Obama and The Palin Effect
From: Deepak Chopra | Posted: Friday, September 5th, 2008
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.
