Rational Passion

Ready enough-ish to lead!  Seriously--you gotta watch this!

My first thought on the Palin pick was: she's better than McCain by a mile!  But I haven't commented until now because I didn't want to say anything about a woman I barely knew anything about.  Well, now I know a few things about her.  One thing I know that absolutely horrifies me is that she has had a Down Syndrome baby.  I'd like to quote my friend The Aesthetic Capitalist:

"The work, suffering, and mental anguish that a healthy child brings is outweighed for the most part by the joys of watching and guiding him to adulthood. Without these joys and experiences, there is no reward or justification for late nights, constant hospital visits, stress, worrying, bills, diaper changes, the loss of personal privacy, and the freedom to do other things you truly love.

"I am not a fan of statistics, but that approximately 80 to 90% of Down Syndrome fetuses are aborted is very telling. In any situation, controversial or not, that you see the numbers skewed more than 70-30; you are looking at a virtual consensus. I have read a number of articles this morning talking about the lives and accomplishments that people with mild form of Down's Syndrome can lead. And that's great. I take nothing away from those people. I wish them all the best. Where I think the evil lies is in those 10 to 20% of parents who think that God had deemed them worthy or better than the rest of world; that they are somehow stronger and more capable and thus must be willing to bear the blessing of suffering through life with a child with Down's Syndrome.

"It is wrong to force that kind of suffering on the child, it is wrong to force that child into a society where it can never truly be a part, and it is wrong to force oneself to bear unhappiness and suffering as a constant, important, part of one's life. That Sarah Palin would make this choice brings her judgment and motives into question; that in other areas she is still head and shoulders above McCain, Obama and Biden is a testament to how bad things are right now, both in the culture and in politics."

In many respects, Palin is indeed an improvement over McCain, Obama, and Biden.  She seems to be a genuine, honest, down-to-earth person--apart from her religious fanaticism.  She seems to have some real achievements, like creating and running a small business with her husband and fighting--and making real headway against--corruption in her state.  Unlike Biden, who has never achieved much of anything except being elected to the Senate six times, Obama, whose greatest achievement was to have been named the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review and whose entire life since then seems to have been an attempt to use the fame and goodwill generated by that achievement to reach the highest possible office in the shortest possible time, and McCain, whose greatest achievement was his willingness to suffer torture at the hands of commies--and who has spent the rest of his entire life encouraging self-sacrifice on anyone who will listen.  Compared to these jokers, Sarah Palin is an improvement.  I am interested to hear more about her--and from her.  I very much look forward to her speech accepting the VP nomination.  But at the end of the day, she is a religious nutcase, and that basically neutralizes all her positive qualities.

I have found myself torn on this election, but have in recent months become more firm in my commitment to abstain.  I think we have two evil Presidential candidates who, in a just world, would both lose.  But since that won't be happening, I don't expect that I'll be giving either of them my vote, even if it's only a negative vote against one candidate's opponent.  The Palin selection has, upon reflection, done nothing to change that.