BEWARE OF SARAH PALIN'S "PIT BULL DIPLOMACY"

Many years ago, I was listening to Christine Downing (Mirrors of the Self: Archetypal Images Shape Your Life) as she spoke of a force of great magnitude which is being liberated from the substructures of our consciousness, and the need to reckon with its potential destructiveness. In my own lecture, the following week, I found that I was much preoccupied with what we might do about this. I believe that this force is released through what we might call, in the Jungian sense, the Aphrodite consciousness—Aphrodite consciousness—creative energy which can go awry. The question is—how do we work with this powerful force so that we preserve life on this planet? We are talking here about working with polarized primal energy, and polarized spiritual energy. It seems to me that there is a possibility, if we are mindful, that we have evolved to the point of learning how to handle the polarities for creativity, and the optimum development of the individual concurrently with the optimum development of the collective.

My suggestion is that we need to look at, and understand, the emerging, or evolving, archetypes as they make their way up through the waters of the collective consciousness and stand before us on political platforms. We might just notice, and even study, those that are wanting to take center stage, and then make our choice as to which ones we want to encourage. I believe the future of our world depends upon us and our choices. I was thinking these thoughts a long time ago…

Now…skip down through the years, and I am watching, and listening to, Sarah Palin as she addresses the Republican Convention. For me, her speech bought back schoolyard memories . I think, “I’ve been here before.” Here’s the scene....I am a teacher, and I’ve got lunchtime patrol. This one kid has grabbed the attention and is holding forth—making fun of another student, and the crowd looks up to this student with smiles and clapping approval. I am watching a bully deftly drawing out the would-be-bully in the listeners…bullies-in-training. With 24-7 media, we have all seen more than we need of the ultimate results of that kind of rhetoric, that kind of dynamic—uzzis in the streets and in our classrooms.

So here she is at the Republican Convention for nomination of a political candidate and she says, “You know what the difference is between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.” As she deftly points her finger at her own rouged lips, I feel a kind of chill…a tremor of warning.

That reference to pit bulls brought back personal memories…memories of counseling a young mother whose small child had been killed by a neighbor’s pit bull—on the sidewalk in front of her home, as she was unloading groceries from her car. Up until that experience, I had never even heard of pit bulls, but you can be sure that I have not had a very high opinion of them since. I simply don’t trust the gut impulses of a pit bull.

And so I am even more astounded when she proudly introduces herself again to the world through a book title: Going Rogue… Looking up ‘rogue’ in The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, I find: “a dishonest, knavish person; scoundrel; villain; trickster; swindler; cheat.” Hmmmm….I think we need to pay attention, and we need to decide what we want to encourage.

--Barbara Smith Stoff