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 fo r 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 di sagree.
 
 –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 exh austed? 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.
 

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“THERE WAS ONCE a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings…” said Rachel Carson in her eco-book, Silent Spring, written over 40 years ago.

What has changed?

On Earth Day in 1970 President to be Gerald Ford said “We have come tardily to the tremendous task of cleaning up our enivronment. We should have moved with similar zeal at least a decade ago…we must now address ourselves to the vast problems that confront us.”

Please believe that it is never too late……

What do we do? Where do we go from here? In a recent survey of the Environmental Working Group the following statistics were published:

*287 chemicals found in umbilical cord blood taken from 10 babies born in August and September 2004

*212 of the total number of chemicals found were banned or severely restricted in the US

*47 were common consumer product chemicals such as pesticides and fire retardants.

As Chief Seattle said over 100 years ago, “What we do the earth we do to ourselves.”

What’s a mother to do? Read labels. If you don’t what an ingredient is, or it sounds like a chemical compound, don’t buy it. Don’t eat it. Support organic farmers and sustainable agriculture. Make fewer choices based on convenience. Think of the next generations and the effect on the Seventh Generation from today.

Isn’t this hot and necessary? Director Oliver Stone will direct a 30 second TV spot against the Iraq war for MoveON.org Let the media buy be hot and heavy!

Singer Sheryl Crow and Laurie David (wife of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm Creator Larry David) had some chilly communication with Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove at a recent White House dinner on their ‘Stop Global Warming College Tour’.

When the ladies asked Rove to take a “fresh look” at global warming, a small fire was stoked. Crow placed her hand on his arm to calm him down, and the dialogue went:
Rove: Don’t touch me.
Crowe : You can’t speak to us like that, you work for us.
Rove: I work for the American People!
Crowe : We are the American people!
Touche.