THE CURRENT CAMPAIGNS CONTINUE to raise fascinating spiritual and values issues.
This time, it's Sarah Palin's bizarre response to the findings in the Troopergate Report.
The report found three things:
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Palin abused her power by violating the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. (This is both ethical and legal wrongdoing.)
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Palin fired Walt Monegan, in part, because he refused to fire her ex-brother-in-law.
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In spite of that fact, the firing itself was legal because the law allows the governor to fire department heads arbitrarily.
Palin's bizarre response:
"Well, I’m very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing," Palin said, "any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that."
What does this response tell us about Palin?
There are at least three different possibilities:
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Palin's response is a calculated lie.
If this is true it tells us two things: -
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Palin has an incredibly low opinion of voters.
She actually believes that if she says the report cleared her, voters will disregard the report itself. -
Palin is a liar.
That is, she is a person for whom language is always and only a political tool, for manipulating the situation, rather than a tool for communicating the truth. She will tell us whatever suits her ends, without regard to the facts.
If these two are the case, she is, like Cheney, a person we should not want near the White House.
-
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Palin actually believes what she said.
If this is true, then she is completely disconnected from reality.
She is capable of reading a report that says, in so many words, that she broke the law and behaved unethically, and believing that it said what she wanted it to say—that she did neither.
If this is true, she is in deep trouble spiritually. She has relinquished her grasp on reality, and embraced a fantasy world.
Once again, this is not a person who should be in high office. -
Both of the above.
It's possible that Palin has a loose grip on reality and no regard for the truth.
In fact, this scenario may be the most likely. Pure liars are hard to come by, in real life. To lie convincingly, on the level that we're talking about here, most people have to convince themselves, at least a little.
To treat language as a tool for manipulation, without regard to the truth, when dealing with others, someone must loosen his or her own grip on the truth.
And if Palin is living in a fantasy world, it would help explain her low opinion of voters. She may actually believe that if she says black is white we'll all swallow it, and then black will be white.
The larger, spiritual, issue has to do with the struggle in our country between a top-down and a bottom-up view of the world.
Is the truth what our leaders tell us it is (top-down), or does it depend on little things, like, in this case, what the report actually said (bottom-up)?
I'm not talking about whether Palin's actions were ethical. She could have simply said that she disagreed with the report, and I wouldn't be writing this post.
But she didn't.
She chose, instead, to say that the report cleared her, that it said the exact opposite of what it actually did say.
She expected her base to accept her word over their own experience. She counted on them bowing to her authority on a simple question of fact, and tossing reality out the window.
If she was right about that, then democracy is in serious trouble.
