{"id":371,"date":"2007-04-15T16:39:09","date_gmt":"2007-04-15T20:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/2007\/04\/15\/vonnegut-on-war-christianity-and-soc"},"modified":"2007-04-27T15:07:28","modified_gmt":"2007-04-27T19:07:28","slug":"vonnegut-on-war-christianity-and-socialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/2007\/04\/15\/vonnegut-on-war-christianity-and-socialism\/","title":{"rendered":"Vonnegut on War, Christianity, and Socialism."},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>The first casualty of war is truth.<sup>1<\/sup><\/li>\n<li>The truth continues to die after the war. There are plenty of truths to kill.<sup>2<\/sup><\/li>\n<li>Any president is going to feel he needs to compete for time on TV and so what he&#8217;s [Bush] going to entertain us with is what I call Republican superbowl played by the lower classes with live ammunition.<sup>2<\/sup><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Religion is the opiate of the masses.<sup>3<\/sup><\/li>\n<li>He [Marx] said it at a time when opium was the only pain killer. You took it for a tootache. &#8230; He might have said religion was the aspirin of the people.<sup>2<\/sup><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>There was a time when I could vote for economic justice, now I can&#8217;t.<sup>2<\/sup><!--more--><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kurt_Vonnegut\">Kurt Vonnegut<\/a> [1922-2007] was an infantryman in World War II. Captured at the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.army.mil\/cmh-pg\/books\/wwii\/7-8\/7-8_9.htm#p233\">Battle of the Bulge<\/a>, he was sent to a P.O.W. camp in Dresden in time to witness the city&#8217;s <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fire-bombing_of_Dresden\">firebombing<\/a> from the relative safety of an underground meat locker [<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/de.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Schlachthof_5_oder_Der_Kinderkreuzzug\">Schlachthof 5<\/a> : <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Slaughterhouse-Five\">Slaughterhouse 5<\/a>]. The <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Image:Dresd_4.jpg\">devastation<\/a> was greater than <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Image:Nagasaki_temple_destroyed.jpg\">Nagasaki<\/a>. Vonnegut thinks the there were 135,000 dead, but only 35,000 are reported now.<\/p>\n<p>He voted socialist and found no conflict with his Christianity.<\/p>\n<p>A personal reminiscence by <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jkbaumga\/2007\/04\/12\/kurt-vonnegut-dies\/\">Berkoblogger <strong>j<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><sup>1<\/sup>Senator Hiram Johnson 1918<sup>a<\/sup><\/p>\n<p><sup>2<\/sup>Kurt Vonnegut In Conversation an interview with David Barsamian of Alternative Radio.Currently [for the next two weeks] available for free from KEXP in Seattle from their <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.kexp.org\/streamarchive\/streamarchive.asp\">streaming archive page<\/a>. Use the &#8220;Listen by Time&#8221; Dropdowns for Sun, April 15, 2007, 7:00 am. [You can <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.alternativeradio.org\/programs\/VONK001.shtml\">buy it anytime<\/a> from the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/alternativeradio.org\/\">Alternative Radio website<\/a>.]<\/p>\n<p><sup>3<\/sup>Karl Marx<\/p>\n<p><sup>a<\/sup>According to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/notesandqueries\/query\/0,5753,-21510,00.html\">Joy from Doha Qatar, et.al.<\/a>,precursors may have gone back as far as <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aeschylus\">\u0391\u1f30\u03c3\u03c7\u03cd\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2<\/a> [a.k.a Aeschylus].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first casualty of war is truth.1 The truth continues to die after the war. There are plenty of truths to kill.2 Any president is going to feel he needs to compete for time on TV and so what he&#8217;s [Bush] going to entertain us with is what I call Republican superbowl played by the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":168,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[776],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sand-oil-and-tears"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}