Crimson Sky

The last few days have made me so nostalgic.

When I was in college, I read James Clavell's classic novel "Shogun." It was about an intense samurai power struggle in feudal Japan. Two mighty houses, Ishido and Toranaga, stood locked in a stealth but escalating tension after a decade of tenuous peace left by a military dictator, and both rulers would vie for the destiny of Japan and to be Shogun. The story runs through a current of smoke, shadow, trap-doors, and quiet powder kegs, slinking through subtle and infinite plot fractures, feasting the reader in haunting flashbacks of decades past, and exploding at times with inexorable force. But fittingly, the sectarian fractures always fall into twos, like humans do.

Spoiler Alert:

Toranaga played the weakling as his samurai allies defected to mighty Ishido. But small Toranaga secretly mastered the arts of the "black powder" of the English mariners, and at the same time played to Lord Ishido's ego by sending his aristocrats to deliberately die at Ishido's hands under banners of peace, thereby frightening Ishido's numerous allies. Near the end (and this is key), Lord Toranaga sent his lovely and astute agent and confidante, Lady Mariko, into Ishido's fortress banquet during the Cherry Blossom Festival. Despite war, every noble was required to attend. Toranaga sent her in order to stridently embarrass Lord Ishido and then die a brutal death by his henchmen after the pageantry. Mariko’s fatal blow to Ishido was when she cavalierly questioned his samurai lineage…a claim of illegitimacy that had dogged Ishido for years. Mariko’s cruel death galvanized Toranaga's house and converted many Ishido allies who had family ties to Lady Mariko, upsetting the lopsided swell of power away from the capital. The heat in the Pacific air rose in war-drum crescendo, but the final battle was never narrated. In the Spring of 1600, Lord Toranaga launched Crimson Sky, his campaign offensive, and it was already a foregone conclusion as to who would win. Lady Mariko's sacrifice already vouchsafed a victory.

Last week, Sarah Palin shattered the predictions of every pundit across the nation, shamed the mainstream media (Fox and Talk Radio aside), and galvanized the GOP base. Furthermore, Obama lost his novelty inasmuch as he was no longer uniquely about change, and women around the nation saw a coequal flagellated with triple the intensity of Hillary. This fell swoop rocked the nation, both Democrats and Republicans alike; one for the better, one for the worse. McCain sent Palin into a million hostile cameras, pointed at her like loaded guns. She delivered a robust and graceful speech that electrified the GOP, published Obama's professional emptiness, disgraced DNC media allies, and left indelible marks on history for the true party of Susan B. Anthony.

Strange revelations about the roles of each party have been shaken from the tree already, most of which were already obvious to many:

1. The National Organization for Women is irrelevant. They only support women that fit their narrow socioeconomic agenda and ignore the rest. The NAACP claims to support colored people, but not Clarence Thomas, because he is not their kind of black man. These geriatric hipster organizations should state what it is that they actually believe and stop masquerading to speak for demographics that do not all share their beliefs.

2. Hillary occupied a strange place as a leftist stood demonized by the leftist media. With all the NBC carpet-bombing of conservatives, she was the collateral damage. Strange vacuum for a liberal to occupy, if I say so myself!

3. The Big-Tent Party of Diversity is the most misogynistic of them all; their faith in women is only a cynical convenience.

4. American women see beyond Roe v. Wade as a make-or-break-issue.

5. There will be trans-generational redefinitions of what "Liberal" and "Conservative" mean. This absolutely terrifies the Left. >>