I’m Getting Scared About the Election

9:00 a.m. here, Friday, Halloween…I should be revising the novel, but I can’t concentrate yet. I’m about to start crying over this darned election. I can’t take the suspense of not knowing the outcome anymore! I want it to be done!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHEO_fG3mm4&hl=en&fs=1]

As much as I want to hope, pessimism leaches into my thoughts. Pessimism because the Republicans are better at shenanigans than the Dems. What’s going to happen in Florida this time around, eh? And the poor, why is it the poor always seem to vote for the party that doesn’t give a crap about them? Why is there so much ignorance?

Actually, “getting scared” isn’t quite right. I’ve been worried for awhile, but it’s hitting me now. But of course there’s hope, there is. The popular groundswell is amazing, isn’t it? And if my diehard Republican brother-in-law is voting for Obama, doesn’t that mean millions more like him might be doing the same?

But what about the millions of closet racists? We know they’re out there. We know they’re nice people who would NEVER say a word about race but that will never vote for a black man either.

Why can’t people think LOGICALLY for God’s sake? Uhm, when was the last time we enjoyed a surplus, great economy, and global respect…uhm, wouldn’t that be under the Democrats?

LOGIC LOGIC LOGIC…Now I’m just getting mad. So I’m going to send you off to three websites.

1. I’ve been receiving position papers from novelist Elizabeth George. She’s a smart cookie, and she’s done her research, believe me. AND, I admire that she decided to publish these papers on her official author’s website.

Please, if you’re still undecided, check her papers out. Read the last paper for an overview (hopefully it’s posted now). She includes some very interesting statistics.

2. My friend Wendy is political, smart, and funny, and I like this post — which, in fact, got me thinking about the logic-factor. Her post about game-show Palin is spot on also.

3. Then this blog, which brought a welcome smile to my face. Two 80-year-olds saying exactly what it is they believe. I want to be that feisty when I’m 80!! As these two say: If you’re still undecided, you haven’t been paying attention.

On a personal level, I fear what might become of me should things not change. I’ve already had two freelance jobs postpone themselves into the indefinite future because of the economy…I wish I had some comfort food in the house…Why the heck didn’t I buy Halloween candy this year?!?!?!?

And Now, A Word From One of Our Playwrights

This blog isn’t a forum for my political beliefs. HOWEVER, I’m a nervous wreck thinking about the possible outcome of the upcoming election. Especially because of Palin. She’s the last straw; I am now going to paste in a wonderfully written, well-worth-reading opinion piece. This one moved me.

Eve Ensler, the American playwright,
performer, feminist and activist
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 fallout 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