This morning my carpool friend was a bit groggy from a night of restless sleep. “Fe,” she said, “Sarah Palin was in my dream last night. She was on a podium, saying terrible things to rile up her fans, and for every horrible thing she said directly to me, I was unable to talk back. It was as if I was gagged”.
It was interesting that a woman of my friend’s intelligence would have such a strong subconscious reaction to a media figure, a manufactured character. Sarah Palin burrowed herself deep into my friend’s id like a tick. The id, for those unfamilar with Freudian theory, is the wild and untamed part of the psyche, which must be controlled by the ego. Unable to shake Palin from her thoughts, my friend’s frustration could find no further voice. She could not dig deep enough or verbalize clearly enough what it was about the Sarah Palin in her head that bothered her so deeply. Mrs. Palin became the boogeyman under her bed. An itch she could not scratch.
What is it about Sarah that stirs up such passionate, even subconscious reaction? How does she get under our skin even as our rational minds adore or dismiss her? Her spunk and folksy demeanor makes you like her. Her sexual attractiveness reminds you of the cute PTA lady you’d like to fuck. Our lizard brains are thrilled and horrified: a hot MILF in four-inch Prada stilettos on Fox News encouraging President Obama to bomb Iran to assure re-election, a concept even neocon Dick Cheney refutes as unwise. Stanley Kubrick, director of the apocalyptic black comedy, “Dr. Strangelove” could not come up with a better film character.
Former Cosmopolitan centerfold Scott Brown, now senator from Massachusetts and Sarah Palin, are the Ken and Barbie of politics. Not a lot there, but iconic and loaded with potential for our projections, political and otherwise. Here at Planet Waves we’ve been talking about the Mystical Longing born from a frustrated-repressed society yearning for a hero or a heroine to rise, who sublimates our sexual desires into a stick figure of leadership whose usefulness is valued, as long as the message resonates.
Palin’s current attractiveness is a combination of sexual allure and a force of personality giving you a wordless comfort that she could command. She is not presidential yet, but she gives people a secure feeling by her supposed certainty. Sarah 2010 has acclimated well under the well-constructed framework of planned speeches, sympathetic interviews and public events from which she can launch her political career. This is her first year on a new campaign trail, and though she’s made mistakes, she’s a quick study. She’s set her sights on running against Obama in 2012, and Fox News is as logical a home for her to do this as cowshit is for mushrooms.
We know Palin is a pawn in the middle of a dangerous game by the same players — the corporate interests, military and Far Right Christians — that Rove and the Bush machine used to engineer Clinton out of office and Bush-Cheney into it. She herself is not dangerous, yet. Even nitroglycerin can be handled safely given the right storage temperature and containment stability.
But it’s the times we live in that are volatile, and America is at a critical point. We have a struggling economy and congressional stasis. The chasm dividing the haves and have-nots is getting deeper. Longstanding problems seem to have no solution, yet neither side is willing to move together in a rational fashion to resolve them, let alone acknowledge these problems exist. The nation is under pressure of the extremes of the right and left, each side demanding that we go no further or we’re not going far enough. You might even want to compare our current state to that of the Weimar Republic – the era that preceeded the rise of Nazi Germany. Therefore, the unveiling of the new model Sarah 2010 under this setting raises some alarm.
In a series of essays from 1995, author Umberto Eco wrote “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt”. In it he noted historical beliefs under which Ur-Fascism (Eternal Fascism) can coagulate around and propagate. These are a few I found already circulating in today’s political discourse (excerpted here):
There can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.
Thinking is a form of emasculation.
Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders.
The appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.
Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare.
What was disturbing about Eco’s article was that it takes only one of these fourteen conditions for a virulent fascist movement to coalesce around. In the most recent of Sarah Palin’s appearances and in the Teabagger movement, I found five.
Palin speaks for the country’s welling frustration by conservatives represented in its extreme by teabaggers. Their sense of purpose is defined by and aligned closely to God, guns and please no gays, taxes, blacks, Muslims or women. All they need is someone charismatic and populist enough to lead them out of the political wilderness, giving them permission to make their platform a nationally acceptable movement.
Both Republicans and Teabaggers, not necessarily the same thing, want her on their team – either as the Republican establishment candidate or third party — Tea Party choice. She’s a coalescing force that can drive their agenda with the literal wink of an eye. Sarah Palin 2010 has the certainty to believe in her own destiny. God sent her. For now, as long as she gets the limelight and the bucks, she’s playing her part. Deriding liberals and President Obama before cheering crowds of the disaffected who want their straight, white, Christian, male world back, her potency increases dimensionally. The longer the stasis holding jobs and the economy back, as Eco and history suggest, the more a force she could become.
We come from a sexually repressive culture that shames women for being their own persons while at the same time puts them on a pedestal for being “ideal” mothers, girlfriends, wives.
