While Sarah Palin tells half-truths in scripted, public stump speeches -- where the GOP hands out "homemade" signs for the screaming lemmings in attendance to wave for the cameras -- about her professed opposition to the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," Eve Ensler, the writer and creator of the stage show, "The Vagina Monologues," weighs in on the vice presidential candidate, with these words...
Drill, Drill, Drill
I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member
of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved
polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe
it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the
Arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the
fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar
bears.
I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to
build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard
to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more
insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and
solidarity of Feminists.
But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to
Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth,
ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds,
deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.
I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of
my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be
so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never
recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the
rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have
seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with
regularity.
Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her
world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or
evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the Actic, the
storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are
all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the
endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and
plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil
is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As
she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."
Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are
raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to
determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.
She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine
her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.
Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has
tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who
think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and
difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president
of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on
the earth.
Sarah believes in guns. She has h er own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has
been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from
the air.
Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But
when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in
God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of
separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever
tried to be.
I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our
hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S. ,
but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the
earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we
move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence
through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for
oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will
free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent
on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of
killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a
closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.
If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get
Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at
the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think
of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military
exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt,
ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.
Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the
sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more
holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?
2 comments:
thank you so much for this. i'm going to share this with friends.
I pray that Barack gets into office. Bottom line is that there are plenty of women who think like her. We just have to make sure that people who believe in conservation, equality and justice cast their vote for Barack. We can't change those who already have her values.
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