October 2, 2008
Sarah and the Apocalypse: Tonight’s the Night (Bernie Quigley)
There comes a moment, said Edward Edinger, New York’s pioneering psychoanalyst, when something comes unfettered and free as if from nowhere and brings an end to all the systems and their agents and arts that we take for granted as part of who we are and what we always expect to be. The end of the generation’s saints and god kings; Mick Jagger and Hillary and Bill. The end of history; the end of Marx and Hamilton, the end of Congress, Wall Street, the Yankees and The New York Times. The end of that and that and all of that, as Robert Graves phrased Europe’s death in 1917, the end of everything. This, said Edinger, is the apocalypse, and it could just as easily be bloodless as not.
It was the feeling they had when the Beatles tumbled altogether down the stairs of the airplane dressed in black as one, prompting visions in the elders of The Four Horsemen and leaving poet Allen Ginsberg to proclaim, “Liverpool is at the present moment the center of the consciousness of the human universe.” It would all be different now, they said, and briefly, between 1964 and 1968, it was.
Everything you planned for; everything you thought would naturally happen next and onward, just suddenly stops. That moment was most poignantly expressed recently by Wes Welker, a football player with the agility of a ferret, when his astonishing quarterback, Tom Brady, tore his ACL within minutes of the season’s opening. “We all had a little come-to-Jesus moment,” he said, speaking for his teammates and about everyone else in New England.
We are at such a destabilizing moment today, brought to a change of season almost overnight and got there by two events which appeared only since the leaves started to change. The one is the sudden surge of identity and character shown by Congress in turning back a bailout of Wall Street being brought to us by the same team of managers who brought us Iraq and Katrina. The other is Sarah Palin.
The Palin terror strikes deepest in the heart. In my morning paper today a commentator called her “an insult and disgrace to womankind.” And even our usually excellent political affairs columnist in reporting that she is “hugely popular” here in the North Country, to which I can attest, and sardonically suggests, “New Hampshire voters, God Love Them, might want to ask Palin which C.S. Lewis novels she considers ‘very, very deep,’ and why.” (For answers to that, see Edinger, above, and his colleague, Marie Louise von Franz.)
The ever popular Ruth Marcus, Washington Post commentator and TV political analyst, offers a host of anecdotes of why Palin should be dismissed by our kind, the most damning: She got a Garfield desk calendar for Christmas, which she liked. Hopefully, her new Bush handlers will trick her out with the more courant Dancing Shiva as a desk prop and maybe a PBS penguin calendar and the always fashionable tote bag.
The clan that basks at Starbucks is really feeling it. How’d a barracuda get into these waters? Global warming?
It is not like we haven’t seen it coming. Our most honored scholars have long declared the end of things. Jacques Barzun, the very dean of ideas and culture, declared the Death of the Renaissance (meaning us) in 2000. Garry Wills, the venerable liberal journalist, announced early in the Bush administration that the Enlightenment was over.
But that is about half our history; the history of the blue states as they rose to power here since 1865. The Renaissance ended with Jefferson in rural parts, and the Enlightenment ended with Jackson. West of the New River in Virginia it never got a purchase. Those parts have grown in power and political influence through economy and population shifts since the 1950s. They demand now to be included.
And for once, my respectable representatives up here in my predominantly Buddhist and Unitarian corner of northern New England, Democrats Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes in New Hampshire and Peter Welch in Vermont, were in full and righteous agreement with our Christian friends in the Deep South, for whom Mike Huckabee spoke eloquently when he said the Wall Street bailout is like buying a Mercedes for a teenager who just wrecked the family’s old Chevy truck.
“The people who burned the Thanksgiving turkey are asking us to let them prepare the Christmas dinner,” says Huckabee. “No thanks!”
Having lived in both parts, this seems a marriage of the best of both. Perhaps we in the coldest north are finding our Jeffersonian roots again.
It is said that all cultural divides are about who will defend the old temple on the one side, and who will build a new temple on the other. Tonight’s debate, between the unlikely contestants, Joe Biden, speaking on behalf of the Eastern Establishment and its oldest orthodoxies and conventions, and Sarah Palin, Woman from the Forest, could well bring a critical turning point between old temple and new.
