President Sarah Palin inaugurated, 1/20/13: Alternate Future History 1
[This is the first of two alternative “future histories” of the Presidential campaign of 2012 and its aftermath. The second will appear tomorrow.]
Washington Free Press On-Line, 6:30 pm, January 19, 2013
Breaking News:
Neighborhoods throughout the District of Columbia are now reporting unexpected and unprecedented movements of US Army troops into the city, where they seem to be securing major traffic nerve centers that could seal off the ceremonial area for tomorrow’s Presidential Inauguration from the residential areas of the city.
Troops seem also to be establishing posts on all bridges across the Potomac between Virginia and the District, and on Interstate 95 where it crosses the Beltway.
Repeated requests for comment to the White House and to the Army Chief of Staff were met with repeated refusals to comment .
Meanwhile, leaders of the Mobilization for Democracy that has been planning to bring two million “Counter-Inaugural” protesters from the South and from the Eastern seaboard as far north as Boston said they had no definite information on what the appearance of troops meant, but thought it might be intended to thwart their protests of the Inauguration of Sarah Palin tomorrow.
“We can’t believe President Obama would be ordering this deployment for such a reason, but there are certainly some military commanders who might,” said Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., co-chair of the Mobilization. “All our demonstrators have been trained in calm and committed nonviolent behavior since we began organizing after Election Day, and we expect them to adhere to that discipline. We will not turn back. We shall overcome.”
News Analysis:
Plans for the Counter-Inaugural demonstration and the newly reported troop movements climax what many observers have called the most divisive national election since William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan in 1896, or even since 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected on the brink of the Civil War.
There is general agreement that the election of Sarah Palin was brought about by three factors: the rise of the official unemployment rate to 15%, plus another 9% of workers who had given up seeking work and thereby gone off the official count; the rising weekly death toll of US troops in Afghanistan, as the Taliban established firm control of the Pashtun regions and encroached more and more deeply in Kabul and other major cities; and the Congressional stalemate and paralysis that emerged from the elections of 2010.
Through the Republican primaries of early 2012, Palin consistently won about 35% of the votes against a field of other candidates. Under the Republican Patty’s winner-take-all rules for the primaries, she carried enough delegates to cement her nomination by late May, and turned to campaigning against the President.
Her speeches and the responses of her audiences were vitriolic, connecting accusations of Mr. Obama’s “un-American” origins with denunciations of him for “sucking up to Wall Street while jobs were sucked out of the real America” and “playing games with Muslim terrorists while real American kids died.” “Why doesn’t he just nuke those America-haters out of the water – or the mountains?” she cried out at many rallies.
Nothing like the 2008 tidal wave of youthful volunteers emerged for the Obama campaign in 2012, as many of the ‘08 activists expressed sorrow, bafflement, or anger at his policies in office. While most asserted that they would vote for him as against Sarah Palin, few offered the devoted organizing effort of 2008.
In November, Obama’s support among “Reagan Democrats” practically disappeared. While his support percentages among African-Americans and Hispanics remained high, the Hispanic turnout dropped considerably. (In the stalemated Congress of 2011, no immigration bill could be passed.) The only other constituencies where he carried a majority of voters were Jews, self-described gay people, Muslims, and a thin sliver of urban and suburban white women from 18 to 45 years old.
Comments
17 comments postedI realize the point of describing this scenario was to motivate action we can be taking now to prevent its realization.
So my comment here may be ‘beside the point,’
but what struck me immediately upon reading the “News Analysis” of the fictional election of Sarah Palin is that the biggest story for the press and the country would be “the first woman has been elected President of the United States!”
As a woman, I have often wondered how I would feel if a woman I disagree with so completely as I do with Palin were elected. But it undeniably would be a huge turning point in our history, just as surely as Obama’s election was for all of Americans, regardless of how they feel about him or his politics.
Nevertheless, this future is something I will be working to prevent in whatever way I can. Obviously there are things more important - and much more at stake - than breaking through that particular glass ceiling.
I think in times like these soceities start swinging precariously back and forth right to left, the evidence being increasingly polarized opinions and fantasies by either side. At some point the crisis reaches critical mass and the side in power seizes absolute power and everything goes to hell. Your Palin fantasy could very well come to pass but so could its Obama opposite with all the horrors you assign to Palin.
This is very possible - thank you for writing it. People who think you “should not say this” or “should not call Bush Hitler” just don’t get it. Bush committed heinous crimes - he was different from Hitler only in degree, not in kind. Obama, unfortunately, is continuing these crimes (the fool), and what is so FUNNY but SAD about that is, the Right Wing hates him anyway! He can keep bombing poor people in Af-Pak and Iraq and possibly Iran all he likes, and they will call him Hitler and a traitor. They hate him no matter what he does, because he is “liberal” (not really) and non-white. (Folks: Spend a few hours listening to right wing radio - you will be shocked at the hatred and misinformation and ignorance of the Constitution and of history.) THE ONLY WAY for Obama to survive politically, if THE PEOPLE actually have any say in that, and, frankly, I am not sure they do (given election fraud, given that I am sure Wall Street and big corporations have the real pull), is for him to do things that help THE PEOPLE and not Wall Street. If he doesn’t, he will fail, and we will get not a populist, but a Christofascist such as Palin, because he will win the primary.
Why did I take the trouble to work these out two scenarios? Because the “prophetic voice” we at The Shalom Center aspire to is not one of prediction but of “possidiction,” of saying IF. — If we do these things, we will get these results; if we do something different, those other results.
The question is: What actions, by whom, will make the difference between the two outcomes?
