Side-Lines

"I'm starting a fund so that Eve can be taken to an arctic ice-floe and left there to touch a polar bear. Film at 11."

You're so kind! Those Polar bears must be starved! Can we fatten her up before she goes?

Oh yeah ... where do I donate? This is a worthy cause for all humanity.

"Towards thee I roll, thou all destroying but unconquering bear. From hell's heart I stab at thee, but at least you're not a damned hillbilly."

Careful about starting a culture war, bitch. Your side has all the polar bear hissy fits and anti-American spleen. Our side has all the guns. Hissy fits may shake your tits but names will never hurt me...at least not as much as my old 8mm is gonna put the butthurt on you.

Interesting post on this on catholicfundamentalism.com Friday, September 12, 2008

Looking at what passes for thinking among liberals.

A column written by the author of the Vagina Monologues about the nomination of Governor Sarah Palin is instructive. Comments in color:

"I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. (I can see why. Governor Palin is pro-life.) 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. (Oh, my! Dressing like native Americans should be a crime!) I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. (So?) 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. (I like them tremendously, but I can’t be bothered going to a zoo to watch them tear apart chunks of meat.) Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears. (Not half as much as some common sense.)

I don't like raging at women. (But, I’m about to!) I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. (Sounds like a community organizer who’s a sexist at the same time.) It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. (But, I’m going to because I must. I just must!) This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. (Because she doesn't’t think like one of us, in the Culture of Death.) The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists. (They think we're more concerned about the well-being of all women than we are about "thinking properly".)

"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, (One such option is explored by the lesbian rape of a 13 year old girl in the Vagina Monologues, opening some real "options" for the poor, abused girl.) opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war. (But, we don’t care much about saving the lives of the very young girls who are aborted, often just because they are girls. Their right to life is not as important as our right to kill. We also don’t care one bit about the hundreds of millions of women suffering under oppressive tyranny that subjects them to “honor” killings, painful clitorectomies, and a lifetime of virtual slavery with no political rights at all. We are far, far above caring about such mundane things as a half-billion women living in oppression.)

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 (from sinking into the amoral destruction that I prefer). But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. (Might interject some nonsense about the sanctity human life.) 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. (We all remember Jimmy Carter, fighting against energy terrorism with his deadly cardigan.)
Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. (Oh, no! She doesn't think the way we do, therefore, she must be wrong.) I take this as a metaphor. (My entire life has been spent taking things in metaphors. It's a great way to avoid truth, and I highly recommend it.) In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. (Utterly untrue. Fundamentalists understand that God’s plan provides a world in which those who love God and their neighbors are separated from those who chose to embrace the Culture of Death.) She does not believe in global warming. (Does any rational analyzer of global temperatures? Temps have been dropping for the past five years, last month’s sunspots, indicating solar output, were the lowest since 1913.) The melting of the arctic, (The area covered by Arctic ice is growing.) the storms that are destroying our cities (have always been around), the pollution and rise of cancers, (cancer deaths have been dropping) are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. (Gov. Palin's position is very reasonable. Polar bears are not endangered, their numbers are growing, with three or four times more polar bears now than just a few decades ago.) The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. (She never said that. She just wants to drill a few oil wells in an area the size of a couple of airports in a place that no one goes.) The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. (Not quite sure how one plunders a wolf or bear, but shooting wolves and bears does save thousands of caribou and seals.) The oil is here to be taken and plundered. (Does it care?) Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. (The only American troops who tried to take some money out of Iraq were arrested and jailed.) As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God." (Maybe it was.)

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. (Neither do the babies who struggle mightily to avoid the abortionists’ cold forceps.) 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. (To be fair, let’s wait until the baby is old enough to decide if he or she wants to be ripped apart.)

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. (Not obvious at all.) I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes. (Actually, it doesn't "make" any.)

