politics

I am afraid that so many people seem to be swept away in admiration of Sarah Palin. Today I read that they have created a new Sarah Palin doll. There are three versions of the doll. One in a business suit, one in work-out clothes, and one dressed in black and toting a gun.
It is so scary that people would be grabbing up gun toting dolls to give to their children. In this culture we so value the "everything is fine" mentality. No matter what we are sweeping under the rug we can make it look like everything is fine. Sarah Palin can smile and warmly pretend not to be who she is. She can speak charismatically and sidestep her extremist views.
It seems so important to get the word out that she gave a talk at her church in which she said that building the Alaskan pipeline was God's will. She is against a woman's right to chose an abortion even in the case of rape or incest. She supports hunting wolves from helicopters. As a mayor she attempted to fire a librarian who refused to comply with Palin's list of banned books. The community rose up in protest and Palin backed down.

Maybe the opportunity I am being presented with here is to learn to express my political views. I want to listen to other people and really hear them. Then I want to be able to respond in a way that lets others hear me. I want to learn to set aside my outrage and participate in this political process with my "being" experience intact. I can take a deep breath and be with my fear so it isn't the energy I am coming from when I talk to others. Feeding that fear isn't helpful. I deeply care about Barack Obama becoming president and bringing change to this country. I want to be able to speak in a way that enables that passion to be a possible influence. Maybe I don't have all the information I think I should have before I talk to people. Anything is better than nothing. It's better to risk not having all of my ducks in a row and speak from my heart than not to speak up at all. (Do those unruly ducks ever really get lined up?)
Where are you with this political process? Are there people you want to be talking to about this? Start with the easy ones. That builds confidence. Thanks for giving me this forum to be real and share who I am. I think it's important to stop pretending that politics is an impolite subject to talk about and tiptoe around not mentioning it.