Recently, Palin got into a silly brawl with the Wall Street Journal over … oh, hell – it truly doesn’t matter does it? (Read about it here if it’s going to keep you awake tonight.) Anyway, Slate columnist John Dickerson had the nutty idea of posting a comment on Palin’s Facebook page to provoke a friendly round of discussion with her adoring fans.
Quicker than you can say WTF, Dickerson’s comments were unceremoniously deleted – twice. Now, I’ve had no reason to get anywhere near Palin’s Facebook page, but this brusque behavior by the Palinite site manger(s) piqued my curiosity. So I paid a visit.
Oh. My. God.
It was like entering a dystopian dream world as whacked as the one depicted in the sci-fi movie Demolition Man (starring Sly Stallone and Sandra Bullock). In the 1993 film, that world is a “future where violence – along with sexuality, red meat, and even swear words – has passed through the sieve of time,” as critic Jesse Pohlman put it. As you may recall, it is a world in which Taco Bell is a world class restaurant and denizens consider denial a virtue.
Likewise, in Palin’s Facebook World, its denizens blissfully sing hosannas to their goddess of trite. She in turn blows kisses and ladles out her endless store of Simple Jack’s Potion. The endless, back and forth paeans amount to little more than happy-happy joy-joy talk, as the dippy Bullock character in Demolition Man was wont to do. No dissent is allowed (as Dickerson learned). Think only happy-happy thoughts. Talk about Orwellian.
(A THOUGHT: If the Pentagon is in need of an effective enhanced interrogation technique, force captured terrorists to read Palin’s Facebook page. In 20 minutes or less, they’ll sing like Lady Gaga. Whether this treatment is more humane than water-boarding is another question.)
Evidently, the Palinites believe they have arrived at Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. It’s too bad that the world where the rest of us live will always be closer to what Rudyard Kipling described in his 1919 poem "The Gods of the Copybook Headings":
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Of course all of this is lost on Palin and her Facebook worshipers. But apart from a neurotic tendency to garrote interlopers, they seem an otherwise benign lot. And as such, they’re harmless. So I’d be remiss in not wishing them happy-happy joy-joy.
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