It is a curious phenomenon today that whenever we discuss the U.S. elections and politics, we no longer focus on Barack Obama versus John McCain. The talk evolves around one name and one name alone: Sarah Palin. Sure, Obama and McCain may be there, but it is no longer mainly about them.

Here is a curious thing about Palin: Nobody would claim that she is politically capable. Not even McCain would dare claim that she is an experienced, smart and politically savvy candidate. Clearly, Palin is there for reasons other than the standard criteria of political experience, foreign policy knowledge and charisma.

In other words, when we make fun of Palin today, is it not rather a redundant criticism? Of course, the standard notion is that once we stop the criticism, then all hell will break loose -- people will have illusions and vote for Palin, she will win and so on. But how about a candidate that radically mocks the standard of politics and gains popularity by illogical standards instead -- the more she is victimized, the louder she laughs and the more she becomes popular?

Matt Damon in his fierce criticism against Palin, the video of which is endlessly circulated on YouTube, has famously described the Palin phenomenon as a "really bad Disney movie" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6urw_PWHYk). He has a good reason for saying so: Does Palin's famous image as the ex-beauty pageant hockey-mom (videos and photos of which are also endlessly replicated on the Web) with a sudden rise to national politics not indeed recall the illogical plots of Disney female heroines who achieve their career heights with nothing but sheer luck and a radical, no-matter-what-everybody-says belief to hold on to their dreams? The adaptation of such a plot to politics should make one thing clear: Politics have become a realm of "ill logic".

I am not writing for the sake of the standard Palin-bashing. If there is anything we should do about Sarah Palin (not only in the United States, but the rest of the world and specifically Indonesia, as I will detail below) it is not to criticize her endlessly but to radically ask ourselves what is happening today in our political sphere. It is not merely that Sarah Palin is bad, crazy, ridiculous and so on -- but the most terrible thing, the real question we should address is how this is possible at all within our political conduct.

Those who follow Lacanian psychoanalysis such as I do have been buzzing about one very curious fact: Is not Sarah Palin actually the first truly feminine character to enter politics? Take for example Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi or even our own Megawati Soekarnoputri -- are they not always marketed as the strong woman, as women more capable of politics than their male counterparts? It is here that Palin radically challenges this old feminist motive: She not only challenges the dominance of men in politics, but also the masculinity of the field of politics itself, thus radically shifting the coordinates of what it means to play politics.

It is here that Palin is a mockery to the previous euphoria concerning the rise of Obama and Hillary -- first we are happy that politics are getting more liberal and equal, that African-Americans and women can now run for president. But with Palin we are suddenly violently forced to realize that not only minorities, but also blatantly incompetent people can run. If there is a lesson we must learn, it is that there is a boundary to this wonderful spectacle of the so-called liberal, minority-loving politics. We are forced to admit that the romantic scenario of illogical dreams made possible by equal chances, so noisily marketed in today's personality development books, have their boundaries.

And this is the lesson the world should learn: Politics are not sweet and romantic. Of course, today, collectively, we are all putting on a very skeptical face about politics. But is it not true that secretly, deep down, we maintain personal fantasies of a peaceful, multicultural haven where equality is defended at all costs? Is it not true that the more skeptical we get outside, the more we secretly dream of unrealistic utopias? Is this not the reason why so many politicians today play the game of how they used to be martyr activists, victimized by other dominant politicians (and two candidates are even already playing the dreamy age game!) -- to try and subtly reach our innermost fantasies instead of our logical minds?

What we need today, more than ever, is real politics with concrete political cognitive mapping. The lesson to learn from the Sarah Palin phenomenon is that politics played as a fashionable spectacle can have detrimental effects. It should not be about how candidates were victimized activists, or how they are young, or how they portray themselves as fashionably religious. It is not even about how they enjoy Indonesian top 40 songs and whether they have enjoyed the movie Laskar Pelangi (Rainbow Warriors) or not.

Stop playing the spectacle game of illogical multicultural tolerance. It is not how romantic the candidates dream. It is how well they think. We do not need more Disney movies in our politics.

The writer is a psychoanalytic media researcher based in Malang, East Java. He maintains a theory/media/philosophy/sociology blog at http://posthumanmarxist.wordpress.com/

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