1. The ”Soccer Mom” with a brood that resembles some dysfunctional Brady Bunch and who needs weeks of “cramming” in order not to sound like a total moron when she is asked the simplest questions about world affairs
2. The “non-threatening” Affirmative Action Figure from Central Casting who spent his career palling around with people whose violent hatred for the historic character of this nation screams out from their every written and spoken utterance

This is a country where a large percentage of the people sit daily in front of the glowing image of “Oprah” and making “concerned” faces over fabricated fairy tales and chant, “You go girl!” at any woman who so much as successfully completes a ten pound weight loss regimen… 

… I can think of two possible ways to account for the appearance of these two individuals at the center of what C.S. Lewis might have called our national “lowerarchy“:

1. We are so debased that these people actually represent what this nation is in 2010.
2. Or, they are left and right hand sock puppets for the most cynical and ham-fisted generation of back-room manipulators ever to slither into power in this country. 

Neither possibility speaks well of us.

             — Comments —

Fitzgerald writes:

A Ukranian friend once said the system in this country, and in most of the West, had become so compromised and controlled by a ruling caste posing in one of two roles, Democrat and Republican in the US, that voting was merely the act of choosing between a left fist or a right fist. Regardless of your choice, you were bound to get a black eye.

Markus writes from Canada:

It strikes me as all a colossal drama catering to the lowest common denominator in society to get the highest ratings. It struck me that in your last election, that with Sarah Palin as head of state would be at the same executive level as Margaret Thatcher, Michelle Batchelet of Chile, and Angela Merkel of Germany. Simply staggering.

Fitzgerald writes:

Palin like so many conservative and neoconservative hawks are as much enamored with the warfare state as the progressive left is enamored with the welfare state, as this American Conservative article so aptly points out. If we want to save our country and by extension our civilization, we must radically scale back their scope and reach if not outright dismantle them almost entirely. 

The use of publically accrued debt as a control lever has a long and checkered history in the US. For instance, the “Nationalists” or “Hamiltonians”, with Robert Morris in the lead, bent on building an empire to rival or surpass Britain’s, attempted to use the Revolutionary War debt to expand governmental powers beyond the Articles of Confederation. Debt, especially debt to fund and fight wars, has been used as a hedge by powerful forces to marshal centralized government control above and beyond the wishes of the states and the common person since before the ratification of the Constitution. From the anti-federalist view of history, most of the agitation for a Constitutional convention was artificially driven by the need to retire war debt, even though most of the debt had already been retired by the states before the war was even over and most of the states volunteered to retire the remaining amount. Morris made sure that wasn’t possible and our trek toward an American Empire was born. This article is only one of many excellent ones that covers the background fairly succinctly.

The tactics used by the nationalists became a trend, a trend that has continued and accelerated to the point now the central government and the powerful class of elites and bureaucrats controlling its levers wield unprecedented power over our daily lives with a stranglehold on our very civilization. The battle cry of radical feminism has been adopted by the state as a potent force for destroying traditional marriage and the “nuclear” family, the remaining bulkhead against it’s complete dominance, and sad to say, it’s buckling. 

Robert Nisbet in his works chronicles in detail how the modern State is the enemy of “intermediary” institutions, with the center and crowning element being the locus familias. According to Nisbet’s analysis, as the central state grows it does at the expense of its enemy, namely non-government societal institutions (family, Church, guild, charities, school boards, monasteries, etc.) which gave local peoples the ability to control their communities, families and property. Western Civilization was particularly adept at creating these “intermediary” institutions to protect freedom and private property and allow for the sane distribution of power and authority at a local level.

Laura writes:

The Tea Party movement is a great step in the right direction and away from this overwhelming centralization. While Palin might be a good cheerleader, she is not ultimately suited to lead it.

Eric writes:

We have become Idiocracy. Life imitates Hollywood.