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The Influence of “American Dirt”:
If American Dirt Doesn’t Move Us to Rectify the Tragic War on Migrants, Then We Are Lost.
My wife and I just finished Jeanine Cummins’ brilliant, but devastating novel, American Dirt, and we can finally allow the tension to slowly dissipate from our immediate consciousness.
Then came the guilt. Followed by the anger.
If you have not read the novel, I will not put a spoiler in my diatribe. I will simply say this: the antagonists of this novel are the bloodthirsty, amoral drug cartels and the heartless, race-baiting Trump Administration (although Trump’s name is not mentioned very often, rather he is alluded to).
Several years ago, I read a novel entitled Cobra written by Frederick Forsyth, who wrote the classic Day of the Jackal. His book was rather farfetched. At its crux it had a noble premise. In the his book, the American President has a ‘come to Jesus moment’ and makes the decision that the drug cartels are the cause of so much mayhem in the world that nothing short of an all out war initiated by the US military is necessary: a war that isn’t authorized by Congress.
It is a military assault by land, air and sea; however, it is accomplished in a Mission Impossible mode, with the drug kingpins “self-destructing in 60 seconds.” If only. (Actually, the plan made a lot of sense; much…
