Well, I guess it was inevitable, I have been dragged into the national conversation about Sarah Palin. It happened quite by accident when a friend sent me what she considered a humorous video of someone mocking Barack Obama. She had entitled the e-mail “To my Republican friends” and I replied that I was surprised she had any. Of course, that set off a firestorm of e-mails. When I sent her the video of Palin engaged in the hunting of wolves, my friend was understandably shaken, but remains a staunch supporter of McCain nevertheless. She had some of her other GOP friends send e mails as well, trying to get me to see the other side.
Oh I see the other side, I just don’t agree with it.
And here’s the thing I noticed about these replies from her “Republican friends”. They don’t have a lot of cold, hard facts in their toolbox. They rely very heavily on insults, innuendo and flat out lies to wit: Obama=Muslim. They are free with the name-calling and rudeness. All I did was send out a video. I didn’t expect an assault from complete strangers calling me names and lying about my chosen candidate. But it appears that this is how the Republicans play the game. I don’t want to play the game that way. I would like to hear well thought out, intelligent reasoning as to why a person supports this candidate or that one, but I don’t want to be abused in the process. In return, I will listen attentively and patiently, consider my response, if I have one, and hopefully carry on a civilized conversation. This is how I was taught debates work. This is called fair fighting. This is how to argue. It’s how lawyers do it in court when one party disagrees with another. No name calling, no bullying, no insults. I thought I left all that in the grade-school playground.
Anyway, another friend sent me an email about a blog being written by women who are against Palin. She asked me to send my reasons why I don’t like Sarah Palin as a choice for Vice President. Here’s what I had to say about that:
I am a humane educator and the author of a book called "Canines in the Classroom", a book about raising humane children through interactions with animals. I am against Sara Palin because she stands for everything I despise and have spent my whole life fighting...animal abuse. The premise of my book, and my life's work, is that children who hurt animals when they are young grow up to be people who are cruel and abusive bullies as adults; conversely, children who are taught to respect animals and show compassion for vulnerable populations grow up to be solid citizens with good character.
Palin is a hunter, and she has killed hundreds of wolves using a method called aerial hunting, where the bullets rain down from a helicopter after the wolves have been flushed out of the forest and sent running into the open. She has killed moose and elk and does so with in the presence of her children. She has fought against animal welfare activists who have attempted to help wolves and polar bears, and has stubbornly refused to halt seal pup head bashing. Her so-called reverence for life seems to go only as far as those few cells in a woman's body that may or may not become a viable human being. She cares not for our brothers and sisters in the non-human animal realm, and her judgment is suspect, her character dark and sinister. If she becomes the person who is "one heartbeat away from the presidency" then we are in a sorry state of affairs, on a slippery slope back to the dark ages. Joe Biden, on the other hand, has a record of being a friend to the animals, legislatively. The difference is day and night (a very dark night indeed).
I don’t know if the bloggers asking for this information will post it or not, but you can visit their blog yourself at http://womenagainstsarahpalin.blogspot.com/
I don’t know how many people out there in cyberspace agree with my little writings or disagree, but I hope that we show respect for eachother no matter what the issues are, and that we take a stand for something. Anything. And if that stand is for change, and Barack Obama, so much the better.
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