posted on September 11, 2008 09:55:18 PM new
Deepak Chopra insightfully writes:
Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national
psyche even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly
illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the
Republican convention in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she
outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given
her negligent parochial expertise in the complex affairs of
governing. Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which
reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New
York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international
figure. Palin's pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but
her real appeal goes deeper.
She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding
his idealism and exhorting people to obey their worst impulses. In
psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides
out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with
qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence,
selfishness, and suspicion of "the other." For millions of Americans,
Obama triggers those feelings, but they don't want to express them.
He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly,
that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind. (Just to be
perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact that
Sen. Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before
his arrival on the scene.) I recognize that psychological analysis of
politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a
perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin's message. In her
acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to
celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.
Look at what she stands for:
--Small town values -- a denial of America's global role, a return to
petty, small-minded parochialism.
--Ignorance of world affairs -- a repudiation of the need to repair
America's image abroad.
--Family values -- a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim
for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don't
need to be heeded.
--Rigid stands on guns and abortion -- a scornful repudiation that
these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.
--Patriotism -- the usual fallback in a failed war.
--"Reform" -- an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out
corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who
doesn't fit your ideology.
Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which
has been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical,
that minorities and immigrants, being different from "us" pure
American types, can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much
effort and globalism is a foreign threat. The radical right marches
under the banners of "I'm all right, Jack," and "Why change?
Everything's OK as it is." The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin
is a woman and a reactionary at the same time. She can add mom to
apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of
feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of
women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they
are voting against their own good. The Republicans have won multiple
national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection,
hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness.
Obama's call for higher ideals in politics can't be seen in a vacuum.
The shadow is real; it was bound to respond. Not just conservatives
possess a shadow -- we all do. So what comes next is a contest
between the two forces of progress and inertia. Will the shadow win
again, or has its furtive appeal become exhausted? No one can
predict. The best thing about Gov. Palin is that she brought this
conflict to light, which makes the upcoming debate honest. It would
be a shame to elect another Reagan, whose smiling persona was a
stalking horse for the reactionary forces that have brought us to the
demoralized state we are in. We deserve to see what we are getting,
without disguise.
posted on September 12, 2008 11:30:31 AM new
You can make endless posts if you seek to define what is "good" and "progressive" and then declare how someone deviates from your definitions. You assume what you want is "good".
Most things have clear "yes or no" answers and the majority of left wing advocates are simply out of touch with reality. The country is not the Berkeley campus.
Yes, women demand the right to choose. However, you extend this to mean "Fill out this form, wait over there for the abortion" method of birth control (even worse if paid for by the state). It simply is not so. This is one reason you cannot figure out the huge support Palin has gathered with women.
The same can be said for guns. You dream up gun bans, or bans on "blue" guns, or "red" guns, because after all "guns kill people". This conveniently disguises the real issue that people kill people. And they do it with steak knives, axes and all manner of things.
The creedo is always to separate the PERSON from responsibility. Everything is a failure of the state to "control" something. The only way a person can fail is if the state fails him first.
