Sunday, September 14, 2008

Wonderful Essay about the election

*Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for "The Vagina Monologues", wrote the following about Sarah Palin*.

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 arctic,
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 her 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 investour 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?

Eve Ensler
September 5, 2008

Ms. Ensler said so eloquently, all of the thoughts I've had about Palin. There are Grand Canyon sized differences of philosophy that can not be reconciled or justified.

5 comments:

Billie Greenwood said...

Fran, this is totally off topic, but enigma just told me it's your birthday weekend, so I wanted to wish you a happy one. I appreciate you soooo much. You're a great blogger. Hope your b-day is the best.

D.K. Raed said...

Eve Ensler has it right. Those "Drill Drill Drill" moments at the RNC gave me the chills. Completely mindless.

You know after she did the Vagina Monos, she went to Bosnia to study the systematic raping tactic employed during those wars? She is one brave woman.

Fran said...

Thanks BE~I hope to get wiser as I get older!

DK~ That chanting was surreal. Like the pillage of our country is a sports event. Kind of reminds me of barbaric events in the Medieval period, where gladiators staged hunts and fights. A bloodthirsty crowd, or in this case Oil-thirsty?

But Ensler also touched on the Polar bear topic ~ I don't want species going extinct under our watch.

She also clarified the Feminist element. I do want to support Women, and I do want wise women in high places, and having equal footing & equal pay. But not someone who has it (pun intended) so "Fundamentally wrong".

I did not know of Ensler's Bosnia journey.
She is brave to take on that topic. Dark history that needs to be told.

enigma4ever said...

truth be told...
I like your post better than Ensler's...yup....it was and is very well spoken...thank you..

I feel like we are watching a bad movie...

Fran said...

E~ Ensler sorted out the Feminist element very well. I normally do try to be supportive & build community, but I can't support someone who has a philosophy of tearing that down (women's rights, Civil rights, & community), as well as the environment.