Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin

Eve Ensler
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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. Idreamt last night that she was amember of a club where they rodesnowmobiles and wore the claws of drownedand starved polar bears around theirnecks. I have a particular thing forPolar Bears. Maybe it's their snowywhiteness or their bigness or the factthat they live in the arctic or that Ihave never seen one in person ortouched one. Maybe it is the fact thatthey live so comfortably on ice.Whatever it is, I need the polar bears. I don't like raging at women. I am aFeminist and have spent my lifetrying to build community, help empowerwomen and stop violence againstthem. It is hard to write about SarahPalin. This is why the Sarah Palinchoice was all the more insidious andcynical. The people who made thischoice count on the goodness andsolidarity of Feminists. But everything Sarah Palin believes inand practices is antithetical toFeminism which for me is part of one story-- connected to saving theearth, ending racism, empowering women,giving young girls options, openingour minds, deepening tolerance, and endingviolence and war. I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket isone of the most dangerouschoices of my lifetime, and should thiscountry chose those candidates thefall-out may be so great, the destructionso vast in so many areas thatAmerica may never recover. But what isequally disturbing is the impactthat duo would have on the rest of theworld. Unfortunately, this is not ajoke. In my lifetime I have seen theclownish, the inept, the bizarre beelected to the presidency with regularity. Sarah Palin does not believe inevolution. I take this as a metaphor. Inher world and the world of Fundamentalistsnothing changes or gets betteror evolves. She does not believe in globalwarming. The melting of thearctic, the storms that are destroying ourcities, the pollution and riseof cancers, are all part of God'splan. She is fighting to take the polarbears off the endangered species list. Theearth, in Palin's view, is hereto be taken and plundered. The wolves andthe bears are here to be shot andplundered. The oil is here to be taken andplundered. Iraq is here to betaken and plundered. As she said herselfof the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God." Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion.She does not believe women whoare raped and incested and ripped openagainst their will should have aright to determine whether they have theirrapist's baby or not. She obviously does not believe in sexeducation or birth control. Iimagine her daughter was practicingabstinence and we know how many babiesthat makes. Sarah Palin does not much believe inthinking. From what I gather she hastried to ban books from the library, has atendency to dispense with peoplewho think independently. She cannottolerate an environment of ambiguityand difference. This is a woman who couldand might very well be the nextpresident of the United States. She wouldgovern one of the most diversepopulations on the earth. Sarah believes in guns. She has her owncustom Austrian hunting rifle. Shehas been known to kill 40 caribou at aclip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air. Sarah believes in God. That is of courseher right, her private right. Butwhen God and Guns come together in thepublic sector, when war is declaredin God's name, when the rights ofwomen are denied in his name, that is theend of separation of church and state andthe undoing of everything Americahas ever tried to be. I write to my sisters. I write because Ibelieve we hold this election inour hands. This vote is a vote that willdetermine the future not just ofthe U.S., but of the planet. It willdetermine whether we create policiesto save the earth or make it foreveruninhabitable for humans. It willdetermine whether we move towards dialogueand diplomacy in the world orwhether we escalate violence throughinvasion, undermining and attack. Itwill determine whether we go for oil,strip mining, coal burning or investour money in alternatives that will freeus from dependency anddestruction. It will determine if moneygets spent on education andhealthcare or whether we build more andmore methods of killing. It willdetermine whether America is a free opentolerant society or a closed placeof fear, fundamentalism and aggression. If the Polar Bears don't move you togo and do everything in your power toget Obama elected then consider the chantthat filled the hall after Palinspoke at the RNC, "Drill DrillDrill." I think of teeth when I think ofdrills. I think of rape. I think ofdestruction. I think of domination. Ithink of military exercises that forcemindless repetition, emptying thebrain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity ordissent. I think of pain. Do we want a future of drilling? Moreholes in the ozone, in the floor ofthe sea, more holes in our thinking, inthe trust between nations andpeoples, more holes in the fabric of thisprecious thing we call life? Eve EnslerSeptember 5, 2008