Here is an email from my dear friend Frank Fowles, Amherst '39. This guy is so sharp and articulate, but then he's Amherst.

I haven't answered your manifesto of Sept. 6, because I haven't been able to find the words to do so. This morning I have received a copy of a brief essay that seems to me to express part of what I would like to say. I am copying that at the end of this message.
This is indeed a crisis in the history of this country, perhaps as important as the Civil War. It's really a contest between two radically different views of life that now have come into focus so clearly they can't be missed, if you really want to look. I think Chopra's essay gives one interpretation of that crisis. There are of course others. The point however is that the issues are bigger than the individuals carrying the torches. I console myself in my helplessness by understanding that. I don't mean that we shouldn't address the issues and express opinions, but after that the only recourse is in the Serenity Prayer, lest we go nuts coping with idiocy.

"Things are in the saddle and ride mankind." Emerson wrote that a long time ago. It is certainly pertinent right now.
Frank

Obama and the Palin Effect
by Deepak Chopra

Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroringthe national psyche even when nobody intended to do that. This isperfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the
Republican convention in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoesformer Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligentparochial expertise in the complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska hasfewer than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to thescale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, RudyGiuliani 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 hisshadow, deriding his idealism and turning negativity into a cause for pride.
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 tochange and a higher vision.
Look at what she stands for:
* Small town values - a nostaligic return to simpler times disguises 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 needed.
* 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 standon 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 tochange, 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.