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May 13, 2004
KURT VONNEGUT TAKES A SWING, AT EVERYTHING!
A friend sent this link to an article posted on the In These Times website written by Kurt Vonnegut, whose concise verbal pronouncements often deflate those myths routinely offered as giving meaning to daily existence. Here's just a taste of what Vonnegut says in his May 10th piece entitled "Cold Turkey."
On our ability to be a civil and just society:
Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace. But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of Americaís becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
On the meaning of life:
When you get to my age, if you get to my age, which is 81, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged, what life is all about. ... I put my big question about life to my biological son [sic: who said]... ìFather, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.î ... I have to say thatís a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, ìDo unto others as you would have them do unto you.î A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.
On being either a liberal or a conservative in America:
Which one are you in this country? Itís practically a law of life that you have to be one or the other? If you arenít one or the other, you might as well be a doughnut. If some of you still havenít decided, Iíll make it easy for you. If you want to take my guns away from me, and youíre all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other, and want to give them kitchen appliances at their showers, and youíre for the poor, youíre a liberal. If you are against those perversions and for the rich, youíre a conservative. What could be simpler?
On the most abused, addictive & destructive drugs known to humankind:
One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint. ...[sic: and] the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels. When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there wonít be any more of those. Cold turkey. Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isnít like TV news, is it? Hereís what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what weíre hooked on.
Vonnegut is widely known for using science fiction to characterize the world and the nature of existence as he experiences them. In stark contrast, here he dishes it out not as a reflection of something from outer space, but rather as what's typical of a politically-charged conversation any fully engaged American family might have while fighting over scraps the day after Thanksgiving.
Posted by Mikal at May 13, 2004 4:52 AM
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Vonnegut (who, incidentally, is from Indiana - and got the hell out) has the most finely tuned bullshit detector in the country. As he said in "Cat's Cradle": "No cat, no cradle."
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