The Herald (South Africa)

Chicks with a conscience unite

- BETH COOPER HOWELL

After a week spent reading about horrendous events happening across the globe, I’ve come to the simple conclusion that if women – and mothers, in particular – ruled the world, we wouldn’t have been in this mess in the first place.

War, bombs, crashed planes, missing people, disease and destructio­n are not topics anybody would choose to discuss during tea break, but from nursery school drop-offs to casual meet-ups in supermarke­ts, I’m finding that more of us are getting fed-up – and we’re also scratching our heads in utter confusion.

Do things really have to be such a veil of tears? As my friend Saartjie observed, the idiots running our countries need their ego balloons burst with a used toothpick.

Neither a psychologi­st nor a political analyst, Saartjie still gets it right. And all of us, we chicks with a conscience, agreed with her. It’s getting to the point where we’re actually wondering if Pluto or Saturn might have our kids, because “Earth isn’t working out, now is it?” Saartjie asked.

A big part of the problem as well, I think, is that the more you read, the less any of it makes sense. Now that pretty much everyone with a reasonably robust brain isn’t just accepting the official story, because Mr Head of State says it’s so, we moms are becoming more savvy about propaganda, manipulati­on and the art of deception.

We’ve raised toddlers, we never really believed the cat ate the chocolate and smooshed crayon over the walls. We’re wired to separate truth from lies spoken with a cute lisp.

Saartjie reckons that if we all started treating our government­s, other people’s government­s, the military and the media like naughty pre-schoolers, we’d get somewhere.

Moms weren’t born with eyes at the back of their heads for nothing, she says.

A mass uprising of four-eyed moms, armed with wooden spoons, would put Russia in its place, send the US to a naughty corner and ground SA for two months.

Another crashed plane was what tipped the scales for most of us a few years back. You buy a ticket to fly and expect to get there – not end up as a bomb- ing victim in somebody else’s war. A hundred different versions of the story were being tube-fed to the public – and it’s obvious (again, especially to four-eyed moms) that any statement from the “authoritie­s” is going to be made just as much to benefit them, as it might be to uncover the truth.

As Saartjie explained, every president was a burping, gurgling newborn once, with about as much power as a napping miniature poodle. The problem is, they become overgrown schoolboys in a grownup playground, throwing missiles instead of pebbles.

“Anything war can do, peace can do better.” Perhaps we could print a billion copies of this slogan and release them across the world in planes powered by female pilots.

At the very least, it would distract the global bullies from their dastardly deeds, giving us a chance to sneak up behind to deliver a smacked bottom.

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