Man debates chair to a stalemate

Clint Eastwood’s man v. chair improvisational theater was a sad commentary on his current mental status; I guess making movies with a script and time to think and do a second take is easier than extemporaneous character assassination.  But even more than that, it provided a great revelation for anyone who has consistently pondered the Republican (mis)perception of and hyperbolic rhetoric toward the President.  Eastwood’s “debate” with an imaginary President revealed his own biases and his party’s distorted vision of President Obama; it is a perfect metaphor for the ongoing dynamic between the Obama that Republicans rail against versus what many of us see.  If, like me, you have as often as not disagreed with Obama’s choices but have found the vision of him as “Muslim, socialist, unpatriotic hater of America, apologist, not one of us” inaccurate and hyperbolic and bizarre, then take heart - you now have some insight into this clash of perceptions.  Republicans have, for 4 years now, been arguing with and against that empty chair, projecting their fears, frailties and hatred onto it and imbuing it with positions and properties that are untrue and distorted.  That they do so also stokes the fears and frailties of their base, creating a primal, unyielding hatred of a manufactured inaccurate image.  To be honest they have always done this, but this time there is a twist.  Obama is not simply a blank or ambiguous canvas like an empty chair. He is not a neutral stimulus; his distinct defining characteristic (his race) inherently taps into their fears of “the other”, those less definable fears about a changing nation that is racing past them, their diminished place and power in it and the frailty of their vision.  It is hard to divorce their nostalgia for simpler times from the substance of those fears - their America is, for better or worse, a thing of the past and it is not coming back.  They see the enemy they desperately want and need to see in Obama; his race is a symbol of all that frightens them.  They are like small children, seeing shadows in the closet.  The arguments they use against such racial interpretations are impassioned - it is not about race, they assert - but the spectacle was there, nonetheless, and it is Obama's race that gives their attacks substance with those who lap them up.  I am not a Freudian, but even modern cognitive research shows that humans process very few stimuli and do so rapidly in "deciding" how to react to a stimulus.  Such limited but salient stimuli activate certain anticipatory schemata that include behavioral and emotional responses.  It is clear that some political strategists are aware of this process and know how to use it to get the reactions they want from their constituents.  In fact, this process is likely the basis of politics.  Hence, while excruciating to watch if one has ever enjoyed an Eastwood movie, the two empty images debating on stage was an excellent demonstration of a skewed, self-constructed perception of reality and a glimpse into the collective conservative mind that shares it, the fear that they feel and are trying to tap into, and the distorted vision they possess in response to the "Obama-stimulus".  The revelation was not comforting, but it was illuminating.  Indeed it was an entire convention that railed against opposing positions it has created out of thin air using lies it has manufactured from the same; Eastwood simply brought this duplicity into stark relief.