Deepak Chopra on Sarah Palin

Deepak Chopra

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 Quail 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 Gillian 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 Barrack 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 globalize 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.