One of my recent modes of procrastination, now that I’ve seen all the Alex Harvey videos and Doctor Who episodes that YouTube has on offer, is perusing Facebook. I recently joined a Facebook group called “1,000,000 Strong Against Sarah Palin” at the behest of a friend. Sure, I thought--what’s to like about Sarah Palin? I even contributed a wall post on the group’s page:

"Richard Nixon represents the dark side of the American spirit."
--Robert F. Kennedy
"Sarah Palin ditto, with a smiley face and a little heart over the "i" in "imbecile."
--me

Shortly thereafter, I read some of the other postings by my fellow anti-Palinites. I immediately regretted joining the group.

There are so many reasons to be appalled at John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. They have been too well rehearsed for me to go into here.   But (like virtually every other moving target on the Internet) a group like the one on Facebook seems to have opened up floodgates of misogyny and free-floating hatred that are scary to witness.

The difference, deep down, between the sort of person I fancy myself to be and the kind of person who would foist Sarah Palin on America, is that I just want people like that to go away and leave me alone. Sarah Palin should stay on the tundra, or wherever, waving at Russia and raising her kids as she sees fit. I simply object to her ignorant self-assurance about how the rest of us should be living our lives. Her prejudices should not become the law of the land.

If people like Palin, or Karl Rove, or Rush Limbaugh had their way, those of us who disagree with them would be disenfranchised, monitored 24/7 by the Thought Police, gagged and prevented from exercising the rights we used to think were guaranteed us. They would throw Jesus in jail for vagrancy and put 11 of the 12 disciples in Guantanamo; they’d find a nice job on K Street for Judas. They are not Christians for any meaningful value of the word Christian. They would make life sheer misery for non-fundamentalists, gays, the poor, and anyone else they take a dislike to. In their tunnel-vision dogmatism they would let some seriously scary people take over American foreign, economic, military, environmental, and economic policy. (Whoops, they already have.)

But we’re better than that. I hope. I regret my Facebook characterization of Palin as an imbecile.  I shouldn’t have let myself mirror the obvious contempt that her faction has for the rest of America.

I look forward to the forthcoming presidential and vice presidential debates because I hope that for once the Democratic standard bearers will articulate the difference between a truly enlightened understanding of the values of this country, and the bastardized, jackbooted, winner-take-all Puritanism that has governed us for the last eight years. Rove/Palin/Limbaugh have not an ounce of respect for anything that anyone outside their movement thinks, does, or believes; by contrast, I expect Joe Biden to give Palin her due as the first woman governor of Alaska, and as the mother of a serving soldier. Barack Obama has already made it clear that he honors McCain’s prior service to the country. But I don’t expect any honest reciprocity from the Republican ticket.

The difference is between tribalism and real civilization. We can’t let the tribalism of the Right force us into a countervailing tribal posture. We have to support a pluralistic nation with room even for the Sarah Palins. We can’t engage in tit-for-tat excommunication of those who have already excommunicated the rest of us.