Sunday, September 14, 2008

I am so thankful for writers!

Cause they can write what I think or feel sometimes much better then I can!!
I have listened, I have watched and I have just sat here and gotten very scared that woman are "relating" , " so happy to have someone to root for" etc..... I feel just like the one outside the zombie film saying NO NO Don't do it!!! But I didn't know how to explain what I wanted to say to these people. Then I got this email tonight and went YES!! Finally!!! Someone wrote the words down!!
So I will go to bed tonight and rest and hope that this email keeps going and possibly wakes some people up to what is going on.

Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feministand activist best known for "The VaginaMonologues," 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 seenone 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 ametaphor. 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 specieslist. 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 birthcontrol. 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 bethe 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 endof 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 afree 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 thinkof 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 EnslerSeptember 5, 2008

4 comments:

  1. Rollie,
    Yes, that is a VERY POWERFUL email!! As I read it the words went through me in a very strong way! I have gone to the vagina manol. every year they have been in my area and I have worked the crisis hotline for our local Women's Resources. I am always trying to make my friends understand the importance of empowerment!!
    Please feel free to forward me that email as I have some friends that I would like to send that along too!!!

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  2. she hit the nail on the head!!!

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  3. Hmm, as usual, we are going to have to agree to disagree on this.

    I would just encourage you to always be willing to check for the facts on anything you hear about any candidate, regardless of what side it comes from. It's all too easy for the media to report on a snippet or a sound bite, so what I've taken to doing is Googling the sound bite and reading the full context of the comments or viewing the full speech.

    Often times I've found that what is *not* being reported is more important than what *is* being reported. And yes, this goes both ways on both sides.

    factcheck.org is one additional resource.

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  4. Hey, thanks for sharing! You are not alone, my friend. I'm with you, and Eve 100%.

    --Margaret Mary

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