[PAA-Discuss] Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin

[Juli3 at aol.com]

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 this precious thing we call  life?

Eve Ensler

September 5, 2008


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