Call it a libertarian, Western guy’s nightmare. James Gaitis’
dystopia is a post-testosterone, government-looks-after-you world.

The Nation’s Highest Honor opens with a languid description
of a federal government employee driving into the wilds of the
Southwest. It’s so languid, in fact, that you wonder if the unnamed
driver in the government-issue sedan will ever reach his
destination, and if it’s the desert itself, with its ruts, caliche,
cholla, lizards and blinding sun, that is actually the actor in this
story.

Hold that thought.

The previous novel by former trial lawyer James Gaitis, A Stout Cord and a Good Drop, concerned the violent establishment
of governance in the Wild West. The Nation’s Highest Honor concerns the insidious establishment of nonviolence in the Wide
World.

It’s the future, 40 years after a tumultuous period of three world
wars. Thanks to the enterprise and energy (not to mention unparalleled
greed and egotism) of capitalist Philip T. Nolebody, a vaccine was
developed that effectively blocked the human fighting instinct and put
an end to war. With no threat of warfare, all nations agreed to
co-exist amicably, destroy weapons and foster peace into perpetuity. Or
until the vaccine lost its effectiveness. Which is now.

Which is why we find William Worthington driving out into the
Western wilds. The president and members of his Cabinet have begun to
see the effects of the vaccine’s moribund half-life, and they fear a
breakdown of social stability. A vaccinated populace was a tractable
populace. Those in power lived a life of privilege. Those out of power
didn’t, and didn’t know any better.

But incidents of unrest have already occurred, and the president has
hatched an unlikely scheme to quell potential rebellion: He plans to
quiet it through the opiate of the much-loved people’s poet. If he
confers upon the “people’s poet” the nation’s highest honor—the
Nolebody Award—the president believes he can retain control.

However, the people’s poet is unaware he’s a celebrity (or that he’s
a poet at all); he lives a hermit’s life in a shack in the high desert,
assembling bird bones and cactus parts into objets d’humble art; and he manifests considerable cognitive
dysfunction.

The action plays out, with two characters attempting to protect the
naïve artist from government exploitation, and the artist
inadvertently crossing an anti-government movement called the
Nobodies.

Far-fetched, perhaps, but it is satire.

The novel presents in broad strokes, at an objective distance. Most
of the characters are stock; the government figures aren’t even given
names. They’re the minister of psychology (she pontificates on
scientific fact upon which there is no empirical basis); other
ministers scrambling to cling to the hierarchical Cabinet table; and
the minister of culture—William’s boss—who seems to desire
acclaim without accomplishment. They’re bumbling, self-important
incompetents who pander to their equally pathetic boss.

The characters we come to follow do have definition. Two of
them—Leonard Bentwood, the “poet,” and Frieda Haster, a rural
mailperson—live away from the government grid out in that high
desert; although the third—William Worthington—is an
inner-circle government employee, he begins to see the appeal of their
choice.

Gaitis, who lives in (and clearly appreciates) the Sonoran Desert,
waxes lyrical when he re-creates this natural setting. Nature provides
life lessons that society has failed, and nature could prove its savior
in the end.

For me, though, the politics and sociology of the satire create some
unease. Reversing the lens, the society it would seem to recommend is
also disturbing. In this book’s society, the Nolebody vaccine blunts
aggressiveness. Is Gaitis thus speaking up for aggression? This society
fosters gender equality, and a fair number of the women characters are
femi-Nazi-like. The fact that the people depend on government handouts
is a commentary. Weapons control has left the people defenseless
against the government. Dismantling the military has left the nation
vulnerable.

Gaitis has played out an interesting question: What if we could
inoculate humans against violence? If he’s also suggesting that
expanded government social programs, equal-opportunity legislation, gun
control and a downsized military is equivalent to “violence vaccine,”
this, too, could make you shudder.

This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2009.