The Midwest Problem

[Guest guest]

Hare Krishna.

 

It's hard to know what to say about the attacks in New York and Washington

this week. So many people have surely died, and many more are trapped and

dying... and many others injured. It seems to me that a great many of us

will eventually learn that someone we knew, or someone known or related to

someone we know, was hurt or killed in one of those attacks. This all feels

very close to home, and very personal. I find myself alternating between

shock and horror, anger and sorrow. This is atrocity on a scale usually

reserved for natural disasters. How can any of us ever understand, or

accept, or forgive, such acts?

 

At the risk of angering a lot of people, though, there's another way to

look at all this. Think for a moment how we'd feel if Canada developed into

a powerful and xenophobic nation (difficult to envision if you've ever

spent much time there, but just for the sake of argument...) and the

Canadians decided that for their own national security and sovereign

interests they needed to occupy the Upper Midwest of the U.S.... And if

Canada took over Minnesota and Wisconsin and Michigan, and began

establishing "settlements" by seizing land from farms and suburbs, took

control of water resources and established an oppressive grip on the local

economy, forced the previous occupants to live as third class citizens in

their own land and enacted martial law with a "shoot first and ask

questions later" policy regarding the local folk...

 

And if Britain lent economic, political and military support to Canada in

all these actions, because the Brits were so addicted to maple syrup from

North America that they felt their own interests demanded that they support

their friend in the region, right or wrong... And if, although many British

citizens felt that all this was wrong as hell and were angry about it, and

a few even suggested that it might be better for everyone to use a little

less maple syrup... the Brits allowed a maple-syrup millionaire to take

office as their new Prime Minister, and they mostly tended to pay their

taxes and tell themselves that they personally were living their lives in

peace (even though many of them did quietly tend to use a little more maple

syrup than they really needed on their crumpets Sunday morning...) And so

most of the British people didn't say much about "the Midwest situation"

because, after all, it was so far away...

 

Well, not to say it'd be right, but I suspect that after all this, some of

those crude, fanatical, backwoods Wisconsin boys might find themselves

inclined to see if they couldn't do something to give London a real clear

message that their involvement wasn't appreciated over here...

 

 

Hare Krishna --

 

ys, Balarama Dasa