America's Reality Show

by Kathleen Parker - December 6th, 2010 - Merced Sun Star

Pending catastrophe is not an easy notion to entertain, much less sustain. Americans moreover have a low tolerance for doom and gloom. We are the nation of optimism, after all. We elect leaders who promise hope and change. We are the shining city on a hill.

But what happens when the lights go out? Can't happen.

Won't.

We're America. The most powerful nation on Earth. The land of plenty and opportunity. The place all others want to live. We are the dream.

But. But. What if ... they do? As they say, denial ain't just a river in Egypt. Count me among those who wish not to see what is horrifyingly apparent. Having recently arrived at the conclusion that the worst-case scenarios we've been hearing about for months (and even years to those more alert) might be true, I feel my optimism flagging.

Certainly a part of Ms. Parker's unhappiness must come from the vitriolic hatred she has received in response to the hate she aimed at Sarah Palin. From the delusions of her inside-the-beltway-bubble conventional wisdom about conservatives, she denounces conservatives but rarely targets progressives. Conservatives were and are evil. Progressives control the media and therefore she is very tolerant of their view. Ms. Parker claims she is a Republican, not a conservative. Therefore she was delighted to mock Governor Palin and smear her children as well. The avalanche of hate she got back caught her by surprise. Actually, she has now become the darling of the left because of her attacks on Palin. However even her TV Show, paired with the prostitute using Governor, has not given her the respect she believes she deserves. That must really depress her.

That does not mean she is not correct in her assessment of the future of our nation. There is certainly much to fear. The problem is that the cause of that fear is not universally consistent. The left is convinced that we must spend our way to success by the redistribution of the wealth of a few. The right is convinced that the history of failure from that policy must be avoided at all costs. Yet as long as Obama is President, the primary leadership of our nation will drive the left's agenda forward, not the agenda of the right.

Parker does not make it clear which side she has chosen, just that the fear from both sides has some validity and it is depressing her. Parker is a fuzzy loving moderate caught in a world of absolutes. Much of what angers the Republican beltway leadership which adores the middle (Kathleen Parker, Ed Rollins, Karl Rove, Charles Krauthammer) is that people like Palin are giving them little cover to straddle the fence as they usually prefer. Parker has long been one of those pretend conservatives in the middle and she is outraged as much by the pressure to take sides as she is by the hopelessness that both of the more absolutist sides currently embrace.