Tonight’s the night. The end of things is only the beginning.
Visit Mr. Quigley's website at http://quigleyblog.blogspot.com.
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Yawn. The real problem is the day after, when the government will go into the business of mortgage and property management on a scale that won't work.
What will happen is that the government will have to foreclose, the houses will fall into disrepair, the neighborhood will deteriorate throughout the United States, and there is still no guarantee that the credit markets will unfreeze.
The Paulson plan, fostered by the chimp in chief is major league risky.
No one who thinks about these things cares whether Sarah will Impalin herself or not.
Comment by Gary Anderson — October 2, 2008 @ 11:17 am
I actually view the possible election of Obama as "the end of everything", in the sense that it happened in Russia in 1917 (much more so than in Europe overall), and then again in 1941, or in Germany in 1919 and again in 1933.
Obama truly represents the end of the values familiar to the Founding Fathers: self-reliance, small and limited, in powers, Federal government, respect for private property in the sense of how it empowers people to work for their own and their families' well-being. Obama represents an influence that sympathizes on several levels with European Soc.ialists, radicals from the French Revolution to the '60s in the US, Marxism as a movement, Islamic sensibilities, and African poverty. Obama's outlook is truly the end of America as we know it. Those who support him usually fall in one of two camps: the ones who don't see this or don't agree with the characterization when exposed to it, and the ones who see this and support him because of this. His detached, often idealistic and symbolic rhetoric appeals to both camps, it's almost like verbal narcotic for some and stimulant for others at the same time. He is a genius of deception, a man who other than during gaffes says no more than he needs to say about the specific and more than enough about thing that inspire the imagination. But have no doubt: if elected he will be the End of Everything.
Comment by Igor R. — October 2, 2008 @ 3:20 pm
#2. In the words of Ronald Reaagan, "there you go again".
Comment by Joyce — October 2, 2008 @ 5:48 pm
You know Joyce (and I'm not comparing the two in any way other than the ability to commandeer public opinion) historical researchers to this day can't figure out how Hitler was able to unify so many people to support him. His views seemed kooky to a large portion of the population in Germany, he was jailed for improper activities and lost the momentum in his campaign, and yet without much apparent effort he was able to unify the country. I once read a long paper by a European researchers who dedicated his life to trying to figure out how he did it and he couldn't figure it out. Hitler certainly had a harder job to do than Obama at this point, being a candidate of one of the two major parties and this bailout thing in the news for weeks, and Palin interviews and everything, but he certainly has a way of getting his supporters not to question his motivation, qualifications, and history. You are not willing to give me any leeway, just on the basis that I had lived in a dictatorship and know the signs. You want to feel good, feel confident, feel hopeful. I understand Joyce.
Comment by Igor R. — October 2, 2008 @ 7:10 pm
I find the reference to Ronald Reagan's comment: "There ya go again" to be hilarious.
It was said in response to it being pointed out that Reagan was absolutely, undisputably full of crap.
Comment by pghremodeler — October 2, 2008 @ 11:20 pm
1) Why is Palin whispering? 2) Why doesn't Palin answer THE Question that was asked? She brought her baseball glove to the football game.
Comment by Dale Anger — October 3, 2008 @ 12:21 am
pgh, I find Plugs misstating the Constitution with great aplomb hilarious. Plugs tried not to talk too much and he still got beat.
Comment by Igor R. — October 3, 2008 @ 1:03 am
Bernie!
Your "Earth Mother" didnt bomb last night, she actually remembered all her lines!
Unfortunately for her, voters were looking for substance and Biden, showing remarkable poise and the ability to stay on message, hit a major home run last night.
She needed to reinforce McCain's message and defend him but she failed miserably.
Comment by Theard — October 3, 2008 @ 10:28 am
Theard, what she needed to do was to stop being a distraction and an excuse for people to abandon the campaign, and instead become a net positive, and she succeeded remarkably. For you to say that "she failed miserably" under the circumstances is, shall we say, a little self-serving and I don't think you're convincing anyone who is already not in the tank for Obama.
Comment by Igor R. — October 3, 2008 @ 1:53 pm
Parallels:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdPSqL9_mfM
Comment by Igor R. — October 3, 2008 @ 5:18 pm