Psychological Advice for a Palin Hater

October 6, 2008 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Election 2008 

A distressed Palin hater receives abhorrent and justifying advice from Salon Magazine. Instead of providing the reader with a thoughtful prescription on her life-hampering frustration, the advice columnist Tennis diagnoses Gov. Palin and then Sen. McCain with a disorder that unavoidably affects us all:

I think what disturbs us about Sarah Palin is that she reminds us of the authoritarian personality. My guess is that she is also an ESFJ, or Extroverted Sensing Feeling Judging type, with a strong preference for sensing. Such a person prefers to acquire her knowledge from concrete objects and places instead of from abstract ideas. This would explain why she thinks being geographically close to Russia is a form of foreign policy expertise.   As an authoritarian type, she strikes us as a person who prefers power to reason. The people running John McCain’s campaign seem to instinctively understand the uses to which such an impression can be put. Perhaps they know better than we do how deeply the American people long to be done with the problem of democracy, to yield to a powerful father-mother pair of authoritarians.   The very thing that appalls us about Sarah Palin — her discomfort in the realm of reason — is her main selling point. This is so mind-boggling that you have to take a minute to let it in. Take a deep breath. Read that sentence again. Face it: Sarah Palin represents what many people want: a retreat from reason; a regression to childhood.

Perhaps its their complicating and hyper-theoretical outlook which excuses personal responsibility, reduces the human condition to a collection of dependent atoms, and invariably contributes to their lack of self-control. Hardly the facets of a robust and functioning democracy.

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