Sarah Palin spoke last night at the Republican Convention, and at the end of the speech I had an argument with a group of people with whom I have everything in common politically. Why? Because I don’t think on Newsgang Live Last night, there was enough respect for the sheer power of words, even words that are twisted. Last night, the Republicans wrested possession of “Change we can believe in” from Obama.
In one of the most bizarre, Orwellian syntactical flip flops of my lifetime, the Democrats have become elitists, the Republicans the party of the people, and Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina are speaking at the Republican Convention on the same night as Sandra, whoops that’s Sarah, Palin, a complete outsider. Words no longer mean what they did.
We, the people who believe in the need for economic and political “change” (and you know I’m a change junkie who thinks everything that can be changed should be changed), often don’t recognize change coming when we see it, because we have a pre-conceived notion of what change should encompass in terms of actions.
How can anyone know who or what to support, when language is used the way it has been used in this election, with Barack Obama tilting to the right as John McCain becomes the Maverick bringing change? It’s like Alice in Wonderland – or better yet, Through the Looking Glass. The Obamas, although black and “liberal,” are the Brady Bunch, while the conservatives have the DUI and the pregnant teen-ager.
What does this all demonstrate? That no ideology is pure, no set of principles too sacrosanct to compromise to the realities of life. The Republican platform said no gay marriage, but Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter has a civil union with her partner, and the Vice President hasn’t rejected her.
In human situations, people are both better and worse than political ideologies. Worse: John Edwards and abstinence only programs. Better: the Palin family’s support of their pregnant daughter, and the Clintons’ support of each other.
Everyone knows what has to be done in America: reduce dependence on foreign oil, spend less, educate more and better, provide health care affordably, recycle more and consume less, get out of Iraq and keep the nation safe for democracy. That’s change from both sides. Unfortunately or fortunately, these changes come with other things also lumped into the same word. For Republicans, change may also include appointing Supreme Court Justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade.
For the past twenty years, we have heard Roe v. Wade as defending “a woman’s right to choose.” Last night that term was co-opted by the Republicans, celebrating a woman’s right to choose to keep a child with Down’s syndrome. New meaning for a fmiliar term. An that’s what the Republicans are doing to ALL the words we have come to find familiar and comforting and symbolic of the American’s ship’s ability to navigate itself through the stormy waters of history. Very four years, we get to say “throw the bastards out.”
We are now arguing the rearrangement of the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic of America. I read all day long – political commentary, economics and financial newsletters, technology blogs, health care blogs. In every article, mainstream or basement blogger, on both sides of every issue, one belief stands out: as a nation, we’re in trouble. On the decline. In debt. Off the moral high ground.
How do we get back there? Certainly not by arguing over Sarah Palin’s grandchild, abstinence, gay marriage, or any of the minor issues we used to have the luxury to debate. And yet, if both sides claim “change,” with different ideas of what that means, we’re in the tower of Babel.
Only by deciding that as a nation, we have to put our oars into the water together (which means electing people who can work together rather than divide us further) to find ways to solve the big problems first, leaving the little ones to be solved in our own family rooms.
