Sandra’s Miscellany

So I’m sitting there watching The Constant Gardener with two of my writing buddies, and it occurs to me that I’m enjoying the heck out of the movie — art house feel, British accents everywhere, and a very cynical thriller part of the story — and I have no idea how my buddies might be feeling about it.

Down here in big ole Texas, I’m surrounded by people who lean harder to the right than the left. That typically doesn’t bother me (okay, in one case it bothers me because the person is a hard idealogue rather than a thoughtful inquirer), but occasionally, like yesterday, I wonder. Did the outrage John le Carre felt against big pharmaceutical companies offend my buddies? Did the cynical take on the unholy alliance between government and commerce annoy people who perhaps voted for Tom deLay in the last election?

I don’t know. I do know that I tend to fall on le Carre’s side of things.

I never really thought about politics and the third world much until a good friend went to Ethiopia as a missionary translating for Wycliffe. Because I was curious about her organization’s work, I hunted around at the library for interesting books that would tell me more, and happened across a thick tome describing how the Rockefellers, way back in the 1940’s and ’50’s, funneled money through foundations and charitable organizations all the way down to Wycliffe Bible Translators. Why? Because they wanted to drill for oil in the Amazon and needed an “advanced guard” to “manage” the indigenous peoples. It was a painstakingly researched book that tracked money through several channels — through educational institutions, housing projects, and diplomatic channels. The patience in constructing what amounted to a campaign that would last for four decades impressed me, in a horror-filled kind of way. The God’s Eye view was astonishing.

The real shame is that the missionaries on the ground had no idea they were being used to further Standard Oil’s cause; in doing what they felt called by God to do, they enabled the brutalization of thousands of indigenous peoples by Standard Oil, who sometimes forced the natives into slave labor to build railroads into the jungle. And that’s not counting the people who died from disease or who were slaughtered outright for not wanting to give white men access to their traditional lands.

And we see similar things going on today. Remember when the missionaries were shot down in South America a few years ago because the guys on the ground thought they were CIA? The CIA routinely leases missionary planes for flights into sensitive areas.

I guess I’m pretty cynical these days as a matter of course, but to see the cynicism and outrage so plainly on the big screen was astonishing.

And if you’re wondering whether big pharmas would be so unethical as to doctor or suppress their trial reports in order to keep a drug in the pipeline, remember Vioxx.

So maybe it’s not about government, exactly, but about greed. If there’s a great evil in the world, I’m convinced that’s it. And when it’s institutionalized, there’s little anyone can do to stop it.

Which is what makes The Constant Gardener’s ending so brilliant. We all know there won’t be a trial and no one will go to jail, but perhaps, in some small way, heads will roll. And sometimes that has to be enough.

And if we’re offended by the story, then perhaps we ought to look a little closer at why we are. I tend to dislike ideas that threaten my very comfortable existence or that suggest the world is different than I believe. A good shake-up every now and then can help me grow, if I’m willing to.