From Putin’s Siberian tiger to Sarah Palin’s tits -- semiotic overload - International Social/Political

From Putin’s Siberian tiger to Sarah Palin’s tits -- semiotic overload
by finch Monday, Sep 1 2008, 5:22am
international / social/political / commentary

The Democrat selection of Joe Biden, who believes America should be fighting wars with China, Russia and India, appears pathetic, even tragic next to the Republican selection of Sarah Palin, who embodies the mythical archetype of female power, fertility and womanhood!

People everywhere are acutely aware that numerous solutions exist prior to declaring war on the world [you dumb American warmongers!] People respond and long for peace/harmony – the appeal of peacemakers -- and readily reject the violence/chaos of warmongers, Bush-Cheney-McCain-Biden, for example.

In vivid contrast to the old, burnt-out Biden, we have the American version of Diana, Goddess of the hunt; a female who possesses skill/power AND attraction. Palin, mother of five, takes her daughters on hunting and fishing trips in the icy wilds of Alaska; she is pictured kneeling over a fresh Caribou kill; the red blood of the kill contrasting vividly against the white snow!

Obama will soon discover there’s more to politics than “rhetorical flourishes” and superficial charisma.

An all-American (archetypal) female is about to eradicate the glib smugness and silver-tongued orator of NO SUBSTANCE; Obama, turncoat and major let-down pretends to the presidency. Every undecided American woman, rigger, blue collar worker, and disappointed Clinton supporter will find the appeal of Sarah Palin almost irresistible -- for a number of reasons.

Politics is played out in the tribal mind, whether it’s the collective mind of the species or the particular, cultural mind, the forces that effect outcomes are the same. It’s all about appealing to our innermost drives, longings, deepest fears/emotions, dreams and aspirations. Obama’s shallow/peripheral methods such as persuasive discourse (rhetoric) and charisma have minimal currency when faced with the power of archetypal cues and responses – we are one at the core of our (human) being!

Expert mass communicators bypass the conscious mind to GUARANTEE success. Semioticians work at the foundation layer, the very building blocks of language/mind/culture/‘meaning.’ The uninitiated are always impressed when desired outcomes can be planned, projected and actualised – the art of cultural 'reality' construction.

Consider the message-laden Willendorf Venus statuette, dated 25,000 BCE. This ‘faceless,’ stylised figurine clearly represents fecundity and is readily re-cognised as such today. The exaggerated breasts and hips relate to an archetype/aspect not a particular entity. The figurine applies to the universal mother/fertility aspect of the feminine.

Now consider another aspect of the feminine as encoded in the form of Diana or Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt and understand the unconscious appeal of a buxom, hunting, mother of five, not to mention her political skills as governor of Alaska. Sarah Palin, possesses REAL ‘currency’ not the vacuous transitory attraction of an Obama or Paris Hilton.

The selection of presidential running mates highlights the lack of expertise in the Obama camp. However, the responsibility of Obama’s future loss remains firmly a matter of his own (un)doing. His traitorous about-face with regard to the ‘hopes’ and aspirations of the people will cost him dearly – no one likes a turncoat or traitor, especially in America.

Palin is simply required to be herself and perhaps open her mouth a little more often. The female and blue-collar vote is assured.

Similarly, Putin’s tiger encounter was a contrived event designed to send a clear message to Russia and the world. The leader/protector, hunter, hero that Putin wishes to project is less subtle and is readily accessible to all layers of society. How a tranquilliser dart would instantly drop an attacking Siberian tiger, I do not know, perhaps the Russians are also advertising a new chemical instant immobiliser-weapon!

Nevertheless, the symbolism is unmistakable and a little 'over the top;' Russians have never been known for their subtleties! I’m sure the symbolism of the story (see link) is not lost on the Russian people or American, Polish or Czech leadership!

However, we should not lose sight of the fact the USA is deadly serious in its plans to engage in a first nuclear strike war with the Sino-Russian military alliance. REAL OFFENSIVE preparations and less symbolic gesturing are required, comrades – I kid you not!

The McCain campaign raised more than $10 million in the two and a half days after Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was named as the vice presidential running mate, bringing the total raised in the month of August to more than $47 million, campaign officials tell ABC News.

The final, official figures are expected to be reported in the next few days, but the amount appears to be a record for the McCain campaign, almost twice as much as it has raised in any other single month.

"We're still counting," said campaign spokesman Brian Rogers.

"We were blown away," said one top McCain official. "She has energized our base and when we see the money flowing like that we know we have a hit," said the official.

As a result, the official said, Palin will be asked to spend at least 80 per cent of her time raising money between now and the election.

Under federal election laws, the McCain campaign cannot spend any of the privately raised funds after today, Sept. 1, because the candidate has opted to take $87 million in public funds.

The McCain campaign official said any excess money will be steered to various state committees and other candidates, as provided for under the law.

