I guess, with no wedding to plan, I'm throwing all my energy into this election...

Written by Eve Ensler:

> 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
> September 5, 2008
> >