Facing Serious Danger

The following piece is by Eve Ensler. It reached me through American history professor and author Peter Filene. I don't have permission to republish it, but I am convinced by the piece itself that Ensler wants it as widely distributed as possible.

Whatever you might think about Ensler, Filene, Palin, offshore drilling, or me, I hope you will read this. It is blunt, bold, and well thought out. I especially like this summary sentence: "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."


Here it is:


Drill, Drill, Drill
Eve Ensler

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