Sarah Palin

"I didn't hesitate." Those are the words that came from Sarah Palin's lips when Charles Gibson asked for her reaction to McCain's choice. In this first national interview, covered by ABC News, we finally get to see what goes on in her skull...which is apparently not very much. As with most of the questions, he had to ask this three times just to get a straight answer and confirm that the responses were not just a slip of the tongue.

WATCH THIS INTERVIEW. In fact, I hope everyone is paying attention to everything about this woman, because McCain is rising in the polls and quite possibly going to drag this clown into the oval office. She's a perfect symbol of what the United States has become: superficial and in power (as opposed to the downtrodden Enlightenment experiment we used to be).

Let me go over this again. She explains that she had no qualms about whether she was qualified to be the vice president. "You can't blink. You have to be wired in a way of being so commited to the mission...so I didn't blink then, even." How do I put this into words? I thought we could view the Bush administration as a vaccine against electing unfit leaders, but I stand corrected. Apparently the majority of Americans prefer personality over intelligence.

I'll leave the rest of the interview to you, but this first minute of the interview spells it out. Anyone who knows anything about her understands she is a Pentecostal (fundamentalist) Christian, was head of the FCA (not SGA) in school, and pageant winner, including third place in the Miss Alaska competition (we know how smart you have to be to win such an election--i.e. Miss South Carolina). She's a regular starry-eyed, attractive, Christian girl who wants to spread her message of the church with an iron fist. She stands for family values (like pregnancy avoidance through abstinence only) and fulfilling our manifest destiny as a "Free" nation to spread freedom and squash anyone who opposes what we think. Like she said, "You can't blink."

I'd imagine that's a good paraphrase of what Al-Qaeda leaders repeat to recruits. The same goes for Japanese imperial soldiers during WWII, CIA investigative torturers, and--most notably--THE CHURCH.

This is why we have seperation of Church and State. Religion is an indulgence of the mind. We don't have all the answers of how and why we exist, but there are about as many seductive, nearsighted ideologies out there as there are types of alchoholic drinks (including cocktails). If someone who believes their brand of ancient mythology has all the wisdom needed to run the most powerful nation on the planet, there is little seperation of church and state when they move into office. I continue to make this point until I'm proven wrong: faith tends to be the number one virtue in Christianity, indeed in all Abrahamic religion. The emphasis is not on the teachings, but on the teacher--Jesus. This is an authoritarian system. The only religions I'm aware of that are sympathetic to democracy are Buddhism, Taoism, and maybe Hinduism. Barack seems the closest we have ever come to a politician who bothers to understand Eastern philosophy, so that's my opinion plug.

To make this more clear, Sarah Palin is a proud Pentecostal Christian. Pentecostalism is explicitly distinct from other sects, or "denominations," for the notion that salvation is only recieved through total faith. The idea is you can be a benevolent person, get baptized, and still go to hell if you don't fully believe what the Gospels say. This means the Ghandi, most of the "founding fathers," and Mother Theresa are probably starting to mix as they melt in the eternal flames. The Dalai Lama will be joining them within the century, I suppose...

It actually hurts to say that. Quite possibly, no one is a better living example of Christ than His Holiness, Tenzin Gyatso. Whatever the implications, the point is that Sarah needs to understand that going to war isn't like going moose-hunting with her dad. People die, families are destroyed, and nothing is accomplished. Questions are pointless and she wants to get this point across that she is fixed on her course if elected. She is a beauty contest winner who follows a two-thousand-year-old cult. We all know it, but not everyone bothers to see the severe problem with this picture.
The crusades are back, and it' not just the fault of the Islamic world. Palin is incapable of making decisions outside of her religious world-view, and this terrifies me.

If the anti-Christ is coming after all, it will be someone who calls themself a Christian.