The Captain Ahab of American Politics

"All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick.? ?Moby Dick, by Herman Melville Is the American Left the Captain Ahab of American politics? So obsessed with its own great white whale in the guise of Sarah Palin, it can't seem to sort out when playing it for a fool has devalued from sport to child's play. For three days, I?ve watched with awe as Liberal buffoons continue to chuck flaccid harpoon after harpoon, incapable of coming to the realization that it?s not the dream of ?universal? health care or stopping of rising waters, they just want to talk about Sarah Palin. I?m guilty of the same thing, but I do contribute to a site that exists explicitly to support and defend her. To make a reasonable comparison, I don?t spend my days mining through every utterance of Hillary Clinton, searching for that million-dollar gotcha moment that never seems to appear. If you?d woken up from a five-year coma having never heard the name Sarah Palin, you would think the United States of America had been arrogated by a bespectacled mother of five with a Facebook account. How else to judge the flouting of Gov. Palin?s every utterance by her detractors, to say nothing of the flaying of every aspect of her existence? When a philosophy professor at HuffPo is calling your shrieking ?knuckleheaded,? perhaps you should consider getting a St. Jude?s medallion tattooed to your neck and calling it a day. Following George Pickett?s rules of engagement isn?t exactly a top-notch stratagem as it falls more along the lines of cutting off the nose to spite the face. I thought the quoted Melville prose was apt after Gov. Palin?s Thanksgiving Day message riffing on the various off-Teleprompter misstatements by Pres. Obama. They?re fun to ridicule, yes, but in my heart of hearts I am certain ? as is Gov. Palin ? that the President knows that the United States has 50 states and that Europe is not a country. Yet, even I, in that same dark heart, did not imagine that so many people on the Left thought that Gov. Palin was being serious: not about making fun of Pres. Obama, but not even realizing that it was the President who said there were 57 states. So delicious was this unforeseen event that C4P?s Stacy Drake put together a highlight reel of sorts, documenting the vacant stupidity of so many Tweeters, convinced of their own superiority while nimbly finding a proper oral purchase for one of their two left feet. I?m not sure what?s more disturbing ? that so many people who hate her follow Gov. Palin?s Facebook Notes, or that so many of Pres. Obama?s disciples were unaware of one of his most famous rhetorical expectorations. This is, obviously, ceding unnecessary ground, as those ridiculing Gov. Palin didn?t bother to read her note. It?s much easier to believe a tertiary non-source about something Gov. Palin supposedly said than to actually go to the primary source and read it. I return to my introductory question: is there a character from literature that best embodies the American Left and its enduring obsession with Gov. Palin more than Captain Ahab, the monomaniacal whale ship captain who takes his crew on a terrifying journey in search of a very specific whale? ?all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick? Replace the word ?Ahab? with the word ?Liberals? and the words ?Moby Dick? with the name ?Sarah Palin,? and tell me if I?m too far off. I hate giving away spoilers, but if you haven?t read Moby Dick by now, you?re probably not going to: In the end, Moby Dick, not Captain Ahab, prevails. Some words of wisdom for my friends on the Left. Re-read Moby Dick (of course you?ve already read it!) and near the end, you?ll find Captain Ahab?s last words: "Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell?s heart I stab at thee; for hate?s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! And since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!"

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