What we sow is what we reap. What we choose to sow is up to us.
Perhaps I should add that I too think it is historically incorrect and ethically wrong to describe any past or present US president as “Hitler,” etc. But I do think a society that engages in two failed and self-destructive wars and that cannot cope with mass unemployment, scapegoating of racial or religious or sexual minorities, or the concentration of unaccountable wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands — is risking an extremely dangerous future.
In that noxious soup, demagogues are bound to rise — and might even take power.
We at The Shalom Center welcome your help to work toward a more decent future. We welcome your thoughts — the whole range of them, agree with us or not; your activist energy; and yes, your donations.
Thanks for any or all of those.
Shalom, salaam, shantih — Peace! —-
Arthur
Thanks Arthur for putting this scenario out there. Being one of the 16 million unemployed and living in New York it does not make me feel secure that the “Banks too big to fail” are not failing and the government has given them guarantees for the next time their greed gets the best of him.
Mention is always made of the growing debt. Where were these politicians during the past eight years?
We have to establish a new political system that goes to the Greek root of the word ‘politics’; the struggle for the common good.
Unfortunately, what struck me most about this is not so much the question of this as a possible future and what we need to do about it, but that this is just the sort of projected outrageous possibility, fear-mongering and divisive politicization of issues that I have come to expect from the right-wing Republican faction—and which I so lament!
Unfortunately, what struck me most about this is not so much the question of this as a possible future and what we need to do about it, but that this is just the sort of projected outrageous possibility, fear-mongering and divisive politicization of issues that I have come to expect from the right-wing Republican faction—and which I so lament!
Seriously, this is scary because it suggests that we might be powerless to stop the Palin onslaught…
However, we need to get through 2010 before we can take on 2012, so let’s keep rallying behind our President, as frustrated as we are with his policies at times, especially around the endless war motif.
Arthur, please make this share-able on Facebook, as many of us have friends who would benefit from this stream of thinking.
Many blessings,
“Ad Meah v’Esrim!”
Rabbi Jonathan Klein
CLUE-LA: Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (though speaking as an individual, not for my interfaith organization).
@RabbiASegal: As much as I dislike Bush, I thought language likening him to Hitler were outrageous during his administration — and I think they’re outrageous now. I’m in touch with a number of right-wing activists through a friend’s Facebook comments, and I’m constantly admonishing them for likening Obama and other progressives to Hitler.
The fact of the matter is that the difference between Hitler and any president, Bush and Reagan included, is massive. No president, thank God, rounded up dissidents and shipped them to concentration camps; no president practiced genocide; and any of us were free to protest all we wanted — democracy, by and large, still functioned; organizing on our part continued; and that’s how we were able to elect a President Obama.
Comments from the left likening Bush to Hitler, including yours, give permission to right-wing fanatics to use the same labels for Obama. Whenever confronted with how harsh and vitriolic their language is, each of them points to the Bush years and notes that members of the left employed the same references.
It’s a dangerous path for anyone in political life to use those types of shrill labels, and I call on you, just as I call on those with right-wing views, to stop using them. Otherwise, you will have alienated me and, I’m sure, countless other people who would otherwise support the Shalom Center’s activities.
Hello all: This is a terrifying and not impossible scenario. Republicans could do well in the 2010 off year elections, paving the way for this possibility. On the other hand, if President Obama pushed through a strong program for “green jobs,” pulled the troops out of Afghanistan, got behind a “single payer” health plan, and presented significant proposals for dealing with climate change (and not just b.s. “market based” programs), progressives might rally behind him and stave off this potential horror. I look forward to reading the second “alternate history.”
I live in the Washington DC area and I repeat— this is not an impossible scenario.
I am afraid. Very, very afraid.
Your prophetic comment does not seem to me to have figured in the 2010 mid-terms which, unless O
stops following in W’s footsteps, which will likely bring more National Socialist admirers to Congress.
Arthur, this is dangerous to put this out. what you speak can become reality. “Let there be light” we are in the image of G!d and shouldnt speak this if we don’t want it to be. Please take care and put out a better vision even if you are trying to scare us. GRR
Just a brief look at history tells us that leftist totalitarian system by far outnumber the rightist ones (from certain point of view even Hitler was closer to the left than right). So if there is that special movement of troops you write about it is most probably becuase certain Obama wants to prevent Palin from being inaugurated.
Shalom:
If we thought that Bush was Hitleresque with his 7 years from ‘9/11,’ and took us into an Amerikan surreal, [but unfortunately real for many others] journey, from 1933 to 1940, then Frau Palin is Eva Braun, who much to our chagrin didn’t take the cyanide in the bunker, and is now the poster girl for the Bund and wishes to be its leader.
“They” said it could not happen in Germany and it did, in a democracy, the Weimar Republic. Are Americans or America, any better, when we are scared, have 17% unemployment, and looking for scapegoats?
Keep up the good fight Reb Arthur. We stand tall along side of you!!
And continued Rfua Shlema so that you can continue passing the message with your teaching.
Shalom, v’ahavah ubracha:
Rabbi Arthur Segal
www dot JewishSpiritualRenewal dot org
Hilton Head Island, SC
Yes, very hard to read and sickening. I guess the scary thing we need to think about is the election of 2010 right now. President Obama has a lot of a mess to clean up that we got from prior years. Not an easy job.
I’m not sure I approve of even thinking up such a scenario. But maybe we do need to be reminded to support Obama even if we don’t like everything he’s done or doing. I’m convinced his heart is in the right place. And THINK of the alternatives!
This is well done, and is making me sick inside.
Thank you for your work in helping us think.
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