We just went into another reality. Maybe it was the moment when Piper was licking her hand to slick back Trig's hair as he rested in her lap in the Palin family box, a nice moment, a real one, and then a few minutes later and Trig is handed up to mom to be held up on stage with the giant rippling flag behind her, his uncomprehending face under the lights. I don't know where we went, not sure I want to be there. I feel as helpless and out of place as Levi.
They have no politics these Republicans but small town resentment and mockery of a reflective black man, as pretentious, self-involved. All the outsider energy. I'm all for outsider energy, but who got us into this mess; you did not hear the name George Bush in her amazing performance or Giuliani's brilliant angry one. So they are just running against elite culture. And what ideas does she have? The idea that only people in small towns serve in the military. The idea that community organizing is some sinister form of socialism. The idea that Obama is running as "a journey of personal self-discovery." Or that it is an "accolade" to have a politician say, as Harry Reid supposedly did, I cannot stand John McCain. So much anger and resentment. Anger that Obama wrote memoirs, mockery that he is Jesus, or a celebrity, and has styrofoam Greek columns behind him to manipulate the elites.
I didn't feel good all night, I only felt good when she spoke about being a vice president who would care about parents with special needs. I loved her then. It was hopeful and warm, the rest was just scary.
The speech ended with her picture of McCain giving the thumbsup in his prison a long long time ago. There's nowhere to go from here. Did she speak well, sure, she spoke great, not a stumble, she is erasing doubts about her stageworthiness. But she has no positive idea other than McCain is a great father figure, and all the rest is scorn toward Obama as a pencil-neck poseur and conman, and the repetition of community organizer feels like code for He's black. It's just mean, and shabby, and hopeless. We're better than that. And they're going down.
