Sarah's Dilemma... Salvation or Oblivion

The following piece of incomprehensibleness tumbled from the mouth of Sarah Palin as she spoke at the Iowa Freedom Summit this past weekend :

"Things must change for our government. Look at it. It isn’t too big to fail. It’s too big to succeed! It's too big to succeed, so we can afford no retreads or nothing will change with the same people and same policies that got us into the status quo. Another Latin word, status quo, and it stands for, ‘Man, the middle-class everyday Americans are really gettin’ taken for a ride.’ That's status quo, and GOP leaders, by the way, y'know the man can only ride ya when your back is bent. So strengthen it. Then the man can't ride ya, America won't be taken for a ride, because so much is at stake and we can't afford politicians playing games like nothing more is at stake than, oh, maybe just the next standing of theirs in the next election."

If her teleprompter was broken she should have just stopped talking until it was repaired. Maybe she should have scribbled the meanings of words she did not know on her palms. To say she is ignorant is not to hate on Sarah Palin. She does not know; and she does not care that she does not know. Ultimately Mrs Palin is another human being who deserves our sympathy. She is a wife, a mother, and a grand-mother. Her dilemma is indeed a shared one… How do we chart the course of our lives given the gifts we have acquired and the opportunities that life presents to us. The challenge we all face is one that demands that we avail ourselves of a moral compass as we chart the course of our ambitions. This is where many of us fall down. This is where Sarah has fallen. When we race ahead into the uncertain future blind-folded by a morally and ethically challenged perspective, we inevitably find ourselves unable to navigate away from the stumbling blocks in our path. Hence our almost certain down-fall... A broken teleprompter not withstanding.

There comes a point at which Wisdom suggests that we stop and take stock. When we ignore the prompting of Wisdom we suffer an existential stumbling that lands us down the slippery path of self-destruction. It is time for Sarah to stop and take stock. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows an overwhelming majority and a plurality of the American public want her to find a quiet place and retreat there from our presence. That’s putting it as kindly as I care to. It would be advisable for her to avail herself of the implicit wisdom of such a recourse.

To be sure, Sarah Palin is no political, rhetorical, or philosophical tour de force. She brings nothing new or useful to the nation’s political discourse. No one has any doubt that picking her as a Vice-Presidential candidate was an error of epic proportions by the Republican establishment. If they refused to acknowledge this then, they now have no doubt given the record of her public utterances. Her abbreviated spell at Fox News is proof of this. Palin has shown herself to be nothing more than a ruthless prospector, mining away at the underground of our nation’s still present bigotry. Her specific appeal is to a cultural fringe unflinchingly unenthusiastic about the progress we are making in our still young democracy.

To continue as a mercenary tongue for the hateful and obstructive influences that keep her motor running, is to assure herself a place on the garbage heap of the American political and cultural consciousness. Her dilemma is a function of her self ordained destiny. For Sarah it is either salvation or oblivion. She has time to change course. And she should.