Alaska: zealots, entrepreneurs, and snake-oil

Watch Katie Couric's interview of Sarah Palin if you haven't already.  

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/25/eveningnews/main4479062.shtml

In 1977, when I was 21, I moved to Fairbanks Alaska for the summer.  I had been working at a title insurance company in Santa Barbara in an entry level clerical position.  I posted documents, by hand, to ledger cards, and later located parcel numbers by reading the legal lot descriptions on the documents and finding the boundaries on a map.  I had worked there for less than a year, earning just above minimum wage.  Hoping to capitalize on my minimal experience, I applied for a job in a title insurance company in Fairbanks.  I was enthusiastically hired because of my "experience", and was quickly conducting title searches.  I was a quick study, but I certainly considered myself quite unqualified to do this work, since, after all, the company was issuing insurance policies verifying clean title based on my say-so. What's more, on some of the searches I was working on, I was able to document title history only for the previous 10 years, but no more.  When I asked my boss why I couldn't find documentation to validate title for these properties, he said, "Well, all of those maps and documents were destroyed in the big flood of 1967.  Just go back as far as you can and don't worry about it." The company was quite pleased with my work and offered to raise my pay by over 30% if I would stay (I was already making twice the salary I had been making in Santa Barbara).  But I didn't like the title insurance business, and I planned to go back to college, so I declined.  

This was my experience in Alaska in 1977:  there was plenty of opportunity for anyone with half a brain, and sometimes that was all the resume one needed.  The state was booming, oil money was everywhere, people were flying by the seat of their pants.  I was astonished that people with little or no experience were able to step into jobs they would never ever be considered qualified for in the Lower 48.  The climate was harsh, the population was sparse, the state and the economy were growing, jobs were abundant and sometimes hard to fill.  So entrepreneurs and ambitious snake-oil salesmen stepped in, and that was how things seemed to run.  

It's been 3 decades since then, but, judging by the state and national politicians that Alaska has produced, not much has changed.  Thus, McCain brings us Sarah Palin.  She wants us to know that "If Putin rears his head. . . " she'd be right there across the border, ready with her Early Response System, since, when Russia "comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go?  It's Alaska, it's right over the border." Yet she can't hold her own in an interview with Katie Couric.  

McCain-Palin

John McCain is a placeholder for the Republican right.  Palin is the real deal.  She, or anyone else in the religious far right crazy zone, is unelectable on top of the ticket.  Like Cheney, she's a stealth pick.  They don't vet her (Cheney wasn't vetted either); they keep her off the radar of press scrutiny.  My prediction: McCain, if he were elected, will be out in four years, maybe less.  The right knows about his health issues.  He refuses to release his full medical records to the public. Palin would be trotted out to appease the right, to play up the role of first woman VP, but she'll be protected from scrutiny.  And when the time comes, she'll step in, unvetted, unqualified, unelected.  Like Bush and Cheney, only scarier.  

But the economy is in freefall, and it's possible this crisis will spell the doom of this tragically cynical, manipulative, and unqualified ticket.  If there's a silver lining, there it is.

Sarah Palin

When I was a born-again Christian in the 70's, which, at that time, tended to merge the 60's anti-materialism, social justice, and peace movements into the teachings of Jesus, there was a parallel movement that was embracing a more radical viewpoint and was endorsing a sort of stealth campaign.  The church I joined in Isla Vista (near UCSB, Santa Barbara, California) in 1975 was the product of a recent split from another church, which advocated a top-down authoritarian leadership, end-times survivalism, communal living, and infiltration of political bodies, from school boards on up, by Christian activists.  The idea was that eventually the U.S. would have Christians in the highest levels of government, where they could begin to force change to what they believed was a corrupt and immoral society epitomized by the 1960's counterculture.  The church I was in split from the more radical faction because the leadership believed in a separation between our spiritual lives and political institutions.  So here we are, 30+ years later, and the hardcore, underground, off-the-radar work by these radical groups is coming to fruition.  George Bush's appointment to the presidency seemed like the ultimate coup for the religious right, but he's not really a church-going zealot in the same way that Sarah Palin appears to be.  I think the fact that she has little experience, thus little history, is actually a plus for the campaign.  Just watching the convention, and the pundits on the right enthusiastically crowing about her character, charisma, charm, etc. is exactly how they would want this to play out.  She appears to be an attractive and assertive blank slate, someone upon whom the sheep-like followers of the right can project whatever they want.  She touches on all the political buzz-words of the political and religious right:  God, guns, gays, taxes, anti-government, and anti-environmentalism.  She exudes confidence and strength, but, like all religious followers in this radically patriarchal system, most especially women who are trained to be submissive to men, she can be easily manipulated and controlled.  

The stakes are even higher than we imagined for this election.  I think most people don't realize just how radical these religious groups really are, even though most of their churches operate in plain sight.  Most Americans who call themselves Christians assume that these non-denominational evangelical groups are just another version of themselves.  But some of these groups are wrapped up with militia movements and extreme end-times theology (which makes environmentalism and global climate change non-issues in their eyes).  

In 1977 I spent a summer in Alaska, and was looking for a church to attend.  I checked out a small non-denominational congregation in Fairbanks, where I was living, and had a bizarre experience as I found myself in the middle of a holy-roller service, with people crying, shouting, speaking in tongues, fainting, throwing themselves to the ground, etc.  I eventually attended some evangelical-style Catholic masses and bible studies, which were radical by Catholic standards but nothing like the possessed little holy-roller church.  Alaska--the frontier, steeped in oil-money (the oil pipeline had just been completed that spring), mecca for misfits and those looking to make a quick buck--seemed to be to be a perfect growing ground for this kind of extremism.  It's no surprise to me that the the VP hand picked by the religious right come out of this environment.