philosophies

"in my heart, i think a woman has two choices: either she's a feminist or a masochist" --gloria steinem

"the main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything . . . or nothing." --lady nancy astor

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin's Crazy Ass

Drill, Drill, Drill
September 17, 2008

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 choose 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

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