Rant: A House Divided

You've seen it on the news, in the papers, across the internet and from the podium. Apparently John Edwards was only half right in talking about the "two Americas". There are two Americas divided by reality, not the poverty lines of Edwards' mantra.

According to Sarah Palin, Nancy Pfotenhauer and Michelle Bachmann America is divided into the Pro or "real" America and the Anti or "fake" America. If you're curious as to what exactly they said Jon Stewart can elaborate, though not without a few explicitives.

I am utterly beside myself in awe. It is beyond my understanding, my comprehension, my basic faith in the fundamental goodness imbued in us by God's own image that these kinds of sentiments can exist. Sparta? This is madness!

That precipitous insanity is the single most disturbing milestone of this election. The unruly and isolated extremists making a name for themselves at McCain rallies and on YouTube were stomach turning, Revered Wright was troubling, but this is above and beyond all other competitors. Unless McCain calls for his loyal supporters to rise up as an army against socialism, to bear their arms and strike out against the demonic liberals seeking to corrupt their nation, nothing can possibly dethrone this critical failure in rational thought.

There is no rational thought process to find here, no workable logic by which one can disqualify the very city that has defined America for decades. This crass and banal division of America is an unconscionable attack on the "other". "America" is now a buzzword for neoconservatives, not a country. Do not mistake their fervor for nationalism. What we see is entirely, and completely, about a national clique in its death throes.

The Republicans have an important choice, either toss the extremists off the ship or let the whole thing sink. It's a difficult choice because extremists are almost always activists, and activists are extremely important to running campaigns. Ceding such a significant amount of power is a painful suggestion, but it's the right thing to do. Ultimately, it's the best thing to do as anything else gravely risks complete self destruction.

Whatever happens, I'm still shocked and discouraged that these sentiments have been so boldly and carelessly thrown onto the airwaves by such important people. We have already eroded our foreign relations, must our internal ones suffer as well?

Factual Basis

I won't bother linking the video, but I was highly amusing by an exchange between CNN's Campbell Brown and the McCain campaign's own Tucker Bounds. The exchange is reported to be the cause of McCain canceling his Larry King Live appearance.

The "interview" was interesting in that Brown asked an obvious and basic question: Given that the McCain campaign has made foreign policy experience a major issue, what experience does Sarah Palin have that qualifies her in this regard? It's a question you'd assume any decent campaign spokesperson would have an answer for.

Instead, Bounds fumbled the answer in an amazing display of political shystering. The best moment was when Brown pointed out it was the Pentagon, not the state governor, who had the authority to send the National Guard overseas. Bounds responded saying "On a factual basis they certainly do."

I like that, "on a factual basis". The implications of that statement are many and delicious.

Implication 1: There's a functional nonfactual basis the McCain campaign works from.
Implication 2: Factual bases are simply one of many at one's disposal, perhaps not even a major one.
Implication 3: Sarah Palin has no foreign policy experience worth speaking of, and hasn't made any notable executive decisions, but that's not going to stop us from making some up.

I'm riding hard on this not because I think this is at all indicative of the McCain campaign as a whole (though someone else might think that way). It's just that you'd think a campaign spokesman sent to talk with the largest news network in the nation would be better prepared to answer the single most obvious question they could be asked. This was Bounds' chance to lay a solid thwacking on Obama while building up Palin, which he blew quite solidly.