Sarah Palin arrives somewhere in the middle, giving us the sexuality we crave but cannot admit to enjoying publicly. Under the guise of the good Christian wife and mother, she is telegenic, pro-life, virulent and charming. A perfect broadcast star. That does not make her dangerous in and of herself, but if wielded as a tool for another agenda, she could be overwhelming, particularly if elected to a position of power. She is the perfect empty vessel like Barbie. A wife, playmate and toy, embodying the conservative ideal upon which our darkest dreams, modeled carefully by the interests who prefer Democracy the Trademark, can be projected upon and bear fruit.
This is not to say she can prevail in these times, nor do I believe she will. But we need to remember the lessons of the past — that Sarah Palins and Scott Browns exist as part of our current events, and should be a lesson already learned from mid-twentieth century history. Our national dialogue needs to move forward and not be mired in the past or a delusion of a world that doesn’t exist. We are becoming something else that we’re not used to and therefore we fear it.
We need to face the problems we’ve got and choose what we want to be, not hold on to what we were and deny these problems exist. By choosing to define what we want to become, continuing to create ourselves as we move past the ignorance, fear and victimization that ignites causes that need the Sarahs and the Scotts, maybe we can find a way out from uncertainty and inability to name them for what they are. We need to start sleeping peacefully with our unknowable future, not with our dolls but with ourselves, unafraid of the nightmares of the past.
Yours and truly,
Fe Bongolan
San Francisco
Hey sugar, well done! You know that I too consider Palin a danger not easily dismissed — and, as you’ve spelled out so well, specifically because she appeals to that unhealed wound within us all.
My response to Miss Sarah is visceral, and yes, comes from the darkest corners of my attic. For me, Palin has been and continues to be the epitome of that bitchy cheerleader-type in high school that made you feel unacceptable even after you’d crawled home, teary-eyed, to Mom … who told you that you were special and wonderful and that this too shall pass, just not quickly enough to feel good about going to school the next day. Think ‘Mean Girls’ — there it is there. You knew in your heart of hearts that they were shallow to the core, used their cruelty as a means to an end and promoted themselves beyond their limited talents by playing the teasy game and flaunting their assets, and there was nothing … make that NOTHING … you could do to expose them or stop them or do else than live through it and make your way into a life that, hopefully, valued more important aspects of humanhood than they offered.
Palin’s dangerous because she appeals to that part of us that has not matured past worship of those old games, that still sees life through the lens of winning and losing, that aches with the need to “belong” to something even if it doesn’t value or benefit us. With a swath of political thought out there still as shaky as the psychic fields of a growing adolescent, appealing to those who consider themselves victimized, Palin speaks for devolvement. And that makes her worrisome indeed.
I agree that she is the shadowside that many of us, like that sleepy groundhog, just don’t see until it’s done its dark work. I agree that to create her as an enemy is to infuse her with more juice than she’s worth. But don’t blink — she’s a natural opportunist that will put herself front and center if she can. We need to see to it that she can’t.
be:
As usual, your insight gives me not only good information but strength. You know you single-handedly knocked down Sarah Palin the beast, with your loving and compassionate perspective. I only hope the people who are shouting and screaming can calm down a bit to realize where we are. Its not just them going over the waterfall, its all of us.
Funny – both you and Deepak Chopra said the same thing. Palin is as much Obama’s shadow as she is ours. She is voicing our darkest fears and putting them in the sunlight wherer they can finally be brought to rest or trial. I only hope people will hold interest long enough to listen and learn from the examples of history already laid before us.
Love you always and as usual–fb
Linda:
I so enjoyed reading your comment and it proves my point about how easily exclusion and xenophobia can spread. All it takes is a word and a flag and the very basest of fears can be acted out to the detriment of our collective compassion.
We’ve had more than a few examples–even before Sarah Palin and George Bush. Ronald Reagan made us look at our less fortunate as less than — and it has spread like a cancer eating away at our heart. Blaming others less fortunate than you was the easy way out. As a Californian under his regime as governor, we learned first hand how to create a homeess “problem”. Close down the psychiatric hospitals and put them out on the streets or in newly constructed jails–giving security guards enough job security that they are now not willing to let people out of jail–even those on victimless misdemeanor crimes — they would lose job security.
Reagan turned the system around and its eating itself–our decaying infrastructure, outsourced jobs and cities in decline. Short term gain, long-term destruction of the industries that form the backbone of the American economy. And there’s no interest in educating our kids to reach for the stars or the future. Its as if we’ve been set up to be the banana republic of North America, and unless this changes, we’re in for some rough seas.
The probem is that Palin is a useful cog in that machine, and it is disheartening we have to face this shadow–useful as she is–but important to our growth. We need to look at her, as bkoehler says, with the heart of compassion, to see where our willingness to follow along with the American dream that isn’t ours can lead us. I only hope we can hear the buzzsaw roaring while we’re half in dream-state, before its too late.
