|
 hen
last we checked in on Barbara
Kingsolver, the ever-so-noted novelist, essayist, and would-be
political commentator, she was complaining in the San Francisco
Chronicle that "the American flag stands for intimidation,
censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, and shoving the
Constitution through a paper shredder." Two weeks later, America
is no closer to becoming a police state, and Kingsolver's fears
of looming "fascism" seem just as hysterical as when they
were first voiced. Undeterred, she has briskly shifted gears, turning
her gimlet eye away from the domestic front and toward the fertile
fields of U.S. foreign policy.
Here are a
few pearls of her Kissinger-like wisdom, culled from Kingsolver's
October 14 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times. "It is
not naive," she writes, "to propose alternatives to war.
We could be the kindest nation on Earth, inside and out ... I'd
like an end to corporate welfare so we could put that money into
ending homelessness ... I would like a humane health-care system
organized along the lines of Canada's. I'd like the efficient public-transit
system of Paris in my city, thank you. I'd like us to consume energy
at the modest level that Europeans do ... If this were the face
we showed the world, and the model we helped bring about elsewhere,
I expect we could get along with a military budget the size of Iceland's."
What, you didn't
realize the link between affordable mass transit and world peace?
Well, that's why we've got Barbara Kingsolver.
And as for
those scattered extremists who aren't won over by our energy efficiency,
soup kitchens, socialized medicine, and clean government —
well, Miss Metternich has the answer to that difficulty as well.
You see, "uncivilized criminals are still held accountable
through civilized institutions; we abolished stoning long ago. The
World Court and the entire Muslim world stand ready to judge Osama
bin Laden and his accessories. If we were to put a few billion dollars
into food, health care and education instead of bombs, you can bet
we'd win over enough friends to find out where he's hiding."
That's right
— give the Taliban the money necessary to educate their citizens
(especially their female citizens, one supposes), and they'll
happily turn over every last terrorist. Or maybe we can just have
the world court send a squad car or two over to Afghanistan to pick
him up.
But before
we get swept away by Kingsolver's global vision of peace, love,
and "efficient public transit," we should remember that
she is, first and foremost, a creative writer. So spare a
thought, if you please, for this noted novelist's choice of simile
to describe America's war on terrorism:
I feel like
I'm standing on a playground where the little boys are all screaming
at each other, "He started it!" and throwing rocks that
keep taking out another eye, another tooth. I keep looking around
for somebody's mother to come on the scene saying, "Boys!
Boys! Who started it cannot possibly be the issue here. People
are getting hurt."
I am somebody's
mother, so I will say that now: The issue is, people are getting
hurt."
To which Kumbaya
Watch can only reply, we're glad she's not our mother.
|
