Biden Palin Debate Leaves me Angry and Exhausted

Anger.

That is the overriding emotion I felt while watching the Biden Palin debate. Anger. I yelled at the screen. That Woman just kept prattling on: dodging the questions, let alone taking any actual positions. Who was I most angry at? I couldn't decide.

Was I angry at the moderator, Gwen Ifill, who was awful, throwing out silly, leading questions (a leading question is where one hints at the correct answer when asking), and failing -- utterly -- to get Palin to answer of the questions? Well, I was angry at her: come on, call that person on her abject failure to answer any question straight on. But that wasn't the main target of my anger.

Was I angry at Joe Biden, who seemed unable to talk to the camera, let alone smack down the generalized blather coming from his opponent? Now, I love Joe Biden. I have been a supporter of his for a long time. But he is not a great debater.

I thought I was angry at Biden and Ifill. There are too many people suffering today, these issues are too important for either of them to allow Palin to spew such bullshit. But my significant other pointed out the source of my anger was Palin herself. And, as almost always, my significant other was right.

What I was angry at was Palin: her refusal to answer the questions or to speak honestly to the American people. I was angry at her overrehearsed blather: she had a speech prepared for each five minute segment, but it had nothing to do with anything the moderator said.

Empathy. Barack Obama explains that empathy underlies all of his political positions. And I can relate to that. It is what makes us human: empathy. The ability to understand and sympathize with the plight of others. The desire to come together to make life better for each of us. Cooperation flows from empathy. Our greatest ability, cooperation, what truly sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom, flows from empathy: our ability to understand each other, to discuss and find paths toward a better world for all.

And these last eight years have been awful: people are suffering. There are people who can't afford a college education. There are people who lose their jobs, lose their homes, find themselves alone, ashamed, living off the good will of friends and family they never wanted to put in such a position. There are people who live will pain, small and big: illness, minor and major. They don't have the money to seek treatment, or are afraid that whatever treatment they do get will bankrupt them. Or they see their children, in crappy, underfunded, overcrowded schools, where the textbooks don't even mention evolution. And they wonder, how are their kids ever going to compete? How are they ever going to be able to build a better life for themselves if they can't even get out of the starting blocks?

And people feel dejected, defeated, like life is over, their fate sealed, before they ever really got started. I know that feeling. I know that torment.

And I want a champion: the American people want a champion. Someone who will forcefully say "enough!" And more, someone who will be able to explain why the path the country has been on is a failure, why it betrays everything about who we are and what we believe and what we strive to be.

No, my anger is not really at Joe Biden. Or even Gwen Ifill. My anger is at Sarah Palin, at John McCain, at those who defend and seek to prolong this downhill slope we are on, who seem indifferent to the pain they cause, or who even revel in it, as Bush and Cheney do.

We are so far off the path of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. We have become the Land of the Lazy Bully and the Home of the Simpering Fool. And, even more than John McCain, Sarah Palin represents that awful, destructive path. So I am angry that anyone would have the delusional arrogance to say the things Palin said, in the way she said it, as if the whole thing were just some episode of American Idol. The world, the pain of our people, is far to serious for such inanity.