© 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

This election matters because of realities-the realities of global warming, the economy, the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, civil liberties, species extinction, poverty here and around the world, and on and on. Such realities are what make this election so very crucial, and how to deal with them is the substance of the Democratic platform.

Election campaigns matter because who gets elected can change reality. But election campaigns are primarily about the realities of voters' minds, which depend on how the candidates and the external realities are cognitively framed. They can be framed honestly or deceptively, effectively or clumsily. And they are always framed from the perspective of a worldview.

The Obama campaign has learned this. The Republicans have long known it, and the choice of Sarah Palin as their Vice-Presidential candidate reflects their expert understanding of the political mind and political marketing. Democrats who simply belittle the Palin choice are courting disaster. It must be taken with the utmost seriousness.

The Democratic responses so far reflect external realities: she is inexperienced, knowing little or nothing about foreign policy or national issues; she is really an anti-feminist, wanting the government to enter women's lives to block abortion, but not wanting the government to guarantee equal pay for equal work, or provide adequate child health coverage, or child care, or early childhood education; she shills for the oil and gas industry on drilling; she denies the scientific truths of global warming and evolution; she misuses her political authority; she opposes sex education and her daughter is pregnant; and, rather than being a maverick, she is on the whole a radical right-wing ideologue.

All true, so far as we can tell.

But such truths may nonetheless be largely irrelevant to this campaign. That is the lesson Democrats must learn. They must learn the reality of the political mind.

The Obama campaign has done this very well so far. The convention events and speeches were orchestrated both to cast light on external realities, traditional political themes, and to focus on values at once classically American and progressive: empathy, responsibility both for oneself and others, and aspiration to make things better both for oneself and the world. Obama did all this masterfully in his nomination speech, while replying to, and undercutting, the main Republican attacks.

But the Palin nomination changes the game. The initial response has been to try to keep the focus on external realities, the "issues," and differences on the issues. But the Palin nomination is not basically about external realities and what Democrats call "issues," but about the symbolic mechanisms of the political mind-the worldviews, frames, metaphors, cultural narratives, and stereotypes. The Republicans can't win on realities. Her job is to speak the language of conservatism, activate the conservative view of the world, and use the advantages that conservatives have in dominating political discourse.

Our national political dialogue is fundamentally metaphorical, with family values at the center of our discourse. There is a reason why Obama and Biden spoke so much about the family, the nurturant family, with caring fathers and the family values that Obama put front and center in his Father's day speech: empathy, responsibility and aspiration. Obama's reference in the nomination speech to "The American Family" was hardly accidental, nor were the references to the Obama and Biden families as living and fulfilling the American Dream. Real nurturance requires strength and toughness, which Obama displayed in body language and voice in his responses to McCain. The strength of the Obama campaign has been the seamless marriage of reality and symbolic thought.

The Republican strength has been mostly symbolic. The McCain campaign is well aware of how Reagan and W won-running on character: values, communication, (apparent) authenticity, trust, and identity - not issues and policies. That is how campaigns work, and symbolism is central.

Conservative family values are strict and apply via metaphorical thought to the nation: good vs. evil, authority, the use of force, toughness and discipline, individual (versus social) responsibility, and tough love. Hence, social programs are immoral because they violate discipline and individual responsibility. Guns and the military show force and discipline. Man is above nature; hence no serious environmentalism. The market is the ultimate financial authority, requiring market discipline. In foreign policy, strength is use of the force. In fundamentalist religion, the Bible is the ultimate authority; hence no gay marriage. Such values are at the heart of radical conservatism. This is how John McCain was raised and how he plans to govern. And it is what he shares with Sarah Palin.

Palin is the mom in the strict father family, upholding conservative values. Palin is tough: she shoots, skins, and eats caribou. She is disciplined: raising five kids with a major career. She lives her values: she has a Downs-syndrome baby that she refused to abort. She has the image of the ideal conservative mom: pretty, perky, feminine, Bible-toting, and fitting into the ideal conservative family. And she fits the stereotype of America as small-town America. It is Reagan's morning-in-America image. Where Obama thought of capturing the West, she is running for Sweetheart of the West.

And Palin, a member of Feminists For Life, is at the heart of the conservative feminist movement, which Ronee Schreiber has written about in her recent book, Righting Feminism. It is a powerful and growing movement that Democrats have barely paid attention to.

At the same time, Palin is masterful at the Republican game of taking the Democrats' language and reframing it-putting conservative frames to progressive words: Reform, prosperity, peace. She is also masterful at using the progressive narratives: she's from the working class, working her way up from hockey mom and the PTA to Mayor, Governor, and VP candidate. Her husband is a union member. She can say to the conservative populists that she is one of them-all the things that Obama and Biden have been saying. Bottom-up, not top-down.

