So Why Does Sarah Palin Make My Skin Crawl?

She really is starting to. Some configuration of hints and glimpses in the still pictures and video footage are beginning to have a creepy echo for me of a show about androids on the SciFi Channel. It is, I am certain, wholly irrational, another one of my biochemical blips projected on quite a normal woman who happens to be in politcs. Were she still the Mayor of Wasilla, or even merely the Governor of Alaska I probably wouldn't feel any such thing from speech or interview footage. But that doesn't mean that there is no objective trigger for my feelings, silly as they are. She is no longer just a small town mayor or popular woman Governor. She is a celebrity. Such things change you.

Does she ever stop smiling? Biden and Obama both have the classic politician's smile, a radiant flashbulb on a hair trigger slipping out from under a grave, sober, and thoughtful mask when something suddenly strikes them as funny. Hillary Clinton smiles slightly or broadly with somewhat pursed lips and with eyes too wary to ever quite fully participate. Those eyes seem to relax only when she is with her daughter Chelsea. And Bill's smile has never lost it's hint of aw shucks! and the joy of a man who genuinely likes being around people, and being The Big Dawg among them.

McCain has that little Cheshire Cat grin that does nothing to hide the constant memories of torment, and perhaps his chronic physical pain, in his eyes. His handlers are starting to figure out that the lumpiness of his face is actually quite attractive because it is genuine, the outward manifestation of the admirable strength of character and will that kept him alive. They no longer try to photograph him exclusively from his right side at eye level in the ads. It is very difficult not to like him now that they have started to acknowledge that he has a left side to his face quite unlike the grave, and boring, senatorial stuffed shirt that those right side only eye level camera angles showed us.

But Palin's smile never seems to change, nor do her eyes. It is disconcerting thinking of her still smiling like that, all through some deadly, snore-inducing, afternoon presiding over the Senate when she must be there as the tie breaking vote. Would her private chats with Vladimir Putin or Hamid Karzai look and sound like she always seems to on her "in depth" interview footage--possessed of a rational chirpishess, a clear belief that her political adversaries are mere mutton-headed baby killers who wouldn't know a hole in the ground when they stumbled into it?

Does she smile like that when the reticule in the eyepiece is dead on just behind the Moose's ribcage, where the high-speed bullet will shred the lungs like a veg-o-matic for a quick kill? What is behind her eyes as the trigger pulls back with that just-so ease and smoothness which makes the reticule vibrate not a jot?

What's it like. Sarah, to touch a warm body you've just shot? Are you as chirpy as usual when you and hubby load it into the bed of the pickup truck?

Now, no, no, no, this is not some cheap shot about her belief in "right to life" being "hypocritical". The reason in her public chirpiness is a perfectly sound display of logic and completely consistent with her conservative and Christian premises. I think someone once said that God cares not for oxen, and, presumably, not for moose.

Unfortunately, I care for them. I care for Sarah Palin without sharing her premises. And I am not a baby-killer. Among other things, the reason for it is this. A death you cause, or order to be caused, leaves a slight but definite stain in your mindstream, and pushes you in a direction where you are the one with the invisible reticule targeted on your loins in some future life. Many such deaths leave you stained much deeper, like my own tough teeth which have seen the passage of thousands of gallons of strong coffee over the last forty years.

When Sarah Palin is characterized as a pit bull with lipstick and when others call her Sarahcuda, do you think the metaphors mean that she will carefully refute Obama’s incorrect political views? or bite into and tear apart his privates? Does anyone think their school age son or daughter will really know the difference? Does anyone care that they do? Does everyone want their daughters to start acting this way on the playground, in the classroom, or on the sports field? Is that what “having a strong woman role model” means?

All I can say is thank heavens Obama doesn’t describe himself in those terms, and doesn’t aspire to earn such a name as Obamacuda. It means that I can vote for him with a clear conscience, whether he wins or loses.

The horror of the Presidency for a Buddhist such as myself, is that you are routinely forced to make decisions that might cost many human lives. I think Barack Obama is a personally good man, and, as such, my feelings about electing him President, and its effects on his future lives, are quite mixed. The power of a tremendous number of good actions from past lives may place him in the White House. If it does, the effects of all those good actions will be totally used up. Does he have any more in his karmic bank balance? His happiness in future lives will largely depend on this. It will also depend on the amount of death his power and actions will cause. And it is virtually certain that some such count of deaths will ensue from it.

Yet I still think him the best man, with the correct and sensible views, for the job. I will vote for him, wear his buttons, and give my widow's mite to his campaign. I can only hope that if he wins, he will emerge stained only as much as Bill Clinton or less. Bill has a relatively few number of human lives to his debit, but I fancy I can see the stain in his eyes from it still. That stain is not there in the eyes of Hillary, of Al Gore, of John Kerry--and I think them the luckier men and women for it.

We have both credit and debit balances from our past lives, and it is possible to carry both into a future life. I'm not sure just what I see in Sarah Palin's eyes, but I hope it is not a deep and indelible stain from causing much past death, which she is bringing to this life along with her good past actions. If so, I hope, for her sake, that she never gets closer to the Presidency than she is at the moment.

Yes, you may call it partisan prejudice and bipolar paranoia if you wish. It might well be, and I frankly hope it is, and that I am merely deceived by it. For if it isn't the potential consequences are enough to freeze the heart.

I am no fan of George W. Bush. I think he has been the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. But I pray for his future happiness and freedom from suffering, as I do for all sentient beings--even the ones who end up in the Palin Family freezer. For GWB really needs it. His Presidential score so far is 4000+ American soldiers, as well as unknown tens, or perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis. And whether I can see it or not [I think I can.] the stain on his mindstream from this is indellible, deep, and dark.

Om Mani Padme Hung. Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Soha.