I’ll tell you what I think

I have been fascinated, not by Palin’s politics, but by the intensity of anger, vitriol and words that arise when she is discussed. Yes, I suppose her ordinariness and her lack of sophistication play roles in this — but I can’t say that I think many of our political discussions even broach the level of sophistication. For instance, how often does a genuine economic theory come into the discussion when we have political discussions in the media? Rarely. (If that often.)

I don’t think this anger is male chauvinism either, though I suspect that plays a role too.

Sure, it has to do with her political stances, but that alone can’t explain it. So I want to give a stab at this and then I’m going to poke Christians in the eye with this one.

This isn’t about my politics. I’m not a supporter of Palin at all. But I want us to think about our how she is being treated in light of our theology, in light of the cross, and in light of what I will suggest is going on.

I appeal to Rene Girard and his theories of mimetic desire, mimetic rivalry and scapegoating. A brief on each one:

Humans desire objects, and let’s say it is control when it comes to politics. We could call it power. We direct our desires at all sorts of objects here, but let’s bundle it all up in the word control.

Humans personify their desired objects so that a person, in this case Palin, becomes the Model of the desired object. She represents People — lots of people. People who are votes and power and control.

We learn to desire objects and models through imitation of those who have walked before us, so there’s nothing new about desiring control through the objectification of another person. So inherent is this mimesis that it characteristic of all of us.

But groups, over time, develop out of their unfulfilled desires a mimetic/desire rivalry and this rivalry leads to violence of various sorts, and in politics it is expressed in rhetorical debates that characterize all free speech societies. It gets ugly.

So now here is the issue: when many people desire the same thing, in this case control, then the rivalry often finds a victim — a scapegoat — on which they can toss and inflict their fears, anger and desires. The victim/Palin becomes the common enemy (of the left). That model becomes the scapegoat mechanism onto which the enemy casts its anger, and in our case verbal violence. This scapegoat mechanism is relieved when the model is no longer a threat, which is what the media did to Palin in the previous election — Tina Fey’s sketches were only putting onto the screen what the media was doing. Trying to rid her of influence is what her opponents are presently doing.

So I explain this anger against Palin as mimetic rivalry turned into a scapegoat, an irrational way-beyond-the-object scapegoat.

Now hear this: I don’t care about your politics and you may well not care about mine, but we are called to follow Jesus. Christians ought to be embarrassed by their actions in turning Palin into a scapegoat. Our responsibility is to follow the One who died as the Victim, the scapegoated victim, and he taught us — at the minimum — to love our enemies and not to scapegoat them. Evangelical progressives, too, ought to be embarrassed.