This is , or was, on the home page of TPM:

Palin: Obama ‘Death Panel’ Might Euthanize My Baby

Seriously: how sad is that?

Without regard to how utterly whack it is; without speculation for any root(s) it may have in post-partum depression (common enough;after all, she did carry her baby to term, under circumstances of self-imposed difficulty to the point of endangering her life and that of the fetus during her plane trip back to Alaska during labor)…but just as a statement of belief: how sad is that?

Here she is, a mom grappling with the difficulty she sees facing her child. I don’t know what she feels about that; I can’t see into her head, nor remotely assess her feelings; but she’s expressed her belief quite clearly.

Because her child has little, if any, chance of:

1) Learning to play the piano
2) Composing poetry
3) Developing a more-or-less normal emotional IQ

In short, because her child will not have what is generally conceived [1]as a normal life in a modern to post-modern nation, she has opined the falsehood that for our common good, her child should be aborted or even euthanized.

And she really, truly, believes it. She’s not being a demagogue. She genuinely believes that someone like her will be called before some sort of Star Chamber to answer for, apparently, her failure to breed successfully.

How sad is that?

What kind of index can be used to describe that depth. that extent, of sadness?

It’s not just Sarah Palin, either. It’s not just Rush Limbaugh. And that is where the extent index begins to be relevant.

Do we really loathe ourselves so completely that we will refuse to care for our own bodies? That we will decline to acknowledge our common good as encompassing our bodies and their developmental arc?

Beginning to see from this perspective, we ken why the global insurance industries rely on the dis-ease[2] model of doing business.

[1] Not the general society; no no no: by her. Dim as Sarah Palin is, she is (probably) still enough of a mom to know that her child will not have the full life she desired; notwithstanding her statement of how much the world can learn from a Down’s Syndrome child. That statement is just an attempt to displace sadness with hope.

[2] Yes, both senses: disease, of the body or mind, defined as a physical pathology, ranging from allergies to cancer or HIV; and dis-ease, defined briefly as removing comfort and a general feeling of safe belonging. Note that I say removing, not absence; and we can see that process of removal in the insurance industries contemporaneous, and by now well-documented, activities. If the metaphor of the body politic is used, then you, gentle reader, can define to your satisfaction what those mobs are.