bet she’d even push for equity laws on pay, parenting and other issues, in a conservative way (say, equal pay for equally valued work, no tax penalty for the married or for families that choose to have a single breadwinner etc.) — is not welcome because she does not ‘fight for womyn’s rights’ but wants to curtail them. They also fear that a smaller nanny state will have fewer dollars available for their pet projects, thus putting them on an equal playing field with their intrinsically stronger opponents (who never received the nanny state money in the first place. See: the outrage when Harper cancelled funding for some lefty-feminist groups as a Canadian example).

The Palin/McCain campaign needs to encounter the frothy anger with calm, reasoned responses, and their ticket will be punched into the White House.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

But not in a way that implies that the end of the piece is drawing nigh, mind you. It’s a crescendo in that sense of that two-chord sequence that percolates through the soundtrack for The Dark Knight; it swells and gets ever more grandiose each time it is heard, but it never resolves (there’s no third chord to close the sequence off)…it just leaves you hanging in this emotional limbo until the next time it thunders by (Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard are messing with us).

And it’s not just Heather Mallick, although her hit piece on Palin is a good example of what I’m getting at here. She’s not doing any better with her follow-up commentary about her “lunatic screed” (thanks to BCF for that turn of phrase), it should be noted…indeed, if nothing else, she is giving ample reinforcement to the notion that the last acceptable bigotries are those which are directed against earnest Christians and “hillbillys.”

But anyhow, no, it’s not just Mallick. Salon.com, known to be partisan but also known to be…well…at least somewhat reasonable, is running a screed against Palin penned by one Cintra Wilson.

I confess, it was pretty riveting when John McCain trotted out Sarah Palin for the first time. Like many people, I thought, “Damn, a hyperconservative, fuckable, Type A, antiabortion, Christian Stepford wife in a ’sexy librarian’ costume — as a vice president? That’s a brilliant stroke of horrifyingly cynical pandering to the Christian right. Karl Rove must be behind it.”

And as though that weren’t a doozy of an opener, Wilson is just getting warmed up:

Palin may have been a boost of political Viagra for the limp, bloodless GOP (and according to an ABC/Washington Post poll she has created a boost in McCain’s standing among white women to a 53 over Obama’s 41). But ideologically, she is their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread, revealing the ugliest underside of Republican ambitions — their insanely zealous and cynical drive to win power by any means necessary, even at the cost of actual leadership.

Sarah Palin is a bit comical, like one of those cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms. What her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter unequivocally prove, however, is that her most beloved child is the antiabortion platform that ensures her own political ambitions with the conservative right. The throat she’s so hot to cut is that of all American women.

I don’t want Sarah Palin being the representative leader and custodian of my rights, my Constitution and my country any more than I want polygamist compound leader Warren Jeffs baby-sitting for my preteen goddaughters.

As a woman who does not believe what Palin believes, the thought of such an opportunistic anti-female in the White House — in the Cheney chair, no less — is akin to ideological brain rape. What this Republican blowup doll does with her own insides in accord with her own faith is her business. But, like the worst and most terrifying of religious extremists, she seems very comfortable with the idea of imposing her own views on everyone else.

…

I did not think that women being downgraded to second-class, three-holed chattel would be a pressing concern in my lifetime. I thought it was like polio, or witch burning — an inhumane error that had already been corrected. But after eight years of Republican hegemony, and now the potential ascendance of this sheep in ewe’s clothing, I am so mortally offended I feel like it is really time for women to be angry, hardcore and disgusted again.

Let’s quickly review. Palin — a working mother of five who was elected governor of an American state (Alaska) — is “an opportunistic anti-female.” She is a (willing?) participant in her party’s “brain rape” of American women. She is a “blowup doll.” She’s no better than a Mormon fundamentalist, really. She doesn’t actually care about her kids (clearly, if she did care, she’d have aborted that little defect Trig the moment the amnio screening came back positive)…her only concern is her stance against abortion.

Wilson covers almost every smear imaginable, but then adds a particularly excreable comment as well: “I did not think that women being downgraded to second-class, three-holed chattel would be a pressing concern in my lifetime.”

Exactly how is Palin going to be the overseer of such a downgrade, being that she is, herself, a woman…and then one who has rocketed to the heights of political (and actual) power? Exactly how is Palin — whose career has consisted, it seems, of shooting through one “glass ceiling” after another purely on the merits of her leadership and character, rather than by riding the coattails of any kind of enforced “equal opportunity” policy — the instrument by which women will again be reduced to mere chattel in the U.S.? EXPLAIN TO ME HOW ELECTING A WOMAN TO THE VICE PRESIDENCY SERVES TO UNDERMINE THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN, YOU BLITHERING IDIOT! Especially when the woman in question seems to be living the ideal of feminism!

Oh, right…Palin opposes abortion. Clearly, then, she’s not really a woman.

See, this is why modern feminism is losing credibility. Palin should be the feminist ideal, the wet-dream “this is the one we’ve been waiting for!” icon of women’s lib. Instead, she is hated with a level of vitriol one has never seen deployed before by the Left; even Bush hatred never went this far. As Jonathan Kay notes, “[t]he brachuckers of 1968 would have been shocked and gratified to know that a woman would change the face of U. S. politics (and perhaps turn an election result) just 40 years after their Atlantic City street theatre — even if today’s feminists have the luxury of tilting their noses at the likes of Palin because she doesn’t toe the left-wing line.”

