THE RIGHT'S MYTHICAL TRIG FAULT LINE

I don't know anyone on the left who ever thinks about Trig Palin, but the right desperately wants us to despise him for existing -- and if we don't, the right will make up a trend of left-wing Trig-hating out of the flimsiest of evidence. Now I see that our old pal Gary Bauer (whom we actually do despise) has written a Politico piece on the subject with Daniel Allott:

Trig Palin has divided America

Reactions to Sarah Palin's decision to resign the governorship of Alaska have been a reminder of her unmatched ability to elicit strong emotions from friend and foe alike. We know some of the reasons why. It's her evangelical Christianity and her folksy manner. It's her small-town roots and her "new feminism."

(It's her narcissism, her pride in her own ignorance, and her McCarthyite hatred for those who disagree with her. But never mind.)

But there is something more. A year ago, Palin gave birth to her youngest son, Trig, who has Down syndrome. Since then, mother and son have become objects of the left’s unrelenting scorn and the right’s unflinching fidelity.

... At Talking Points Memo, an article sarcastically suggested that Palin resigned because "she wants to spread Down syndrome ... because Down syndrome is just too cute to be reserved for one in 800 births."

A Paliban Daily article titled "Sarah Palin’s Retarded Platform: More Trigs!" interpreted Palin's outspokenness on disability rights as a political ploy to win votes....

Those reactions echoed the hateful response that met Palin when she introduced Trig on the campaign trail last fall. Nicholas Provenzo of the libertarian Center for the Advancement of Capitalism discussed being "troubled" by Trig’s existence because "it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome." ...

Working backward, I'll start by saying it's news to me that "the libertarian Center for the Advancement of Capitalism" -- which "is dedicated to advancing individual rights and economic freedom through Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism" -- is part of "the left."

As for the Paliban Daily piece, I see that it was so representative of the depraved thinking of the left that the editors of the site responded a day after it was published by asking readers whether he should be fired, and a day after that he quit writing for the site. The TPM piece was written not by a regular TPM writer but by a diarist with no "followers" -- in other words, he's just a blogger who decided to create his blog at TPM (a blog with a whopping two posts since late June), and who's elicited very little response.

I know you righties really, really want this to be about Trig, just as you'd really like it if we lefties killed kittens for sport or engaged in similar heart-tugging acts of depravity. But listen to me: We don't care about Trig. Many of us, faced with a pregnancy in which Down's syndrome was evident, would make a choice very different from Palin's. But our response to Palin's choice is "Go with God" (or whatever the atheist or Flying Spaghetti Monster-worshipping equivalent of that might be). We don't like Palin and her followers using him as a prop, or a bloody shirt -- but her choice to bring Trig to term is something we simplty don't think about.

And if Palin does want to try to reduce the number of abortions in cases involving Down's syndrome fetuses, she might want to tell her fans to back the hell off, and she herself might want to stop talking about people who disagree with her (on this and other issues) as if we're unspeakably evil, which is precisely how she's talked from her 2008 convention speech on. You can catch more flies with honey than with hydrochloric acid.