Sarah! and Michelle

If anyone is reading this, I'll try to avoid six months between posts.

I guess, as a moderate, there are a couple of things that I do not understand about the Right. And, since you can't have a civilized discussion about these things anymore, I'll throw it open to someone who can educate me.

I simply do not get the Palin/Bachmann(sp?) attraction. I have yet to see why anyone would want these folks to be president. And, it's not a gender issue...I don't see why a reasonable person would look at them and think "there's my president."

Part of it is belief. I have religious beliefs, but I don't think they are central to how I define myself. A conservative person holds their beliefs central to their identity and (this is what I don't understand) extends the concept of belief to other areas of their lives.

Palin's attraction, I think, is that it is totally unimportant to her that what she says is factually correct. She believes it to be so, therefore, to her and those like her, that's all that matters. It's like when the Bush Administration says "Mission Accomplished" it is, no matter what the reality is.

Reality is what you believe it to be. Facts be damned.

Now, on a certain level, that's a nice place to be. But, when you have the fate of many, many people hanging on every action, it's a terrifying prospect. It really reminds me of the Soviet Union, where all someone had to say that genes didn't exist and...poof...they don't.

It all comes back to something I firmly believe...that the right wing of the Republican Party is the closest we've come to having a Sovietized political system. And, since I believe it, it must be true.