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Oct. 16th, 2008 08:01 pmNot that the Canadian election is over, I can indulge my obsession with American politics without guilt.
Mostly, it's the train wreck called Sarah Palin. I go through waves of horror and laughter. She's crazy, and that seems hilarious until it comes on you that she's damn close to the centre of America's -- and by extension, the world's -- most powerful office. They're behind in the polls, but a day is an eternity in politics.
It's hard to laugh at her sometimes, because my fellow Neo-Pagans in the US are so (rightfully) scared of this woman and her church's obsession with "witches" (by which they mean Neo-Pagans, fortune tellers, and animists and polytheists in countries where these weren't wiped out).
Palin denied she knew that her church was involved in these things. But her favourite pastor had tried to raise a mob against an elderly fortune-teller in Kenya as a "witch." Palin was caught on camera getting a blessing from her pastor to protect her from witchcraft as she ran for governor of Alaska.
Most recently, the leader of Palin's older prayer group -- Mary Glazier -- bragged that their prayers gave a local Wiccan cancer.
Fortunately, she's scaring off the sane, and now McCain has to try and defend Obama against the crazies who now constitute McCain's core, and who are screaming for Obama's blood.
But you have to wonder, how did the US get to this brink? How did someone like Palin get so close to power? This was a country founded by deists on Enlightenment rationalist principles. Why is it now slipping back toward this Medievalism?
Hopefully, when this campaign is over, the only memory of Palin will be all the jokes about her -- Tina Fey skewering her with her own words, or all the Monty-Python era jokes from that other Palin ("Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" and "She turned me into a newt!").
But it's hard to be entertained when the stakes are sanity in the most powerful office on the planet.
Mostly, it's the train wreck called Sarah Palin. I go through waves of horror and laughter. She's crazy, and that seems hilarious until it comes on you that she's damn close to the centre of America's -- and by extension, the world's -- most powerful office. They're behind in the polls, but a day is an eternity in politics.
It's hard to laugh at her sometimes, because my fellow Neo-Pagans in the US are so (rightfully) scared of this woman and her church's obsession with "witches" (by which they mean Neo-Pagans, fortune tellers, and animists and polytheists in countries where these weren't wiped out).
Palin denied she knew that her church was involved in these things. But her favourite pastor had tried to raise a mob against an elderly fortune-teller in Kenya as a "witch." Palin was caught on camera getting a blessing from her pastor to protect her from witchcraft as she ran for governor of Alaska.
Most recently, the leader of Palin's older prayer group -- Mary Glazier -- bragged that their prayers gave a local Wiccan cancer.
Fortunately, she's scaring off the sane, and now McCain has to try and defend Obama against the crazies who now constitute McCain's core, and who are screaming for Obama's blood.
But you have to wonder, how did the US get to this brink? How did someone like Palin get so close to power? This was a country founded by deists on Enlightenment rationalist principles. Why is it now slipping back toward this Medievalism?
Hopefully, when this campaign is over, the only memory of Palin will be all the jokes about her -- Tina Fey skewering her with her own words, or all the Monty-Python era jokes from that other Palin ("Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" and "She turned me into a newt!").
But it's hard to be entertained when the stakes are sanity in the most powerful office on the planet.