Imagine, if you will, a futuristic American society, 20 minutes from now, in which fundamentalist Christians install a gender-based caste system where each woman is assigned a specific societal function. Facing a national emergency, the merging of church and state is carried out by a group of old male " commanders ". A chemical plague has rendered many women infertile, so the regime sets about a forced selective breeding program to sustain itself, rounding up and " schooling " the few fertile young women remaining. The resulting regime is a American police -state theocracy, where citizens are constantly threatened with fearful propaganda, basically stampeded into obedience and submission to an all-powerful, all-seeing state apparatus of secret police, economic slavery, constant surveillance and neighborhood informers. (  "It's for your own good, dear " )

 This is the premise of Margaret Atwood's prescient " A Handmaid's Tale", a novel inspired in part by Reagan's embrace of fundamentalist Christian wing-nuts in his administration. As we slide further into the morass of converging crises brought on by the last eight years of corrupt and criminal behavior by Monkey Boy and the " permanent majority" party,  one gets the disquieting thought that we may very well face a real fork in the road that leads to the frightening dystopia  portrayed in Atwood's book.

The unexpected candidacy of right-wing, Christian extremist Gov. Sarah Palin brings Atwood's prophecy alarmingly close to fruition. All we need is a national crisis to bring the " change " needed to sweep this regime of old male " commanders " and their female counterparts, the " Aunts " into power. ( What's that you say ? We already have a national crisis ?.... ) Add some RFID tracking technology and some bright and shiny Halliburton " relocation camps " for dissidents, atheists and malingerers , a dash of martial law, a couple of tweaks to the Supreme Court, and we are pretty much there. We have arrived at the  gates of the refuge nation of Gilead, the old America in terminus, the women gone barren, the endless wars raging.

In Texas, they would call Palin a  " post turtle ". As in , you are driving down a lonely road, miles from anywhere, and you see an object on top of a pole by the side of the road. When you get closer, you realize that the thing on top of the post is a turtle. Absolutely God -smacked, you pull the car over, and say out loud, " Now what kind of S.O.B. would put a turtle where it does not belong - on top of a post, in the hot sun ??? " Well, in this case, the S.O.B. that put Palin where she does not belong, as a  candidate for Vice President, is none other than an old male  "commander ", Senator John McCain, and his right-wing cronies on the Christian hard right.

 Another way to look at the unlikely candidacy of Palin is to view her as a stealth candidate, a person whose views are so extreme, that she must be smuggled into power, like a Trojan horse -  a literal stalking horse for the radical religious right, with Joel's Army Christian commandos on board.

 On a task from God, no less, talking in tongues.

 Babble on.

 The true reasons for which Sarah Palin has been selected will only become apparent after she is stealthily situated in office. With the possible demise or incapacitation of McCain, ( check the actuarial tables for a 72 year old man  ), and all the growing, converging environmental, social and economic crises, the regime might just institute emergency powers, pass out flag pins, suspend  what is left of the Constitution, muzzle the press,  deride dissidents and intellectuals, and then drag them off to camps., as an example to others to keep their mouths shut.

In an article, " Welcome to Gilead, Governor Palin ", posted September 30, 2008 at Truthout.org, Cynthia Boaz, an assistant professor of political science at Sonoma State University, provides some analysis of Palin's unlikely candidacy, and how Palin mirrors some aspects of Atwood's frightening vision of a re-visioned America, cast in cold, theocratic stone. Quoting from Atwood's novel, she describes the similarities of the " Aunts  to Sarah Palin :


... " The attractive young women of reproductive age are the " handmaids " : the attractive but infertile middle-age women are the " wives " ; the dark-skinned women of any age are domestic servants, and so on . All women are forbidden from reading or writing. The country is renamed the Republic of Gilead, a reference to the biblical homeland of the patriarchs. And the Aunts - who are middle-aged white women of some previous prestige and education - are especially sinster characters. The primary job of the Aunts is to keep the handmaids ( the childbeares ) subservient. They go about this by convincing the handmaids that they are powerless and can only contribute to society when they fulfill their God-given responsibility to serve the commanders. The Aunt's job, put simply, is to exploit other women by keeping them submissive and telling them that it's for the good of all ( and even more insidiously, that in obeying, the handmaids " empower " themselves. ) What makes the Aunts so remarkable is their collective failure to relize that they are simply being used by the commanders to keep other women in line, and their willingness - glee, even - at doing so is simultaneously sad and terrifying. So what compels the Aunts to become traitors to both their sex and their country ? First, they believe that their contribution to the repressive social order is righteous, and second, they've found that under this rigid system of social control, they have the illusion of a tiny bit of power. " ( from the " Handmaids Tale ". )


Does any of this sound familiar ? It should. Governor and republican VP Sarah Palin is the Gileadian " Aunt " manifested. Her sudden enmergence onto the American political scene, accompanied by a burst of enthusiasm on the part of many American women, is a surreal example of life imitating art. Much of Palin's rhetoric, tactics and personal philosophy seem to be taken directly from the Auntie training manual. By accepting the position on the GOP ticket despite her astonishing lack of qualifications, Palin signaled that she was prepared to be used - on the basis of her sex alone - in exchange for the promise of status and power. Refer to Palin's RNC convention speech, which was mostly a fawning homage to McCain's patriotism and leadership sprinkled with condescending references to Obama as  "our opponent ". Although the lines were delivered with Palin's own folksy vernacular and over-enunciation, it was not Palin, but McCain - or more accurately, the GOP elders at whose feet he finds himself on election eve - who wrote the speech and whose voice echoed through the hall that night in St. Paul. Women who find themselves drawn to Palin because they think she epitomizes the classic " woman who has it all " might want to take a closer look.  Sarah palin was picked for the ticket solely because of - not despite - the fact she is female. By keeping her sequestered from the media, McCain has confirmed that he does not have faith in an unscripted Palin's ability to represent the campaign to the world. By going along with it, Palin is telling us that she's perfectly fine with being controlled by her male superiors. And by portraying herself as the candidate of the empowered woman ( while simultaneously promoting policy that is openly hostile to the interests of working and middle-class American women ), she reveals the sad truth about how little progress we've actually made. "





Things are moving very quickly. Each succesive national trauma, ( Wall Street collapse, terror attack, 24/7media calibrated fear index ) - leads to greater public confusion, and more aquisition of unwarranted executive power. More and more, the president defers to the advice of " generals on the ground ". Who is the decider ? Independent press journalists are being told to  become " embedded " with police forces if they wish to be sheilded from excessive police force being unleashed at public demonstrations in the streets of our own cities. A further clampdown seems imminent before the election , perhaps economic collapse, another false flag anthrax attack, or what ? In many ways, the present Bush regime provides the template for Atwood's future fascist America ; and certainly leaves us the toxic legacy of 8 years of catastrophes - the shock doctrines - which justify that even more repressive social measures be taken in our uncertain future.

Mourning in America ?

 McCain/ Palin is Bush's third wave.