In These Times | Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@

Vonnegut:

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.”

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!

I have read most of Vonnegut and consider Slaughterhouse-Five and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater two of the best novels of the last century. Like his Mother Night these are examininations of modern morality which should be required reading in high school or college. Mother Night also has a lesson that applies now: Be careful who you pretend to be because we all are who we're pretending to be.

This is much better than the cynical and anti-liberal message in Slaughterhouse Five (link is to very good movie) where the Tralfamadorians teach Billy Pilgrim that "it is pointless to be concerned with the bad things that always happen, it is better to only focus one's attention on the good moments, for no moments are capable of being changed."

Not a philosophy I want to consider when one of the most respected nuclear weapons analysts says he has been shown documents which confirm the US military is considering using nuclear weapons in a war with Iraq and outrage in England is reaching the point of Pilger calling Blair and Bush cowards and war criminals.