Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@

>
>> Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@
>>
>> By Joel Bleifuss | 1.27.03
>> http://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=38_0_4_0_C
>>
>> In November, Kurt Vonnegut turned 80. He published his
>> first novel, Player Piano, in 1952 at the age of 29.
>> Since then he has written 13 others, including
>> Slaughterhouse Five, which stands as one of the
>> pre-eminent anti-war novels of the 20th century.
>>
>> As war against Iraq looms, I asked Vonnegut, a reader
>> and supporter of this magazine, to weigh in. Vonnegut
>> is an American socialist in the tradition of Eugene
>> Victor Debs, a fellow Hoosier whom he likes to quote:
>> "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long
>> as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as
>> there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
>>
>> --Joel Bleifuss
>>
>>
>> Q: You have lived through World War II, Korea, Vietnam,
>> the Reagan wars, Desert Storm, the Balkan wars and now
>> this coming war in Iraq. What has changed, and what has
>> remained the same?
>>
>>
>> One thing which has not changed is that none of us, no
>> matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be
>> born in the first place, and that even somebody as old
>> as I am, which is 80, only just got here. There were
>> already all these games going on when I got here. ...
>> An apt motto for any polity anywhere, to put on its
>> state seal or currency or whatever, might be this
>> quotation from the late baseball manager Casey Stengel,
>> who was addressing a team of losing professional
>> athletes: "Can't anybody here play this game?"
>>
>> My daughter Lily, for an example close to home, who has
>> just turned 20, finds herself--as does George W. Bush,
>> himself a kid--an heir to a shockingly recent history
>> of human slavery, to an AIDS epidemic and to nuclear
>> submarines slumbering on the floors of fjords in
>> Iceland and elsewhere, crews prepared at a moment's
>> notice to turn industrial quantities of men, women and
>> children into radioactive soot and bone meal by means
>> of rockets and H-bomb warheads. And to the choice
>> between liberalism or conservatism and on and on.
>>
>> What is radically new in 2003 is that my daughter,
>> along with our president and Saddam Hussein and on and
>> on, has inherited technologies whose byproducts,
>> whether in war or peace, are rapidly destroying the
>> whole planet as a breathable, drinkable system for
>> supporting life of any kind. Human beings, past and
>> present, have trashed the joint.
>>
>>
>> Q: Based on what you've read and seen in the media, what
>> is not being said in the mainstream press about
>> President Bush's policies and the impending war in Iraq?
>>
>>
>> That they are nonsense.
>>
>>
>> Q: My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that
>> many people are beginning to despair. Do you think that
>> we've lost reason to hope?
>>
>>
>> I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution
>> I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded
>> by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had
>> been. What has happened, though, is that it has been
>> taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy,
>> Keystone Cops-style coup d'etat imaginable. And those
>> now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust
>> C-students who know no history or geography, plus
>> not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka "Christians,"
>> and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic
>> personalities, or "PPs."
>>
>> To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly
>> respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she
>> has appendicitis or athlete's foot. The classic medical
>> text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey
>> Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full
>> well the suffering their actions may cause others, but
>> they do not care. They cannot care because they are
>> nuts. They have a screw loose!
>>
>> And what syndrome better describes so many executives
>> at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched
>> themselves while ruining their employees and investors
>> and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven
>> snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them?
>> And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in
>> our federal government, as though they were leaders
>> instead of sick.
>>
>> What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in
>> corporations, and now in government, is that they are
>> so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never
>> filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they
>> cannot care what happens next. Simply can't. Do this!
>> Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public
>> schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's
>> telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a
>> trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and
>> the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!
>>
>>
>> Q: How have you gotten involved in the anti-war movement?
>> And how would you compare the movement against a war in
>> Iraq with the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era?
>>
>>
>> When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and
>> spiritually and financially and militarily ruinous
>> mistake our war in Vietnam was, every artist worth a
>> damn in this country, every serious writer, painter,
>> stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you
>> name it, came out against the thing. We formed what
>> might be described as a laser beam of protest, with
>> everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and
>> intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a
>> banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped
>> from a stepladder five-feet high.
>>
>> And so it is with anti-war protests in the present day.
>> Then as now, TV did not like anti-war protesters, nor
>> any other sort of protesters, unless they rioted. Now,
>> as then, on account of TV, the right of citizens to
>> peaceably assemble, and petition their government for a
>> redress of grievances, "ain't worth a pitcher of warm
>> spit," as the saying goes.
>>
>>
>> Q: As a writer and artist, have you noticed any difference
>> between how the cultural leaders of the past and the
>> cultural leaders of today view their responsibility to
>> society?
>>
>>
>> Responsibility to which society? To Nazi Germany? To
>> the Stalinist Soviet Union? What about responsibility
>> to humanity in general? And leaders in what particular
>> cultural activity? I guess you mean the fine arts. I
>> hope you mean the fine arts. ... Anybody practicing the
>> fine art of composing music, no matter how cynical or
>> greedy or scared, still can't help serving all
>> humanity. Music makes practically everybody fonder of
>> life than he or she would be without it. Even military
>> bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up.
>>
>> But that is the power of ear candy. The creation of
>> such a universal confection for the eye, by means of
>> printed poetry or fiction or history or essays or
>> memoirs and so on, isn't possible. Literature is by
>> definition opinionated. It is bound to provoke the
>> arguments in many quarters, not excluding the hometown
>> or even the family of the author. Any ink-on-paper
>> author can only hope at best to seem responsible to
>> small groups or like-minded people somewhere. He or she
>> might as well have given an interview to the editor of a
>> small-circulation publication.
>>
>> Maybe we can talk about the responsibilities to their
>> societies of architects and sculptors and painters
>> another time. And I will say this: TV drama, although
>> not yet classified as fine art, has on occasion
>> performed marvelous services for Americans who want us
>> to be less paranoid, to be fairer and more merciful.
>> M.A.S.H. and Law and Order, to name only two shows,
>> have been stunning masterpieces in that regard.
>>
>>
>> Q: That said, do you have any ideas for a really scary
>> reality TV show?
>>
>>
>> "C students from Yale." It would stand your hair on end.
>>
>>
>> Q: What targets would you consider fair game for a
>> satirist today?
>>
>>
>> Assholes.
>> ___________________________
-- -Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com
The Wandering Medicine Show
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