HOW ABOUT IT EVE?

By Roni Bell Sylvester

Reviewing Eve Ensler's following write- "Drill, Drill, Drill" - as a direct attack on domestic resource providers, I was admonished by those who failed to see any connection, and scolded for lack of critical thinking.
And even though it didn't fit in to the subject at hand, I was also informed "foreign countries think lowly of the U.S."
My questions...which countries and how much do they owe us...were ignored.
Anyway I digress. Back on subject.
Eve's write and the subsequent exchanges proved to me once again, the BIG disconnect between those of us who provide food, fuel and fiber, and those who don't.
Using Al Gore's solo word "man makes globe hot", and ignoring debate and the thousands of scientific evidence to the contraire, this new administration is fast tracking the complete shutdown of all American resource production; the final step in bringing us to our knees below the dictators of socialism.
And yes, the Polar bear can be connected into global warming and the many weapons used to stop domestic resource production.
We - resource providers - failed in creating a language fast enough, to keep our urbanites educated and connected to the land. We have no one to blame, but ourselves.
We were too busy working, and didn't get into town often enough to educate.
Now things are flipping up-side-down: Urbanites plant back yard gardens, and put up chicken coupes, while governments shut down real farmers and ranchers. Roni
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DRILL, DRILL, DRILL
by 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
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My responses...stitched together...to those who failed to see the connection:

Regards Eve. I'd like to invite women like her, Camilla Pagilia, Gloria Steinem, Oprah Winfrey, Nancy Pelosi et al, to our home for a fireside chat at the Circle Bar.
They're obviously fearful of women like myself when there's no need to be. We're friendly, approachable and actually fairly swell ladies.
We take each facet of a situation and turn it up-side down, inside out before we make decisions.
We are not myopic, nor do we trust one sided sources for information.
Where I'm beginning to see the reality of the break, is that while we understand, work in and walk with ease between many cultural strata’s, women like Eve don't. Therefore, I guess what we represent is the "unknown" to them; and as they say, fear of the unknown trumps the known. [See dysfunctional marriages, partnerships, governments.]
I remember after going to my husband's ranch for about a year, I boasted to the cowboys, "Give me another couple three years and I'll be able to sit up at the table with you guys, and speak your language."
Now after observing them for a dozen years, I know I'll never be able to "sit up at the table with them." I'll never be able to reach their depths of wisdom, knowledge and hands on applications.
What the guys and gals who feed, clothe and shelter us have to contend with on a minute by minute basis places each of them deserving of canonization - or at the least profound respect - in my eyes.
This is where I part ways with women like Eve. I don't believe these provider pals deserve to have crude, inaccurate, disrespectful, denigrating ugly, arrogantly judgmental and hateful pictures painted of them.
After all, food, fuel and fiber providers save lives; unlike those including Rachel Carson, who set upon inaccurate alarmist claims which result unnecessarily in the loss of thousands of lives.
God forbid, but if the socialist party is successful in their push to shut down American resource production (Even though we're working 24-7 trying to prevent this.)...the great leveler between the feminists who hate ladies like Sarah Palin, and the feminists who are Sarah Palin...will be the hunger that then conjoins.
The difference? The feminists who have no clue as to how to feed, clothe and shelter themselves will suddenly become very polite when they have their hands out, cupped and ready for handouts from resource provider feminists like, ah hem, Sarah Palin.
Unfortunately for those unable to discern fact from fiction, the far too many ethereal little writes rife with mistakes (like Eve's), influences our society in unhealthy ways.
But then, much of what destroys our culture comes unnecessarily from actions born from lies, errors, and omissions.
If Eve wants to mend holes in our thinking, she could start by using her influence to for example, demand Al Gore debate an “un-bought” scientist like Dr. Willie Soon.
Doing so, she’d be respected by every one, as that “courageous feminist who stitched together the ‘fabric of this precious thing called life.’”
How about it Eve?
Then you and your friends would be welcomed at the ranch for some great steaks, wine and jaw on what brings us together - like stopping socialism - instead what keeps us apart.
Doesn't that sound worthy of what makes this thing called living, precious?
Roni 3/24/09
A feminist the day I put on cover-alls and milked cows with the boys. That'd be about 53 years of feminism...come to think of it.