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Topic: A Good Read From Kurt Vonnegut (nsc) Return to archive Page: 1 2
May 13th, 2004 10:48 AM
FPM C10 Published on Wednesday, May 12, 2004 by In These Times
Cold Turkey
by Kurt Vonnegut
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 America�s 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.
-------------------------
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 have seven kids, four of them adopted.
Many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.
I put my big question about life to my biological son Mark. Mark is a pediatrician, and author of a memoir, The Eden Express. It is about his crackup, straightjacket and padded cell stuff, from which he recovered sufficiently to graduate from Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: �Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.� So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it.
I have to say that�s a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, �Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.� 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.
The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.
But back to people, like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, who�ve said how we could behave more humanely, and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favorites is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana. Get a load of this:
Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran 5 times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:
As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
As long as there is a criminal element, I�m of it.
As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Doesn�t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools or health insurance for all?
How about Jesus� Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. �
And so on.
Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that�s Moses, not Jesus. I haven�t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
�Blessed are the merciful� in a courtroom? �Blessed are the peacemakers� in the Pentagon? Give me a break!
-------------------------
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don�t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would want to be a human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy, lying and greedy animals we are!
I was born a human being in 1922 A.D. What does �A.D.� signify? That commemorates an inmate of this lunatic asylum we call Earth who was nailed to a wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates. With him still conscious, they hammered spikes through his wrists and insteps, and into the wood. Then they set the cross upright, so he dangled up there where even the shortest person in the crowd could see him writhing this way and that.
Can you imagine people doing such a thing to a person?
No problem. That�s entertainment. Ask the devout Roman Catholic Mel Gibson, who, as an act of piety, has just made a fortune with a movie about how Jesus was tortured. Never mind what Jesus said.
During the reign of King Henry the Eighth, founder of the Church of England, he had a counterfeiter boiled alive in public. Show biz again.
Mel Gibson�s next movie should be The Counterfeiter. Box office records will again be broken.
One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
-------------------------
And what did the great British historian Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794 A.D., have to say about the human record so far? He said, �History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.�
The same can be said about this morning�s edition of the New York Times.
The French-Algerian writer Albert Camus, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, wrote, �There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.�
So there�s another barrel of laughs from literature. Camus died in an automobile accident. His dates? 1913-1960 A.D.
Listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge of the Light Brigade.
But I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren�t crazy to begin with. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls� basketball.
Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
Actually, this same sort of thing happened to the people of England generations ago, and Sir William Gilbert, of the radical team of Gilbert and Sullivan, wrote these words for a song about it back then:
I often think it�s comical
How nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal
That�s born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative.
Which one are you in this country? It�s practically a law of life that you have to be one or the other? If you aren�t one or the other, you might as well be a doughnut.
If some of you still haven�t decided, I�ll make it easy for you.
If you want to take my guns away from me, and you�re all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other, and want to give them kitchen appliances at their showers, and you�re for the poor, you�re a liberal.
If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you�re a conservative.
What could be simpler?
-------------------------
My government�s got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.
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.
Other drunks have seen pink elephants.
And do you know why I think he is so pissed off at Arabs? They invented algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.
We�re spreading democracy, are we? Same way European explorers brought Christianity to the Indians, what we now call �Native Americans.�
How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful are the people of Baghdad today.
So let�s give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That�ll teach bin Laden a lesson he won�t soon forget. Hail to the Chief.
That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven�t noticed, they�ve already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a perfectly enormous debt that you�ll be asked to repay.
Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because they have disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been embedded, has forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People.
About my own history of foreign substance abuse. I�ve been a coward about heroin and coke and pot and so on, afraid they might put me over the edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn�t seem to do anything to me, one way or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple of drinks now and then, and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit. No problem.
I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.
But I�ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack uh uh could match. That was when I got my first driver�s license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.
And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drug 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 won�t be any more of those. Cold turkey.
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn�t like TV news, is it?
Here�s 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 we�re hooked on.
� 2004 In These Times
May 13th, 2004 10:50 AM
jb Thanks FPMC10..
May 13th, 2004 05:18 PM
Nasty Habits Thanks, FPMC10.

