Irony is filling the air right now, the air in my apartment as i read through posts and sites on my computer about Sarah Palin. I don’t even know how i got to her, i haven’t wanted to look. It started on you-tube with Matt Damon. An interview on CBS with him describing the possibility of her Presidency as a bad Disney movie. The possibility of McCain dying and her facing down Putin, with her folksy hockey mom shtick. I could see it. I have watched this campaign like a good chunk of the world, excited and disturbed. Barack Obama may not be much better, he is against gay marriage and he wants to go in to Afghanistan, amongst other things. He also possesses qualities that i like very much; the willingness to be wrong, to challenge and be challenged and to not speak to the public like he is some cartoon character, he uses real “grown up” words. Maybe its an act, politics is about theatre. The irony is that if John McCain dies, and Sarah Palin becomes the first women to be President in the United States, then this dream that many women have had, the dream of “what if a woman ran the world” would come true. The idea of a woman running the world has been loaded with the usual gender biases that there would be no war, we would make more compassionate leaders and the world would just be a better place. The irony is that she would go to war, probably faster than any of the men running in this campaign, she has said as much, she has said it, maybe its to prove how tough she is in the boys club.
I am scared right now. I don’t like to think about US politics, or any for that matter, but i do, i need to. I look at what people are saying, i look at the on-line comments more than the articles, i listen to talk back lines and read letters to the Editor. This is where i get a sense of what is going on, where people are at. That is the scary part. They want her, they want Stephen Harper too, they want the tough leaders, the ones who will defend us as if we were there children. The thing is, we aren’t. They will blow us up and cut everything we have access to now, sell our resources and screw us, they have no loyalty. We need to stop thinking that they are going to make it right for us and that a woman is going to make a more thoughtful choice than a man. Were going to lose everything we have, and in many ways we deserve it. Maybe things will change, i have no idea. It doesn’t matter, we don’t change. Canadians are so nice, and polite, Americans are stupid, Women are passive, Men are aggressive, the French are rude, the Chinese are cold, the Russians are scary, and on it goes. Speaking as a Canadian and a woman were not that nice. Look at me, i’m becoming a snarky nihilist.
