Obama and the Palin effect

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.



Something I found on the internet. Good reading for ALL