About Palin, SHEESH!

No doubt you too have received some of the emails that are floating around about Republican VP pick Sarah Palin. Most of them have my women friends up-in-arms, (which I actually think is a good thing.) But this piece by Deepak Chopra is the most sensible I've seen yet. He really spells out the reasons why it's so important to keep the McCain/Palin ticket from winning the election. This country, and the world, surely cannot survive another year of radical right-wing rule. I know our economy can't survive any more corporate "bailouts", our military can't survive another pre-emptive war, our kids can't survive their bankrupt schools, our homeowners can't continue to lose their homes, and our seniors can't afford privatized medical and Social Security.

This "Reign of Error" must end and it must end on November 4th with the election of the Democratic ticket. Rather that sit around bemoaning poll numbers and positive media coverage for the Republicans we should all turn off our televisions and computers and get out and register voters. This election will be decided by new young voters. They're fired up by Obama. This election will be decided by women, angry at the callousness by McCain's pick of an anti-woman, woman VP. This election will be decided by African Americans who have the best reason in the history of this country to feel engaged in our political system. This election will be decided by you! NOW PLEASE, GET TO WORK!

Obama and the Palin Effect
by Deepak Chopra

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 turning negativity into a cause for pride. 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 nostaligic return to simpler times disguises 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 needed.
* 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. Source