My spirited interlocutor, BB, sends me a note from Deepak Chopra, Guru and Wizkid economist, who is about to lead a "soul of healing" retreat in New York. What does Chopra think of Obama? "He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind." So Deepak and Barack are just two Gurus trying to raise our consciousness. Okay. And what about Sarah Palin?
Small town values — a nostaligic return to simpler times disguises a denial of America's global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
Well, it's nice to get things so clear. Obama is "high minded." Palin represents all those petty, small-minded rural voters. And besides, Palin was Governor of Alaska. How can you take that seriously?
Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure.
It's no wonder he decided to hold his "Soul of Healing" retreat in New York. Only there will you find creatures evolved enough to shell out, well, I couldn't find out how much it would cost me without giving Deepak my e-mail address. But I did get some idea of what wonders await me there.
In the soothing environment of the Chopra Center & Spa at Dream, you will receive daily Ayurvedic massage treatments – and rasayana, a powerful cleansing therapy that slows the aging process and revitalizes the body, mind and spirit.
I'm not sure what "Ayurvedic massage treatments" are, but I am sure they must feel very good.
I know a bit about Buddhism, which Chopra claims to channel on occasion, and I know that dividing the world into the high mind good people and the small-minded parochial people is the very disease that the Buddha thought lies at the root of human suffering. And besides, it's bad politics. If the election really comes down to a choice between "an ethereal atmosphere" at "discounted rates", and small town values, and it might, any guesses as to who wins?
Chopra is a joke. Unfortunately, his way of dividing Americans into the higher and lower types, the New Yorkers who count and the Alaskans and South Dakotans who have no business having opinions, is not confined to new age hucksters. Here is Bob Herbert in the New York Times:
While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I've gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.
So if McCain wins, it is not that a lot of Americans, thinking it through, disagree with Herbert. It's that "dimwittedness" has prevailed. My Keloland colleague and NSU colleague emeritus, David Newquist, certainly agrees. He sees the recent rise of McCain in the polls as "The Rule of Imbeciles."
In 2000 and 2004 the American electorate divided pretty evenly between two parties. Maybe this isn't because one side was stupid, but because reasonable people can disagree. And if you are trying to draw a few more people over to your side, maybe telling them they are dimwitted isn't the most intelligent strategy.
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