Eve Ensler does Palin

An interesting viewpoint, and one worth reading.  While I love her for the Vagina Monologues, I respect her even more for her point of view.  Maybe it’s jsut ‘cuz I share it, who knows.

Eve Ensler, the American playwright,  performer, feminist and activist best known for ‘The Vagina Monologues’wrote the following about Sarah Palin:

“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 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 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?”

Eve Ensler