Sunday, February 06, 2011

Palin to rule planet Earth (a legend in her own mind)

Sarah Palin has announced that "we should not stand" for an Egyptian government led by the Muslim Brotherhood. She courageously made her stand on the Christian Broadcasting Network, virtually guaranteeing that all Muslims who heard her proclamation would be rightfully offended at her disrespect for everyone's freedom except her own and that of her kind. Sarah Palin is in some sort of race to the bottom with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck for the Ugly American Award, given to Beck in 2010, Limbaugh in 2009, and now comes Palin to make a play for gender equality, presumably.

What would Sarah say if a candidate for back-up ruler (vice-president in the US) in another country declared that "we should not stand" for a particular party or candidate or governing group coming to power in the US? If Wen Jiabao, Prime Minister of China, starting spouting about which party the Chinese would "not stand" for, imagine the rhetorical blasts from Palin. There would be crosshairs all over her website and she's be clamoring to go wave our nukes in a circle around China. But she gets to pontificate about what government a completely sovereign state should have, and which kind we "should not stand" for.

When Mohamad ElBaradei claims that there is no worry about the Muslim Brotherhood being the party of jihad, we should relax a little, take a deep breath, and just cheer for the Arab street, which has been valiantly out resisting US puppet Mubarak for more than a week and a half. These brave people have not left and that is simply more courageous than anything Sarah Palin has ever done in her entire entitled life. It's more than Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh (or Sean Hannity, or Tom DeLay, or Dick Cheney, et alia) have done in their benighted existences; it is hardly the mark of a brave person to personally never risk what they expect others to risk.

As the US slides in global stature it is long past the point when we should display just a little humility. We don't rule Earth. We are showing what happens when we decide we do not stand for a particular government; we are botching the two invasions and occupations we've undertaken, they are financially ruining this country, and we are alienating huge swathes of the populations of sovereign citizens all around the world. The uprising in Egypt is theirs, not Sarah's, and it's their country and their government, not hers.

Time for a new path based on equality and humility. We had an embarrassment for president for two full terms in the first decade of this millennium; "we should not stand" for an arrogant attempt to embarrass ourselves again.

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