Fe,
A great article and so thought provoking. Sarah, I believe, embodies the Chiron part of the triple conjunction in Aquarius as it conjoined the U.S. Moon. Not that she resembles the Chiron myth, but that she represents the part of the citizenry (U.s. Moon) that feels wounded.
In the Solstice chart last December, Chiron, Neptune and Jupiter and the Moon were in conjunction to each other and to the U.S. Moon (Sibly). In the Equinox chart for this Spring (3/20/10), Neptune and Chiron will still be conjunct the U.S. Moon, but the Solstice Moon will now square the U.S. Moon from earthy, no-nonsense Taurus.
This challenge to the Pain of Palin (always-in-our-face Chiron) by the feminine Moon is exacerbated further by the opposition of Vesta in Leo to the Aquarian group, including the U.S. Moon, and if that weren’t enough. . . . .
Pallas Athene will be in Scorpio, opposite the Moon in Taurus, square Vesta in Leo and square Neptune and Chiron and the U.S. Moon in Aquarius. A fixed grand cross.
This same Equinox chart has Jupiter, moved away from the Aquarian pressure into Pisces and in trine to the U.S. Sun, but quincunx the U.S. Saturn. This will change the bulk of focus by the media and world attention to say healthcare or some other Piscean topic.
With all these challenges to Chiron and Neptune, as well as Sarah’s Sun, etc. I’m thinking it won’t be so easy to fool the U.S. citizens, what with so much feminine energy thwarting her efforts. Perhaps a problem with income and taxes could come to light (Taurus and Scorpio)?
The real Barbie dolls were popular with young girls, until they grew up. If the folks who imagine that Sarah is real can mature enough to see she is a substitute for their hopes of a return to their old lives, or an answer to their financial dilemmas, we have nothing to fear from this empty toy. She exposes our wound, Sarah does; she points out what needs healing, and we owe her for that.
be
Fe – Australia had (part) of its shadow personified by a woman named Pauline Hanson. In 1996 she declared “Australia is being swamped by Asians” and formed a party called ‘One Nation’ and surpising many, she won a seat. Her party crumbled from the inside (a history lesson in itself) but her message was noted by the conservatives and melded into their platform which gave us 10 years of John Howard and his mates.
Your clarion call is appropriate. The current situation in the US of A is a much richer broth. Aussies weren’t armed or experiencing economic anxiety…..
Excerpt from The Guardian:
“Although Hanson left behind no political party organisation, her impact has been profound. She reshaped Australian political culture, many would say for worse. Tapping into white cultural anxiety, Hanson unleashed a nasty chauvinism that reprised an Anglo-Celtic race patriotism.
Her politics were in some ways a vanguard for the reactionary cultural politics of John Howard. It is no accident that Hanson’s uncompromising stance on asylum seekers quickly became Howard government policy, as in the case of “temporary protection visas” for refugees.
By offering subtle approving nods to Hanson’s rhetoric, Howard built a core working-class and lower-middle-class constituency for his Liberal party in formerly Labour electorates in outer metropolitan suburbs. This was the so-called dog whistle tactic, which allowed racialised appeals to become part of mainstream Australian politics. At the same time, Hanson’s politics confounded a progressive left that failed to hear the grievances of the culturally disaffected.
When in 1997 Hanson launched One Nation by draping herself in the national flag, most Australians cringed. Eight years later, when the Cronulla race riot took place in Sydney, most striking was the use of the Australian flag as a symbol of exclusion. Today, on Australian roads, motorists fly the national flag from the roofs of their cars. A growing number of white Australians now tattoo their sunburnt flesh with the southern cross as a symbol of “Aussie pride”.
These aren’t expressions of benign patriotism or civic virtue, but they do express the legacy of Pauline Hanson. Australia is now a country where national symbols divide as much as they unite citizens.”
Full article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/16/enduring-legacy-of-pauline-hanson
Thanks Len. It felt like an opus.
Discussing this piece with eric, we both decided it had to go deeper than the daily progressive political sites and mainstream newspapers like R. Cohen’s column at the Washington Post, for whom Sarah is a joke. I’m like Andrew Sullivan – afraid that yes she is a joke, and no, she isn’t.
Fascism is in the psyche and its built on shame and neurosis. Like Reagan, Sarah is the type of personality that can eclipse feelings of victimization and raise the pitch on the rabble rousing. That is concerning, particularly at this very slow time for the nation–where we’re used to quick recovering. We haven’t seen the last of her, no matter how hard or soon the media tries to call her political demise.
Fe – this is an absolutely amazing piece of work, don’t know where to begin except to say you cover all the bases. The Umberto Eco exerpts are espeicially well taken. Nothing against Planet Waves, but this piece deserves wider circulation somehow.