May 13th, 2004 05:25 PM
Bloozehound yeah thanks for the comedy

that article makes me LMFAO

nothing like watching the liberals cry
May 13th, 2004 06:01 PM
Joey
Thanks FPMC10
May 13th, 2004 10:20 PM
stonedinaustralia yes thanks from me also FPM

tho i notice Kurt has paraphrased Joyce's "Ulysses" without giving credit (naughty, naughty). To wit:

"I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other."

Joyces definition of a cigarette - "A white stick, with a light at one end and a fool at the other"

and bloozehound i don't see this as liberal "crying" - it strikes me as a fairly accurate description of exactly what is happening in this crazy mixed up (i.e. hypocritical) world we live in, leavened with some (albeit dark) humour - but as the old blues songs say - "you got to laugh - just to keep from crying"
May 14th, 2004 01:08 AM
Bloozehound sia no offense to you

that was meant for american libs only

i don't like to mix politics here, but if they can't refrain from rubbing it in my face i'll dish it right back
May 14th, 2004 01:25 AM
stonedinaustralia no offense taken

but my comment still holds - i think you've misread the thing

are you a facist??
May 14th, 2004 06:43 AM
mac_daddy well said, Kurt. Thanks for the post, FPM.

I still don't buy that the sole motivating factor of the current US foreign and domestic policies is oil. But it certainly is a major one. I am afraid that the current admin. (along with the folks in power elswewhere in the world) have bought into their religious superiority. The Prez and his cronies seem to truly believe all this End of Days crap, and that scares the hell out of me. Because they are not afraid do bring it on, the It being the Apocalypse, because they figure that they are Christians, so they are stoked for eternity regardless. what's the difference? there ain't any Palestinians in Heaven...

Rumsfi*ld and the boys were hot to get into Iraq because they honestly believe that they can bring about a new order in the Middle East, as if this is the proper role for a foreign nation to take. What made them think that they could do what NOBODY has been able to do in thousands of years can only be ignorance and misguided bravado. The fact that they could line their pockets along the way is an added bonus that I am sure did not go unnoticed, but I believe they are focused on implementing their world vision first, aand profiteering second...

Well, guess what? foreign policy based on this kind of flawed logic, sucks - and we are now in a horrible situation that is getting worse by the day, with no real end in sight. When I think about it, I believe this crew has done more to damage the US's standing in the world's view than all other modern administrations combined. And that is a tall order! I was an exchange student in Europe (Scotland, Germany, Austria, Greece) during Ronnie's tenure in office, and I was shocked at how many people outside the US thought we were assholes, with horrible foreign poilcy, who were dragging their Allies with them through the mud. Back home, it seemed that the Gipper's hardnosed approach was a winner. Well it wasn't - but it was nowhere as ugly as what george jr. is doing with the reins now...

if we, as a nation, truly want to save face, we can start by voting these dickheads out of office with an overwhelming public mandate!!!






[Edited by mac_daddy]
May 14th, 2004 07:02 AM
Bloozehound
quote:
stonedinaustralia wrote:
no offense taken

but my comment still holds - i think you've misread the thing

are you a facist??



no i'm an american
May 14th, 2004 07:48 AM
Bloozehound let me repeat myself

i'm american and proud of it
May 14th, 2004 10:27 AM
jb Thanks FPMC10
May 14th, 2004 12:31 PM
FPM C10
quote:
jb wrote:
Thanks FPMC10



Thanks for the thanks!

Thank you EVERYONE for the thoughtful thanks.

And thank you Bloozehound for your pride. These days you must just be beside yourself !
May 14th, 2004 03:09 PM
Bloozehound
quote:
FPM C10 wrote:
And thank you Bloozehound for your pride. These days you must just be beside yourself !



for once in your life you are right fleabit

i am as happy as a clam
May 14th, 2004 03:13 PM
Bloozehound
quote:
stonedinaustralia wrote:
are you a facist??



do you mean, do I like to look at faces ?

sure
May 14th, 2004 03:34 PM
Mel Belli Shame. Vonnegut used to be a great novelist; and as a WWII vet, he deserves respect for that alone.

