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'Tis the Gift to be Simple


"Simple Gifts" was written by Elder Joseph while he was at the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine in 1848. These are the lyrics to his one-verse song:
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.
                                     (Source:  Wikipedia)

Sister Sarah, up there in Wasilla, Alaska, the former Half-Governor of Alaska, has a gift for simplicity.  As a Vice-Presidential candidate, she was an embarrassment.  She seemed to know only the simplest things: Russia was  not very far away.  Government was bad.  Drilling for oil was good.  Shooting wolves from airplanes was fun.  People should not pay very much in taxes.  You can always go to Whitehorse, Canada if you need health care.  Wimpy types live on the East Coast.  Real people live in Idaho and Alaska, and own guns, and love God. 

During the election campaign, Sarah Palin recognized that she was expected to know something about the world beyond simple slogans, and it baffled her.  She wrote the answers on her palm.  She is done with that, now.  "Follow me!", she says.  "Follow me!  Government is the problem.  We simple, honest people who love God and guns and freedom from taxes are the salt of the earth, just like it says in the Bible somewhere."


As in Elder Joseph's lyrics, Sister Sarah is doing a simple dance, turning, turning simply.  The world is damned complicated, but it is a gift to be simple.  It is a gift not to know so much that one's head spins.  It is a gift to cut all the crap away and just stand for God, and real people, and less government, and oil (if you have it).  It is a gift to take government subsidies, if you can build a bridge with it, without having to worry about the hypocrisy of it all.  It is a gift to have Sister Sarah as a symbol of how lots of people feel.  It is a valley of love and delight; a place just right.

There are a lot of people like Sister Sarah, afraid, confused, angry at their lot in life, or at the lot they think they are in danger of sliding into. They do not want a history lesson about how we got into this mess.  They don't want to know anything about what a fundamental shift in economic structure means, and they don't want to know anything about global climate change, or evolution, or the massing of capital in the hands of a few, either.  They don't want to know what the real and beneficial impact of recent immigration is.  They don't want to know where all the money we spend on health care insurance is going, or where most of the rest of the money in our society is being amassed, at the very top.  They intend to send a message to Washington, D.C., and all those effete types, and buy lottery tickets and get rich.

They are going to vote for Republicans, because they have their heels dug in, too, unless there is a Tea Party candidate handy, in which case they will follow Sister Sarah's advice.  They aren't ashamed to bow and bend,
when true simplicity can be gained.  






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