by Teri Wills

This was quite possibly the most ridiculous, most opprobrious meme of the 2012 election. As accomplished as my lady parts are, the last time I checked there weren’t any brain cells firing down there. So I voted with my head, thanks.

And if I had been picturing vaginas while voting, they would have been the vaginas and other female body parts of Muslim women and girls that my tax dollars have drone-and-cluster bombed into bloody bits of tissue. I’ll admit, those images aren’t quite so witty or inoffensive to consider as this one.

Now that the election is over, this policy of blowing up innocent women, children and men will, of course, continue unabated and largely unquestioned. Wait. What’s that? You say you’re not familiar with this drone war on innocent civilians? That drones are precision tools carefully wielded to excise known terrorists, and preferable to exposing our military to ground operations? Whoops! I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’ve been played.

Had Mitt Romney been (s)elected to continue the policies of the 0.01 percent, the remains of anti-war liberalism might have been rebooted. But everyone, including the Military-Industrial Corporate Complex CEOs, has their priorities. War profiteers aren’t ideologues; they’re lazy. Consequently, Mittens was never going to win.

So, while Americans on both teams of the two party game fretted over the possibility of election fraud, they needn’t have worried. If there was any fraud going on, it was aimed at keeping third party candidates from breaching the five percent threshold. Because therein, people, lies the real challenge to warmongering business as usual.

But getting back to the original point about voting with our vaginas; it happens that I believe in the Law of Karma, but you may call it what you wish. Cause and effect, perhaps. The Golden Rule. Or relate it to the non-aggression principle. At any rate, to my American sisters who demand, vociferate and mobilize around our own abortion and reproductive rights, yet simultaneously ignore (or even—ugh!—rationalize) the fingerprints on the bombs that terrorize and explode Muslim women and their children (who would probably appreciate the basic fucking right to just, you know, not be blown up!) in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, I suggest a gut check: the prints on the bombs are ours. They’re yours and they’re mine, and Karma’s gonna be a bitch.

If, in the future, voting with our lady parts means turning a blind eye and granting ipso facto approval to imperialist slaughter, well….how about we don’t do that, girlfriends? If we can’t—
or won’t—use our heads, shouldn’t we at least consult our hearts?

About the Author: Teri Wills Allison is nobody special…just an angsty, dirt-worshiping plant whisperer who functions best in the company of horses and barnyard fowl (although currently, and paradoxically, she has neither chickens, geese nor garden). She embraces the Gaia hypothesis, hates wearing eyeglasses, frets over the Oxford comma and labors under the illusion that her words might somehow have an impact on someone, somewhere. Teri deeply regrets not having done more to leave her children and grandchildren a cleaner, greener, more peaceful world and dreams that her efforts to make up for lost time will bear fruit beyond the wildest imaginings. Her favorite quote is from Isadora Duncan, to wit: You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.