Yeah, that sounds about right.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "amarnath" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Subject: Deepak Chopra on Sarah Palin :
>
> This defines our mission so clearly....to remember who we are,
> and stay balanced even in the midst of this archetypical struggle
> and to GET OUT THE VOTE!
>
>
> 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.
>