(This isn’t the first hit-piece that Salon has gotten roasted for, by the way. Juan Cole ran an article that has been repeatedly slammed by commentators for its comparison of Palin — who is openly Christian — to Islamic fundamentalists, of the sort that fill out the ranks of Hamas or govern Saudi Arabia.)

Ace nails, I think, the reason why all of these various hate-pieces are getting published. In the end, he says, it comes down to simply hatred, and the fact that the Left is not at all embarrassed to hide its hate; it is hate as a form of virtue, a substitute ideology to hold up in place of a vacuous one (e.g. “hope and change”).

And the kicker in all of this? For as much as the feminist/Leftist commentators insist that Palin. Is. The. Enemy. Of. Women. Everywhere!, normal, rational people are beginning to distance themselves from the screeching…and, in doing so, are shifting their support from Barrack Hussein Obama to John McCain. Which has a lot of people rattled. And rattled people will do irrational things.

Good gravy, even Obama himself is so rattled by Palin that he can’t help himself. His statement that “[y]ou can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig,” may not have been directed at Palin specifically, but it’s a close thing, following a tad too closely on the heels of Palin making a joke about herself concerning pit bulls, hockey moms, and lipstick. As Mark Shea notes, by way of comparison:

The key to political humor is it has to be either self-deprecating or else genuinely funny. So when Palin asks “What’s the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom?” and answers “Lipstick”, that’s funny.”

When the Son of the living God [Obama's supporters have attempted to deify the man -- Ken]makes a veiled reference to Palin as a pig in lipstick?: Not so funny. The era of Obama’s cool transcendence of nasty politics is over. The Hero of the Solar Myth turns out to be a Chicago Machine Pol. Team Obama is losing it, and with it, the votes of all those women who could not care less that Gloria Steinem and the NY Times thinks they are not women at all.

Palin’s the first person who ever laid a glove on the guy and he is now beginning to crack up as a result. His “pig in lipstick” remark is a sign of that. It’s also (whether he wants it to be or not) a signal to the Freakish Enemies of the Normal that the gloves are off. These people will go apesh*t on Palin and her family — and the mass migration away from the Lightworker will continue.

It’s over. He’s got nothin’. He’s so desperate he’s forgotten he’s running against McCain.

That last point is also significant. Look, the dynamics of a presidential race aren’t that hard to understand. The VP nominees are supposed to be the “attack dogs” for their respective presidential candidates, while the candidates themselves are supposed to talk about issues and policies in an attempt to win voters. The candidates take the high road, and the VP nominees deal with the mud-slinging and gutter politics. It’s not a pretty tradition, but there it is.

Obama has forgotten this, it seems. And more than a few people are (maybe prematurely) suggesting that, for “the Lightworker,” the race may now be over.

The kid’s acting like an amateur is basically why. You don’t let the *Veep* of the other party drive your campaign and *especially* you don’t let her sucker you into making the sort of personal attacks it is the job of your surrogates and lackeys to mount. The moment the Pig In Lipstick campaign comes from Obama himself, he loses one of the few precious resources he has as an Empty Suit: the illusion that he is the Lightworker, an ethereal being floating above the Old Political Paradigm. That’s almost all the guy has going for him and now he’s throwing it away because she’s gotten into his head. He showed real class when he told the Freakish Enemies of the Normal to knock off the Gynecological Inquisition and reminded people that he was the product of a out-of-wedlock tryst.

But the moment the guy starts giving into the Inner Misogynist, he’s toast. He himself may get his game back and realize what a catastrophically bad move that was. But I doubt the Freakish Enemies in the Normal will be so swift on the uptake. Up till now, the bizarre hatred of the Ordinary American that has made Palin its lightning rod has been conducted over the protests of Obama and some of the rest of the Team who can see how it’s all playing in Paducah (huge spikes in the polls for McWhatsisname/PALIN!!!!!!!). Now Obama’s chosen to give a loud and clear signal to the Palin-flesh eaters to do their worst. That’s just about the stupidest thing he could possibly have done.

McCain’s campaign team is already making sure that Obama’s slip is going viral. Meanwhile, FactCheck.org is going to town on the various false assertions being made about Palin’s record. And over in Britain, Palin’s record in office — and the reason it qualifies her for the VP slot — has not gone unnoticed:

The surprise is not that she has been in office for such a short time but that she has succeeded in each of her objectives. She has exposed corruption; given the state a bigger share in Alaska’s energy wealth; and negotiated a deal involving big corporate players, the US and Canadian governments, Canadian provincial governments, and native tribes — the result of which was a £13 billion deal to launch the pipeline and increase the amount of domestic energy available to consumers. This deal makes the charge of having “no international experience” particularly absurd.

In short, far from being a small-town mayor concerned with little more than traffic signs, she has been a major player in state politics for a decade, one who formulated an ambitious agenda and deftly implemented it against great odds.

Palin’s selection was a brilliant move by the McCain team, it seems, for two reasons. First, Palin herself will do well in office; she seems comfortable with fulfilling executive branch duties, and seems equally at ease setting out to do what needs to get done. Moreover, she’s no stranger to international dealings at a high-end, policy-making level, and her record of standing up to corruption — even at the expense of career — is fairly solid.

Secondly, though, and then more importantly, Palin’s selection has utter destabilized the Obama campaign team, and thrown his supporters into disarray. Seriously…apart from one mention of tax policy in the past two weeks, what have we heard concerning Obama’s platform since Palin made her debut speech?

On such things do elections turn.

P.S. by way of the Shaidle, I was alerted to James Lileks‘ epic-scale fisking of Mallick’s article. It should be read in full, as there is simply too much “good stuff” in it to excerpt here.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!