Election 2008

Since I’m taking break from doing loads of work for my English class. I’m taking ENG 399 a gateway to my major, I must pass this class with a grade of C+ to proceed to the majors. I decided to read emails and I got a page from a friend of mine, I thought I should share this to all of you. The election day is inching closer and I’m in District of Columbia, the headquarter of America! I feel the need to express you this: 

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 doesnot 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

 

Ok now, it is time for me to go back to work. I hope this helps and put a good consideration in your election choice. I am all fired up and I feel that Obama is all ready to go to the White House! 

Cheers, 

 

-C