While we struggle with our earthly concerns, the war has an unforeseen effect: the Butter Battle Book shortage on the planet Vox.
A little known fact about the book - which is usually interpreted as a Cold War analogy - is that Dr. Seuss actually wrote it for the Voxians. Their world was divided between two distinct cultures, one that buttered their toast on the top and one that buttered it on the bottom. When Seuss learned of the centuries-old quarrel the planet was mired in, he decided it was time to step in with a little creative advice.
The book illustrates - literally - the ridiculous and potentially destructive proportions the Voxians' quarrel might ascend to if left unchecked. Thanks to Seuss' efforts, the Voxians came to accept and even embrace each other's differences.
But since the war started, the company that produced the books has shifted to printing military training manuals and maps of Afghanistan. One might suppose that the Voxians should be able to manage with the books they had before the war. But the company's otherwise shrewd marketing tactics have had unpredictably disastrous side-effects.
You see, the company made the books on paper programmed to self-destruct one year following production. The company, of course, only meant to insure future profits. But with no new shipments coming in, the Voxians only have enough books left for one-tenth of their population, and the number is decreasing every day.
On another sad note, the American sitcoms the Voxians have been importing seem to have diminished their attention spans so badly that they have to read the book at least once every five hours in order to retain its moral message.
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The Butter Battle Book shortage has thrown Vox into chaos. The two divergent cultures have started stockpiling slingshots, while factories revert to producing heavier artillery.
In an ironic turn of events, the influence of Seuss' book is actually compounding the problem. Over the years, many Voxians have tried buttering their toast on the other side, and some discovered that they actually liked it.
As a result, quarreling has broken out among friends and even families. There's been a sharp increase in the number of street kids, many of whom were thrown out of their homes for buttering their bread on the wrong side.
In the increasingly zealous atmosphere, some Voxians are standing up for the people's right to butter their toast whatever way they see fit. When they do, they often face being ostracized and told they are unpatriotic, mindless sheep.
With tensions running high, open fighting is likely to break out at any moment. Though both sides have been ready enough to deliver threats, neither has been willing to sit down and negotiate a truce.
The Voxian crisis must seem terribly far away, yet surely our hearts cry out to them. Surely there must be something in our experience, in our world that enables us to empathize.
Perhaps it is the kids living in our streets, many of whom ended up there because they're queer or they take drugs. Or the kids in our homes, who know more about what's happening on PokÇmon than what's happening outside their window.
Perhaps it is the supposedly benevolent genetically engineered seeds we're shipping to the global south, which have to be repurchased because they're also engineered to not grow new seeds. Or the fact that the war has made racial profiling, limitations on civil rights and indefinite incarceration of immigrants okay.
Perhaps it is the way war consumes our economy. Or the way war makes us belittle each other simply because we disagree.
Perhaps it is the war itself.
For whatever reason, we should be able to sympathize with the Voxians' plight. We should be able to consider how government and corporate policies affect the lives, including our own, of people everywhere.
To paraphrase Moxy Fruvous: What can I say? I'm only 23 years old, with 23 sweet summers and hot fires in the cold. This kind of life makes oppression unthinkable. I'd like to write poems, have kids and grow old.
by Sari Krosinsky
Daily Lobo Columnist
