Depravity, Not Decency

At a work-related function Thursday, two bosses of mine decided to make a snarky, demeaning remark about Governor Palin in my presence. I’m sure they assume I am a Democrat and as such, the fact that I am a woman would have no bearing on the fact that they were deeply insulting someone of my gender.

She is a Republican. Therefore she is not human. She has chosen to raise a Down Syndrome baby and therefore that makes her something of a Neanderthal.

“She is only the Governor of Alaska – not a real state after all. Don’t they just have lots of snow and ice up there? I mean, who lives there, like 50 people, you know, next to that bridge to nowhere. What does she: shovel moose poop in front of the door of the shack she lives in with that husband of hers and five brats? God, she’s really stupid, huh? What an airhead. It’s a disgrace. Just because she can see Russia from her window, what does she know about foreign policy?

She’s a heartbeat away from the Presidency. I mean, McCain’s on his last legs, isn’t he? So she commands the Alaska National Guard – what are they, like, the boy scouts? What did Congressman Charlie Rangel say – “she’s disabled”?

It just keeps getting better.

I was in the yard while the Vice Presidential debate was taping. A neighbor poked her head out to say, “He’s slaughtering her!” I read some news story in the Boston Globe where a voter talking to Joe Biden said, “Take her down.” Someone else said, “Make her cry.”

Do all these filthy degenerate pustules of the lowest order have any idea of the hateful misogyny they are guilty of?

Thursday night, all the feelings came back – the misogynist Hillary horror show of the last nine months. Every nasty thing they said. Every great thing she did that they pretended didn’t exist. Every time the media, the DNC elite and the Obama thug squad keep moving the goal post and rearranging the rules to suit themselves and saying:

It’s not enough. You’re not enough. You’ll never be enough. No matter how you do it, we will find something wrong with it. We will find something wrong with you. Your pantsuits. Your ass. Your face. Your cackle. Your statements. Your family. Your solid record, which we will pretend amounts to much less than the empty briefcase of the charlatan against whom you are running.

Cold comfort to see this was not reserved for Hillary alone. How nice for her that she gets to sit in Washington, D.C. or in her New York office and witness this debacle leveled at Sarah Palin, so she can relive the lovely experience herself as well.

I was never so ashamed of having spent my life as a Democrat. What makes Democrats any better than the Republicans they have been forever characterizing as evil? I thought we were the party of tolerance, equal rights, equal opportunity and openness.

I was wrong.

We have been screaming at the Bush administration not to condone torture. Tell me, to whom do I apply for redress when I feel like I am being figuratively tortured having to listen to, and by extension, be slapped with these kinds of insults and demeaning behavior.

It is abuse. It is misogyny. It is vile no matter the source or object.

God forbid you find fault with someone on the issues. On something real.

A peripheral friend emailed me an offensive piece of material on Palin. It was written by Eve Ensler, another pretend feminist who penned something so vile and so bogus, I wonder that her nose didn’t grow and poke a hole in her computer screen before she hit the send button. Prior to this, the friend and I had not talked politics this year. I politely, so politely, informed her that I am not an Obama supporter. Her response was that she was shocked! Shocked!!

Oh, the humanity!! The self-righteous, pretentious outrage of it all! My response to her little missive, suffice it to say, was somewhat more thorough.

And you can take that any way you want to take it.

I suppose now, for all my education and the respect I have previously received from this person, and all the times I have fed and entertained her at my home, I am now considered a low information Neanderthal as well. Everything before has been wiped away. She even intimated we must be suffering from some deep seated racial bias.

She is an idiot. Let her worship at the foot of his “HOPE” poster and never darken my door again. Our friendship is over.

After our neighbor gave me the ‘review,’ I finally sat down with my husband to watch the debate we had TiVo’d for myself. Imagine my surprise when Sarah-cuda gave as good as she got – in fact, by all accounts she did much better than that.

I found myself weeping. It’s not that I’m so enamored of her, but I was so puking sick of watching yet another woman treated like dirt. Well, plenty of Dems treated Hillary like dirt. What did I expect they would do to a woman on the other side of the aisle?

It must be truly threatening to see a successful woman step up to the plate and stake a claim to something even bigger. The ‘male’ whom history seems hell bent on anointing as this ‘historic candidate’ is as thin as tissue paper but how dare we tell the truth about that. The contrasts in acceptable criticism of one versus the other show so wide a chasm, it defies description.

The horrid occurrences that came flooding back once again ensured I will never stand with any of this hateful cadre. If they can win this election, let them do it on their own.

What kind of a decent human being can treat a woman, a mother of five, a fellow human being this way? Have we lost so much as a society that this kind of low behavior is tolerated, even accepted?

Registering as an Independent when the primary ended was not only an act of protest against this undemocratic Democratic Party, but it helped to open my eyes. I can actually see how the other side has a point and is sick of our side’s elitism and snobbery.

Since the DNC says we need to elect Obama because he is a ‘symbol,’ well, America is a symbol as well. And electing ‘Party’ is not half as important to me now as electing character, decency, and honor.

Rove’s thugs may have stolen at least one of the last two elections. Does that make it permissible for our side to do it? The answer is a resounding no.

Just because neo-cons hijacked the Republican Party eight years ago, if the far left hijacks the Democrats, will that lead to a better end? Again, no.

Since I mentioned torture earlier, that is as good an analogy as any. Abu Graib represented the worst of America, not her best. We are who we are because we respect others rights, because we stand for freedom and decency. Once we show that it is all right to treat the other side with depraved indifference, we are no better. And they have succeeded in turning ‘us’ into ‘them.’

Likewise, if you think that Obama’s fraudulent tactics, nefarious connections and constant dissembling are acceptable, then Rove, Cheney and their ilk win.

The people attacking Sarah Palin are just as vile, if not worse, than any attack ever leveled at ‘us’ by Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter.

What makes us better?

What makes the left better than the right?

Right now: nothing.