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. (She got elected Mayor, and then Governor, by not thinking? Or, is “thinking” defined as the bizarre thought-patterns liberals invent to justify what they want?) From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, (You seem to gather wrong, but, most libraries take great delight in banning books that liberals don’t like by not buying them. No liberal calls that “censorship”.) has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. (Few sane people can.) 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. (Hope so!)

Sarah believes in guns. (So did George and Martha Washington.) She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. (Wish I could afford one.) She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. (Forty caribou at a clip? Forty caribou at a clip?) She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air. (Thereby saving thousands of caribou.)

Sarah believes in God. (No one should do that. Makes people take those pesky Commandments seriously.) That is of course her right, her private right. (Thank you!) But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name (Is it wrong when middle-eastern terrorists do that? Not one person in the Bush Administration declared war "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. (Certainly can’t have the rights of the unborn getting in the way of what liberals want.)

I write to my sisters. (Not sisters as we know them, but as women who might dare to think differently than me.) I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. (And that’s more important than protecting the unborn, whose lives we also hold in our hands.) This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. (No liberal can write more than a few paragraphs before showing how important their goals are to “the planet”.) It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. (And that’s what conservatives want to do, destroy their own children's’ home, while she and her fellow travelers merely want to destroy the children, themselves.) It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy (Caving in to evil.) in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. (Actually standing up for our own interests is always BAD!) It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning (Nothing much wrong with those things, considering that the “planet” is cleaner now than ever, except for the occasional volcano, which are Republican in nature.) or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction (And, wasting that money on wind power that costs $1.20/kwh rather than being independent with nuclear power at a nickel/kwh.) It will determine if money gets spent on education (We're now spending about $12,000/year/child with the lowest reading and math skills in history!) and healthcare (Which has been screwed up by every government that’s meddled with it.) or whether we build more and more methods of killing. (Abortion, and the seals and caribou slaughtered by polar bears and wolves is not seen as “killing” by those who blind themselves to it.) It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society (We haven’t had that since LBJ started stealing trillions from us for a “great society”) or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression (Fundamentalists are never fearful, looking forward, as we do, to a joyful eternity. We are also not aggressive, because that would keep us from reaching that goal).

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected (not likely) 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. (So?) I think of rape (That’s your right, but so what if that’s what you think of? Some working people might think of more real-world issues, like filling their gas tanks.). I think of destruction (Rather than families being better off with lower energy prices.) I think of domination. (Instead of people dominated by high energy prices?”) I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. (Drilling on our own land makes war less likely.) I think of pain. (This kind of thinking has almost turned you into a being that is nothing but pain. Since it causes you so much agony, you may want to simply stop believing that your "thinking" makes any sense at all.)

Do we want a future of drilling? (Yep. Can’t come soon enough!) More holes in the ozone, (The ozone hole was one of the first big frauds, driving the price of freon from .99 cents a can to $20.00 for something that can now only be used by a licensed “professional”. Hiring environmentalists to screech about the naturally-occurring “ozone hole” made the freon manufacturers into billionaires!) in the floor of the sea, (There are already naturally occurring "holes" in the sea floor, with millions of barrels of oil and toxic chemicals gushing out of them.) more holes in our thinking, (more holes in somebody’s thinking!) in the trust between nations and peoples (Those whom Lenin described as “useful idiots” are big on “trusting”.) more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life. (What about the fifty million aborted babies about whose lives you do not say one word in defense? Isn't each one of them a "hole in the fabric of this precious thing we call life"?)

Since this girl has not seen a polar bear in action, here is what one will do when you introduce yourself (assuming he is already full). He is very curious, and playful--in Polar Bear terms. He won't rush you, or attack you, he'll(she'll) poke you and roll you over, which will seem perfectly gentle to him but remember he is 1,200 pounds. When you start to panic that will interest him he'll play with you like he does with the seals he's caught. There's not enough entertainment on the ice, and you'd be perfect. Eventually, he'll bury you in a nice spot where he can find you later in a pinch.