A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [150]
Duncan arrived with a late bulletin. “Dad, Denver reports we picked up over three hundred thousand this week.”
“Good, we won’t have to hitchhike out of here,” Quinn said.
Otherwise, Quinn was stubbornly silent and the rest, gnashingly frustrated, wanted to shake him.
“Fuck it!” Greer screamed.
“You’ve grown awfully hardheaded,” Mal said. “Your state senate office in Colorado was a place of conciliation and compromise.”
“Because,” Quinn answered drudgingly, “whether Democrat or Republican we were all hard-core Coloradans. Maybe we’ve treated these people down here like country bumpkins for too long. There are issues besides the Second Amendment that I have to save for Thornton Tomtree. We have to hold our fire until we see him in the crosshairs. Hey, guys, love you all. I’ve got to get some sleep.”
“And the next president of the United States, Quinn Patrick O’Connell!”
“…one thing in this campaign has really bugged me, and that is my challengers trying to put across the idea that I come from a strange place to a place where I have no business. They go further. They say, ‘What can a governor from a small mountain and prairie state possibly know about Southern history and tradition and politics? If, God forbid, a Coloradan gets to the White House, what will happen to us?’ I resent the past isolation of the South, and I resent the Chad Humboldts who want to keep this isolation going.
“I resent it when I am told, do not make a doom-and-gloom speech in Mississippi. Do not bring up overpowering moral issues because the Mississippi electorate can’t get it. They want honey on their hush puppies.
“I believe an informed electorate, an informed American electorate, North, East, South, or West, should be aware of the concerns of our leaders. I am deeply worried about a lot of things which can no longer be shoved into the closet.
“So, muffle the drums. We are gutting this planet close to the point of no return.”
Greer closed her eyes, but the thumping of her heart could almost be heard. Duncan took his mother’s hand. Both hands were wet. Maldonado felt a hard stab, and wanted to stand up and scream for Quinn to stop.
“…In a word, we are taking more out of the planet than the planet has to give in order to sustain life.
“All over we see ominous signs of a lessening quality of life, bald spots for shopping malls ripped out of the evergreen forests of New Zealand…Indians fighting off elephants coming right to the village edge to get at the leaves in the tall trees…wood bearers having to go miles to find firewood that used to be on the edge of their fields…dead fish who can’t get over the dam, crushed by generator blades…green slime we spill back into our waters that takes the oxygen away from millions of shellfish…the shark, the most ancient and perfect fighting machine, now facing extinction. Sixteen lanes of blacktop running the length of Florida, covering forever destroyed rich pastures. Deep plowing that has eroded our great prairie farmlands and blown away irreplaceable topsoil.
“Yes, I believe that the people of Mississippi understand this. And I know you understand when I say that fifty thousand people die of starvation and malnutrition every bloody day of the year. Sixteen million deaths from hunger a year—a child dies every six seconds.
“The planet, with all its great agricultural innovations, cannot feed our present world population of four billion people. How in the name of God is it going to feed eight billion, the number that will inhabit the earth this century.
“We must chart an intelligent course through these minefields. I know that population control offends my church and many of your beliefs. I know that from the beginning of time poor men have counted their riches in the number of children they could produce. It is a luxury we can no longer afford, and it’s going to happen to your children and grandchildren unless we recognize what’s going on and do something about