posted May 17, 2004 12:38 AM            

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. Š

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 ****** 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 cocaine and
LSD 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 cocaine 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 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
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

posted May 17, 2004 01:44 AM            

2 items in the US budget consume 40% of the budget dollars, Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. But that doesn't even get close to all the social spending in the US budget. All the HUD programs, job training, and the multitude of other help programs also take a large chunk. The non discretionary spending items in the budget consume about 50% of all money spent by the federal government and that's all social spending, every penny---transfers of money from one group to another. Half, how much is enough?

posted May 17, 2004 08:06 AM              

who could not warm to these thoughts?

quote:

---

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.

---

seems to be true christianity and religion in general summed up in a nutshell, doesn't it?

well, not everyone shares these concepts, i guess--but never mind the previous criticism. i don't bother to read them any more. i waited a long while to read something that displayed real thought or creativity or usefulness, anything positive or hopeful, but it was all just stuff like this (and the word "stuff" is a polite euphemism)

posted May 17, 2004 09:34 AM              

Gotta love dem Scorps

posted May 17, 2004 11:47 AM            

quote:

---

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?

---

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who enjoyed it.

Did you all know that Helen Keller was a socialist? I'm reading this book called "Lies My Teacher Told Me". It's about all the stuff that was left out of our history books. Like the last 60 years of Helen Keller's life. She even helped found the ACLU! I had no idea.

posted May 17, 2004 12:15 PM            

quote:

---

Did you all know that Helen Keller was a socialist?

---

What's your point Harpyr? The following people were or are socialists too.

Marx
Lenin
Leon Trotsky
Stalin
Mao Tse-tung
Kim Jong-il
Kim Il-sung
Saddam Hussein
Pol pot
Ho chi minh
Fidel Castro

Good little murdering socialist dictators, one and all. A rogue's gallery of socialists.

Collectively, these people are directly responsible for the murder of approximately 200,000,000 people.

So, Helen Keller was a socialist and therefore socialism is good? Right?

posted May 17, 2004 02:48 PM              

Saying that someone is a Socialist is like saying that someone has their Venus in Virgo.

Reading the second-to-last post, I immediately wondered, "did Helen Keller decide on this label herself?" Did she directly use that word to specifically describe herself in that book, Harpyr?

And common sense will tell you that not all "Socialists" are murderers by default. Good grief!

My opinion on Socialism? Simple and un-political. If human beings got busy taking care of themselves and each other, none of us would need "the government"'s handouts.

posted May 17, 2004 03:33 PM            

At that point it's fair to see how socialists act and how their political, economic and governmental theories play out in practice. Not very well unless you're prepared to excuse 200,000,000 murders committed in the name of socialism.

Nor am I prepared to consider the notion that those repressive governments didn't represent true socialism because extreme, repressive government follows as surely as night follows day when the system begins to break down. And it always will break down because it isn't a viable system. Nor is any other system based on envy and class warfare, taking the fruits of one person's labor and handing it over to another more favored person by government edict. That's socialism in a nutshell and like a nutshell, there's a nut in there.

posted May 17, 2004 06:26 PM            

But, when working for their own benefit, they managed to produce more on less land than when working for the government and that after working at their government job on the government farm.

Someone from the Soviet Union said, "the government pretends to pay us and we pretend to work" which exactly sums up the problem with collectivist societies. The only thing those societies produce are shared misery.

posted May 17, 2004 08:56 PM              

"So, what's your point, jwhop? The following people were or are Caucasian, too:

Adolf Hitler
Ted Bundy
Charles Manson
John Wilkes Booth
Pope Urban II

Good little murdering Caucasians, one and all. A rogue's gallery of Caucasians.

Collectively, these people are directly responsible for the murder of -- well, a heck of a lot of people. (Forgive me, I am not so mathematically inclined.)

So Linda Goodman was a Caucasian and therefore being a Caucasian is good, right?"

Does the chain of reasoning now appear as silly and as flawed to you as it does to me? You attempted a syllogism (look it up), which failed as many of them do.

Please, do not mistake my words for a defense of Socialist government; I would never be so foolish. "Removing the incentive for hard work, innovation and risk of capital is the fastest way to the economic trash heap" -- this I agree with wholeheartedly. No, if I am defending anything, it is Helen Keller, or sound logic. And certainly the ACLU, which is fighting our despicable power structure's so-called "Patriot" Act, so that perhaps in another ten years we will still have a few Constitutional rights left to us.

Now will you please quote to me the exact phrase from Kurt Vonnegut's speech that roused your anti-Socialist ire in the first place? I have read and re-read it, and cannot find any part of it in which he condones or promotes a Socialist government, nor claims to be a Socialist himself. He does speak about the good ideas of one person who chose to call himself a Socialist, and considers the possibility that maybe not ALL Socialist agendas are bad... but that is a far cry from stating a desire for a communist government.

