McCain and Palin’s Mounting Bad Karma
Saturday, October 11th, 2008The other day, someone asked me what I think of Sarah Palin. “She’s a mirror of our own ignorance,” I replied.
Americans are by and large an ambitious bunch. We worship winning and getting ahead. We compulsively parade our ever-embarrassing, and now out-dated self-image from the crumbling bully pulpit of “we’re number one.”
Please note: Compassion, empathy and cooperation will always elude a nation of number ones.
In the Buddhist and Hindu world view, titan realm beings exist between humans and gods. They are the middle children of the wheel of samsara, the wheel of suffering.
As middle children, they covet the position of the gods above them and wreak vengeance on the humans below.
Palin is a titan: Intelligent, vigilant, paranoid, deeply insecure, deeply self-deluding and completely consumed with getting and staying on top.
McCain is also a titan, albeit not as committed as Palin. He’s playing his role as the weak man who ignores his better instincts and allows his own formidable ambitions to be stoked and stroked by those around him to the detriment of all.
He is Arjuna’s faltering twin. (Arjuna is the hero of the Bhagavad Gita.) He is the one who does not follow Krishna’s advice and cannot muster the strength to move out of the doubting middle and act his proper part as an ignorance-vanquishing warrior.
Both Palin and McCain are playing with fire, literally. In their rush to dominance at any cost, they are inciting those for whom the mere name “Obama” and any prejudicial statement linking Obama to foreigners and shadowy enemies instantly calls up a deep, deep reservoir of anger and alienation.
In a classic move, the cornered titans are courting support from those suffering most poignantly, those most mired in ignorance and least capable of self-reflection.
This is dangerous indeed. It is more than thoughtless. It is totally cold and unkind. In the world of cause and effect, it could be criminal.
As Frank Rich, the New York Times columnist, pointed out today:
“At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option.”
The U.S. produced McCain-Palin. They have that special and especially ugly American flavor. We can look in the McCain-Palin mirror and see our own uncertainty, our own vacillations, our own anger and especially our own ambition. We can see a reflection of our own national and personal ignorance.
We can also see, writ large, how high a price it is possible to pay for the pleasure of feeding anger and ambition. We can see the price of striving to be number one, of maintaining our separateness in the face of a world that is truly a continuity. We can think of this every time we build ourselves up at the expense of another. We can think of this every time we indulge ourselves in the blind pleasure of unkindness and seduction. We can think of this when we go to vote in November.
It is a blessing, in some respects, to be given such a stark example, such an unclouded mirror. Let’s not push the mirror away with our usual “it’s not me, it’s them” routine. Let’s look in the mirror deeply and learn.
Let’s change.
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