But that article was written by a man who's become an old crank. It read like a car with a drunk behind the wheel -- weaving all over the road.

Rationally, the war in Iraq was not about oil. Why would we spend billions and lose lives to get the same oil that Saddam would've been perfectly willing to sell to us? All we had to do was ask.
May 14th, 2004 03:39 PM
Bloozehound according to the libs it's about the oil


(it's always about the oil wink wink, nudge nudge)
May 14th, 2004 04:20 PM
throbby What exactly are the moral justifications of this war? I'd really like to know considering I've two sons registered in the selective service system. Now I'm hearing rumours of a renewal of the draft after the fall elections take place. I'd really like to hear some honest answers as to what the real objective is in Iraq.
May 14th, 2004 04:21 PM
sirmoonie To liberate the fucking piss out of those Iraqi scumbags!
May 14th, 2004 04:23 PM
Donny Rummy
quote:
Mel Belli wrote:
Shame. Vonnegut used to be a great novelist; and as a WWII vet, he deserves respect for that alone.

But that article was written by a man who's become an old crank. It read like a car with a drunk behind the wheel -- weaving all over the road.

Rationally, the war in Iraq was not about oil. Why would we spend billions and lose lives to get the same oil that Saddam would've been perfectly willing to sell to us? All we had to do was ask.



You are right. It never ceases to amaze me how naive people are. But considering where I'm posting - duh.

May 14th, 2004 04:27 PM
Bloozehound
quote:
throbby wrote:
What exactly are the moral justifications of this war? I'd really like to know considering I've two sons registered in the selective service system. Now I'm hearing rumours of a renewal of the draft after the fall elections take place. I'd really like to hear some honest answers as to what the real objective is in Iraq.



rest assured the draft will never happen

more liberal propoganda

in the last year the recruitment rate to join the armed services has been the highest it's been in years

god bless them

and this has the libs furious

i guess thats why they sit around and write inflamatory, pathetic shit like fleebit so gladly posted above
May 14th, 2004 04:29 PM
Donny Rummy
quote:
Bloozehound wrote:


rest assured the draft will never happen

more liberal propoganda

in the last year the recruitment rate to join the armed services has been the highest it's been in years

god bless them

and this has the libs furious

i guess thats why they sit around and write inflamatory, pathetic shit like fleebit so gladly posted above




Good god - you avatar is ugly...

May 14th, 2004 04:30 PM
Bloozehound hey Rummy!
May 14th, 2004 04:32 PM
Donny Rummy
quote:
Bloozehound wrote:
hey Rummy!



Now if you only had David lee Roth banging the wooden dummy up the arse - then it would be the rockingist avatar ever!!!!

May 14th, 2004 04:33 PM
Bloozehound lol

that would be pretty wild

wild indeed
May 14th, 2004 04:39 PM
Mel Belli The objective of the war, at this point, is to create a relatively stable, mostly secular, reasonably democratic state in Iraq that does not have pan-Arabic ambitions and does not fund or incite terrorism.

The larger hope is that the creation of such a state will, over the long haul, help transform the political slum that is the Middle East.

Whether either of those things will happen is anyone's guess. But I think they're worth trying, considering the undeniably dangerous connection between Middle Eastern autocracies, radical Islamism and WMD.

(Every intelligence agency of any repute in the world thought Saddam had WMD; isn't it nice to know, for sure, that 12 years of containment -- which included economic sanctions and the occasional cruise missile, plus U.S.-enforced no-fly-zones over 50 percent of the country's airspace -- did succeed in disarming him?)

Those are the strategic aims, anyway. The moral justification, which I consider secondary to national security, is, to my mind, cut and dried. No critic of the war can answer it.

In the bargain, the U.S-British-Aussie coaltion liberated 25 million people who were living under a genocidal dictatorship. Who can possibly say that was a bad thing?
May 14th, 2004 04:42 PM
Donny Rummy
quote:
Mel Belli wrote:
The objective of the war, at this point, is to create a relatively stable, mostly secular, reasonably democratic state in Iraq that does not have pan-Arabic ambitions and does not fund or incite terrorism.