Can you see nothing of worth or value in Mr. Vonnegut's words? If all you took away from 'Cold Turkey' was a reason to be angry, then you really have missed out. This thread made me feel all good inside, until you dumped all over it and wracked my sensitive Venusian nerves -- not to mention missing the point, which compelled me to point out the flaws in your reasoning.

Perhaps you are more enlightened than your previous posts to this thread would seem to suggest, and you will gracefully let it drop here, and start an "I Hate Socialists" thread somewhere else, which I promise not to visit. Who knows? I believe in miracles. It could happen.

posted May 17, 2004 10:48 PM            

quote:

---

If you aren't one or the other, you
might as well be a doughnut

---

Then I`m a doughnut and full of........

cream cheese

posted May 17, 2004 11:06 PM              

Jwhop, in your never-ending quest to hunt down the world's last remaining Communists, I believe you have missed the point. Read Harypr's post again. Stay calm. Deep breath. Think.

I am still innocent. I still believe. I think deep in his heart Kurt does too. It ain't over till it's over.

Chocolate glazed doughnut

posted May 17, 2004 11:59 PM              

My son Tom used to date a girl that they called "Suzy Cream Cheese.."

posted May 18, 2004 01:36 AM            

As for Kurt Vonnegut's speech, I don't think I've ever encountered a more negative rant. The high point in his life appears to have been the day he got his drivers license and he's been going downhill ever since.

We should really talk about the speech that trashed everything in America and the human race as well that made you feel all good inside.

Let's see:
America is not humane and reasonable
America is corrupt because America is powerful
America's leaders are power drunk chimpanzees
There's not a chance in hell of America ever being reasonable and humane.
Everyone in America is being shafted and lied to by our government.
The Constitution is flawed
Only nuts want to be President
Only a nut would want to be a human
Humans are treacherous, untrustworthy, lying and greedy animals
All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being
you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a
conservative.
The President is pis*ed at the Arabs because they invented algebra
We're spreading democracy the same way Christianity was spread to the Native Indians.

That's enough, there's much more but that's enough. It's also quite enough from a bitter man who's ideas and political leanings have been rejected over and over again at the ballot boxes. Apparently everyone in America is an utter fool, except Kurt Vonnegut and presumably those who think like him or should I say "feel" like him because no thinking person could or would say half of what he said. He reminds me of Andy Rooney, another American nay-sayer.

As for what he said about socialism and all the linkages he gave it, perhaps you should reread it once again.

If anyone attempted a syllogism, he did but his conclusions are not logical.

I didn't miss any points in Vonnegut's rant paras but you seem to have missed most of what he said. Maybe it's the jocular way he said it. No way to put a happy face on it. One thing is true, if I hated everything in this society as much as Vonnegut does, I'd leave America, pronto. I often wonder why those who feel that way don't pick up and immigrate to greener pastures. Instead, they take advantage of the freedom and opportunities here that people are willing to risk their very lives for to just get here, while trashing the very country that makes it all possible.

As for your comments about enlightenment, I don't think I would go there if I were you.

Let's see, you want to get your licks in then call it quits without comment? Sorry, I won't oblige you. I am a fire sign but I consider what I say and mean it.

posted May 18, 2004 08:32 AM              

"So Hellen Keller was a Socialist and therefore Socialsm is good, right?"

Will you foolishly argue with me (and Merriam-Webster) when we tell you that the word THEREFORE signals a CONCLUSION?

So, yes, you drew a conclusion, and attempted a syllogism, whether you want to admit it or not.

Kurt Vonnegut's rant DOES have many negative things to say. Is that so strange to you, in such a negative world? He -- and I -- are not content to sit idly by while injustice is done. And much injustice is done, not just in Socialist countries, but even here in America. And the injustices grow larger and more numerous as time passes. (I could present many examples, but this is a tiresome proposition.) This grieves us, for we love this country. We love it for what it is supposed to be: the first country in the world founded on an ideal rather than a bloodline, and where the will of the people is the voice of law. We would see America live up to the great ideals it was founded upon. If we follow passively along, and keep our dissenting little mouths shut, who then will fuel the fires of Change? You suggest that we pack up and leave our country. Indeed. And leave it completely at the mercy of those who would use its wealth and power for their own selfish and short-sighted purposes? Leave it to follow its present course of decline to its inevitable conclusion? I am afraid I must "nay-say" once again.

posted May 18, 2004 12:16 PM            

I also am a 'nay-sayer' to the argument that people like me should just pack it up and leave if we don't like the way the US is run. That's absurd. Just because I don't march in rank and file with the rest of the conformists doesn't mean this is any less "my" country. I will not abandon it to those who turn a blind eye to the murderous capitalists we've bred here. I will stand up in the face of injustic where ever I see it even if it means being accused of 'hating' America. If I hated America I would no doubt leave to find my peace else where. It's because I love this country that I will do whatever I can to guide her down a path of healthy evolution towards sustainability rather than sowing the seeds of her own destruction.

posted May 18, 2004 12:35 PM            

If you want free exchange of Astro info, I don't see how using someone's sign or aspect of a sign to diss them is going to encourage that.