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 of this precious thing we call life?

Comments

[BaxterJ]

I can't believe that more people don't feel this way. Well, Friedman does, at least.
http://www.entertonement.com/collections/2959/Thomas-Friedman

[Loyolacat]

Well said, but I hope you are not preaching to the choir...WAKE UP American we've all been in the dead zone for 8 years with the current administration...4 more years of the same is unthinkable!

[Panda16]

I think it was actually "Drill Baby Drill". At least that is what I thought when I heard the idiots chanting during Guillian's and Palin's speeches. A cold chill ran down my spine and I felt truly terrified thinking these people can vote and want to run our government. When G and P laughed and smiled as the hostile crowd chanted I thought of them as playground bullies with no intelligence, sensitivity or knowledge of appropriate behavior. I felt truly sad thinking of more green polar bears and more denial of global warming. I think of Alaska as one of America's greatest natural treasures that these evil haters want to destroy. What happened to "Country First"?

[mezz1962]

Well in the 70's the Dems were crying Global Cooling so I guess we have to even out the temp someway.

In ten years we will be back to Global Cooling again whoo whoo

[ADunafraid]

40 years was a long time ago many things have changed and a some of us have gotten smarter.

[mpeachhead]

What does Global Cooling have to do with this dangerous woman who took six years and five colleges to graduate with her bachelor's degree?

[LeftRight]

So when are you going to find a "fact"?

[clausenheimer]

"Well in the 70's the Dems were crying Global Cooling" mezz1962

Well, now it's most SCIENTISTS who are 'crying' about global warming......even Republican scientists (actually...even GWB).

[CapedCrusader]

Oh, it's still "Country First.", they just left out the rest of it:

"Country First, we'll destroy the rest of the planet later."

[rubinoff]

"What happened to Country First"...it's like last winter's snow..."GONE."

[lvdragonlady]

There is no 'Country first', there is only mememememememe and scr** everything and everybody else.

[ohmetoo]

I believe this article covers it all. Thank you for putting it so all together for me, in one package.

Yes this is a frightening time. One thought on the drilling, let them have the arctic, but only in trade. Give up all current, millions of square miles of ocean and coastal, leases that go unused fin exchange for drilling in the arctic. TIC