Yes, the McCain-Palin ticket is weak on the major realities. But it is strong on the symbolic dimension of politics that Republicans are so good at marketing. Just arguing the realities, the issues, the hard truths should be enough in times this bad, but the political mind and its response to symbolism cannot be ignored. The initial Democratic response to Palin - the response based on realities alone - indicates that many Democrats have not learned the lessons of the Reagan and Bush years.

They have not learned the nature of conservative populism. A great many working-class folks are what I call "bi-conceptual," that is, they are split between conservative and progressive modes of thought. Conservative on patriotism and certain social and family issues, which they have been led to see as "moral", progressive in loving the land, living in communities of care, and practical kitchen table issues like mortgages, health care, wages, retirement, and so on.

Conservative theorists won them over in two ways: Inventing and promulgating the idea of "liberal elite" and focusing campaigns on social and family issues. They have been doing this for many years and have changed a lot of brains through repetition. Palin will appeal strongly to conservative populists, attacking Obama and Biden as pointy-headed, tax-and-spend, latte liberals. The tactic is to divert attention from difficult realities to powerful symbolism.

What Democrats have shied away from is a frontal attack on radical conservatism itself as an un-American and harmful ideology. I think Obama is right when he says that America is based on people caring about each other and working together for a better future-empathy, responsibility (both personal and social), and aspiration. These lead to a concept of government based on protection (environmental, consumer, worker, health care, and retirement protection) and empowerment (through infrastructure, public education, the banking system, the stock market, and the courts). Nobody can achieve the American Dream or live an American lifestyle without protection and empowerment by the government. The alternative, as Obama said in his nomination speech, is being on your own, with no one caring for anybody else, with force as a first resort in foreign affairs, with threatened civil liberties and a right-wing government making your most important decisions for you. That is not what American democracy has ever been about.

What is at stake in this election are our ideals and our view of the future, as well as current realities. The Palin choice brings both front and center. Democrats, being Democrats, will mostly talk about the realities nonstop without paying attention to the dimensions of values and symbolism. Democrats, in addition, need to call an extremist an extremist: to shine a light on the shared anti-democratic ideology of McCain and Palin, the same ideology shared by Bush and Cheney. They share values antithetical to our democracy. That needs to be said loud and clear, if not by the Obama campaign itself, then by the rest of us who share democratic American values.

Our job is to bring external realities together with the reality of the political mind. Don't ignore the cognitive dimension. It is through cultural narratives, metaphors, and frames that we understand and express our ideals.

Author retains copyright.

There's no such thing as 'bad' publicity Sarah, especially when it keeps the opposition off the front pages.

Just keep doing what you're doing; go girl, GO!

A flick of the wrist transforms 'bad' publicity and you've won the day. The more press they give you the more you should smile and embrace the public.

Never defend or react, just say "we have a very important job to do, which is above the gutter politics of the Obama camp" -- flick o' the wrist!

RELISH AND CAPITALISE ON THE ATTENTION -- it's GLOBAL! You couldn't buy it; 'they' gifted it instead! Dumb, fucks!

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin won high marks in the US press Thursday for her performance at the Republican convention, with commentators saying she could no longer be dismissed as a political amateur after electrifying an audience of party faithful.

The Republicans, wrote a Wall Street Journal columnist, may have found their own Margaret Thatcher while the New York Post hailed Palin as a fighter and urged her on: "You go, girl."

Under the headline "She shoots! She scores!" Tom Shales of the Washington Post said Wednesday's speech by John McCain's surprise vice presidential pick was a political bull's eye even if it lacked eloquence.

"If the Republicans win the presidential election in November, it may well be said that they won it last night -- the night that John McCain's brilliantly screwy choice for a running mate changed from laughingstock to national star," Shales wrote.

"To those in the hall and probably to millions watching at home, she came across as genuine and down-to-earth, a self-described 'hockey mom' whose confidence and bravado were not exactly ingratiating but were somehow persuasive."

With the stakes high and the McCain campaign facing questions about her thin resume and pregnant teenage daughter, Palin rose to the occasion, he said.

"She proved herself in the great arena; that's what counts politically. Nobody could watch that speech and still consider her a joke, no matter how flimsy her credentials and qualifications may seem on paper."

In a reference to her feisty jabs at Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the New York Daily News ran the headline: "Hockey mom drops gloves."

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal said that by picking Palin, McCain had ushered in a promising new face for the conservative cause.

"Twenty years after Ronald Reagan left office, Republicans who have long missed him may have found a future Margaret Thatcher," wrote Fund.

"If John McCain wins, conservatives may find one of the most enduring accomplishments of his term will have been what he did before it started: helping to fill the Republican Party's future talent bench with such a fresh and compelling figure."

Palin achieved several objectives in her speech, Fund wrote. She introduced herself to American voters in a compelling way, sold McCain as a genuine hero, deflected criticism against her as an attack on small-town, suburban values and "skewered Obama with gusto but without meanness."

He added: "America has just learned why Mrs. Palin enjoys the highest approval ratings of any governor in America."

© 2008 AFP

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