The larger hope is that the creation of such a state will, over the long haul, help transform the political slum that is the Middle East.

Whether either of those things will happen is anyone's guess. But I think they're worth trying, considering the undeniably dangerous connection between Middle Eastern autocracies, radical Islamism and WMD.

(Every intelligence agency of any repute in the world thought Saddam had WMD; isn't it nice to know, for sure, that 12 years of containment -- which included economic sanctions and the occasional cruise missile, plus U.S.-enforced no-fly-zones over 50 percent of the country's airspace -- did succeed in disarming him?)

Those are the strategic aims, anyway. The moral justification, which I consider secondary to national security, is, to my mind, cut and dried. No critic of the war can answer it.

In the bargain, the U.S-British-Aussie coaltion liberated 25 million people who were living under a genocidal dictatorship. Who can possibly say that was a bad thing?



Right - but the powers that be currently are so very historically and culturally naive. It's fucking amazing really. It's the only explanation for this colossal fuck up.

May 14th, 2004 05:08 PM
throbby I'm well aware of the party line. I just don't buy it.

Too much bullshit flying around. Makes it hard to know what the truth is.
May 14th, 2004 05:44 PM
Riffhard
quote:
Donny Rummy wrote:


Right - but the powers that be currently are so very historically and culturally naive. It's fucking amazing really. It's the only explanation for this colossal fuck up.





Your kidding right?! Who the hell is being historically naive here? Are you,in your immense wisdom,suggesting that Saddam was ready to change his pattern of behaviour because the limpwristed UN asked him to? Please give it a fucking rest. The entire western world has turned their back on the Mid East while tyrants,despots,and Islamic fascists took over the region and tried desperatly to take the populations back to the 15th century ala,Saladin and friends.

Bush seems to remember vividly the morning of September 11,2001. It would seem that some liberals would like to forget that that day ever happened. The ridiculous argument that says that there was no connection between Saddam and Al Queda also ignores history. We know that Saddam was harborring terrorists inside Baghdad. We also know that he was sending $25,000.00 to each of the Palestinian "martyrs" as a reward. Gee,it seems more than a little coinsitental that the suicide bombings in Israel have slowed considerably. I wonder why?

The bottom line is this. Saddam Huissain is directly responsible for death of more muslims than anyone else on the planet. He was/is a tyrannical madman who saw/sees no value in human life and has on numerous occasions stated that he would destroy the USA. He also put out a hit on a former US president. This war was going to happen one way or the other. I firmly believe in Bush's actions as they are in keeping with his mandate of "in a place and time of OUR choosing". I personally lost three people on 9/11/01 and I,for one,have little or no sympathy for terrorists that are bound and determind to destroy my way of life.

If anyone does not think that Saddam was guilty as sin for crimes against humanity then your ignorance has no bounds.
To try and equate the USA with the way that these Islamic fanatics behave is just so much bullshit. We had some soldiers that behaved appallingkly in the Abu Gariab prison. The difference is that our president apologized to the entire muslim world and those responsible are being delt with accordingly. I'm still waiting for an apology for the four Americans that were burned to crisp,dragged through the streets of Karbala,and then tied up on a bridge while these subhumans danced in the streets. I'm still waiting for the apology for the brutal beheading of Nick Berg nad Daniel Pearl. I'm still waiting for an apology for execution style slayings of American POWs by Iraqi forces. I'm still waiting for an apology for 9/11/01,The Kobar Towers,Kenya,Tanzinia,the USS Cole,WTC '93,Bali......

Don't even try and make any moral equations between the USA and these animals. It only makes you look like a complete and utter fool. It also shows and incredible amount of "historical naivite'"


Wake up! You are lucky to live in the United States. Learn to count your freaking blessings.


Riffhard
May 14th, 2004 06:22 PM
Taptrick


Draft?

USAF will be eliminating 17,000-18,000 positions by the end of 2005.



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