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.

It is hard to write about Sarah Palin.  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.  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?

Eve Ensler

September 5, 2008