sarah palin terrifies me.
because i can see her appeal. she’s photogenic. a small-town success story. real-life liza doolittle. a mom. an all-american, reform-spouting “i’m an outsider!” and “i’m just like you middle-america!” (albeit in a snide, condescending way) rags-to-riches story. someone who didn’t go to fancy schools and in fact did poorly at the four colleges she spent six years attending. proof that anyone in america can make it.
i’d like to correct matt damon. sarah palin is less disney movie than tabloid-celebrity — like paris hilton — attaining notoriety not because of talent or intelligence or accomplishment — but because people can’t look away from a car crash.
and ok, i’ll confess… i’m obsessed too. for the second time in history, a group of people have discovered a shill they can pass off as a potential world leader. palin, like george bush, is completely unqualified and unprepared to serve in the office that millions of americans are clamoring for them to hold. like george bush, palin attempts to cover her intellectual inadequacies with rigid adherence to misconception. if you repeat a lie often enough, you can convince a lot of people it’s the truth.
like i said, i’m scared…
in the words of deepak chopra:
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.