{"id":1428,"date":"2004-05-22T18:12:21","date_gmt":"2004-05-22T22:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/05\/22\/a-little-radicalism-from-kurt-vonne"},"modified":"2004-05-22T18:12:21","modified_gmt":"2004-05-22T22:12:21","slug":"a-little-radicalism-from-kurt-vonnegut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/05\/22\/a-little-radicalism-from-kurt-vonnegut\/","title":{"rendered":"A little radicalism from Kurt Vonnegut"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve enjoyed Vonnegut for a few years now.  So I was a captive audience when this ran across my electronic world.<\/p>\n

May 10, 2004<\/p>\n

Cold Turkey<\/p>\n

By Kurt Vonnegut<\/p>\n

Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it
\npossible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members
\nof my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the
\nGreat Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died
\nfor that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.<\/p>\n

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of
\nAmerica’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and
\nabsolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy
\ndrunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in
\ndanger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle
\nEast? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are
\nbeing treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas. <\/p>\n

When you get to my age, if you get to my age, which is 81,
\nand if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children,
\nwho are themselves middle-aged, what life is all about. I have seven kids, four
\nof them adopted.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Many of you reading this are probably the same age as my
\ngrandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our
\nBaby Boomer corporations and government.<\/p>\n

I put my big question about life to my biological son Mark.
\nMark is a pediatrician, and author of a memoir, The Eden Express. It is about
\nhis crackup, straightjacket and padded cell stuff, from which he recovered
\nsufficiently to graduate from Harvard Medical School.<\/p>\n

Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: “Father, we
\nare here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”  So I
\npass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can
\nforget it.<\/p>\n

I have to say that’s a pretty good sound bite, almost as
\ngood as,  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  <\/span>A lot of people think Jesus said that,
\nbecause it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually
\nsaid by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there was that
\ngreatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the
\nformula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for
\nfireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere
\neven knew that there was another one.<\/p>\n

But back to people, like Confucius and Jesus and my son the
\ndoctor, Mark, who’ve said how we could behave more humanely, and maybe make the
\nworld a less painful place. One of my favorites is Eugene Debs, from Terre
\nHaute in my native state of Indiana. Get a load of this:<\/p>\n

Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran 5
\ntimes as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6
\npercent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had
\nthis to say while campaigning:<\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Doesn’t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like
\ngreat public schools or health insurance for all?<\/p>\n

How about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?<\/p>\n

\n

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
\nBlessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
\nBlessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the
\nchildren of God …<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And so on.<\/p>\n

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly
\nDonald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.<\/p>\n

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never
\nmention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that
\nthe Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses,
\nnot Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the
\nBeatitudes, be posted anywhere.<\/p>\n

“Blessed are the
\nmerciful” in a courtroom?  
\n<\/span>“Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break! <\/p>\n

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I
\ndon’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be
\npresident.<\/p>\n

But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would
\nwant to be a human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous,
\nuntrustworthy, lying and greedy animals we are!<\/p>\n

I was born a human being in 1922 A.D. What does “A.D.”
\nsignify? That commemorates an inmate of this lunatic asylum we call Earth who
\nwas nailed to a wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates. With him still
\nconscious, they hammered spikes through his wrists and insteps, and into the
\nwood. Then they set the cross upright, so he dangled up there where even the
\nshortest person in the crowd could see him writhing this way and that.<\/p>\n

Can you imagine people doing such a thing to a person?<\/p>\n

No problem. That’s entertainment. Ask the devout Roman
\nCatholic Mel Gibson, who, as an act of piety, has just made a fortune with a
\nmovie about how Jesus was tortured. Never mind what Jesus said.<\/p>\n

During the reign of King Henry the Eighth, founder of the
\nChurch of England, he had a counterfeiter boiled alive in public. Show biz
\nagain.<\/p>\n

Mel Gibson’s next movie should be The Counterfeiter<\/span>. Box
\noffice records will again be broken.<\/p>\n

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die
\nhorribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have
\nentertained us. <\/p>\n

And what did the great British historian Edward Gibbon,
\n1737-1794 A.D., have to say about the human record so far? He said,  <\/span>“History is indeed little more than the
\nregister of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.”<\/p>\n

The same can be said about this morning’s edition of the New
\nYork Times.<\/p>\n

The French-Algerian writer Albert Camus, who won a Nobel
\nPrize for Literature in 1957, wrote, “There is but one truly serious
\nphilosophical problem, and that is suicide. “<\/p>\n

So there’s another barrel of laughs from literature. Camus
\ndied in an automobile accident. His dates? 1913-1960 A.D.<\/p>\n

Listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to
\nbe a human being: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, the
\nIliad and the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge of the
\nLight Brigade.<\/p>\n

But I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in
\nwhat era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there.
\nAnd, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games
\ngoing on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren’t crazy to begin
\nwith. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love
\nand hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and
\ngirls’ basketball.<\/p>\n

Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics,
\nwhere, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two
\nkinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.<\/p>\n

Actually, this same sort of thing happened to the people of
\nEngland generations ago, and Sir William Gilbert, of the radical team of
\nGilbert and Sullivan, wrote these words for a song about it back then:<\/p>\n

I often think it’s comical<\/span>
\nHow nature always does contrive<\/i>
\nThat every boy and every gal<\/span>
\nThat’s born into the world alive
\nIs either a little Liberal<\/span>
\nOr else a little Conservative.<\/i><\/p>\n

Which one are you in this country? It’s practically a law of
\nlife that you have to be one or the other. If you aren’t one or the other, you
\nmight as well be a doughnut.<\/p>\n

If some of you still haven’t decided, I’ll make it easy for
\nyou.<\/p>\n

If you want to take my guns away from me, and you’re all for
\nmurdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other, and want to
\ngive them kitchen appliances at their showers, and you’re for the poor, you’re
\na liberal.<\/p>\n

If you are against those perversions and for the rich,
\nyou’re a conservative.<\/p>\n

What could be simpler?<\/p>\n

My government’s got a war on drugs. But get this: The two
\nmost widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both
\nperfectly legal.<\/p>\n

One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W.
\nBush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four
\nsheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41.
\nWhen he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the
\nsauce, stop gargling nose paint.<\/p>\n

Other drunks have seen pink elephants.<\/p>\n

And do you know why I think he is so pissed off at Arabs? They
\ninvented algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol
\nfor nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb?
\nTry doing long division with Roman numerals.<\/p>\n

We’re spreading democracy, are we? Same way European
\nexplorers brought Christianity to the Indians, what we now call  <\/span>“Native Americans. “   <\/span>How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful are
\nthe people of Baghdad today.  <\/span>So let’s
\ngive another big tax cut to the super-rich. That’ll teach bin Laden a lesson he
\nwon’t soon forget. Hail to the Chief.<\/p>\n

That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with
\nDemocracy as the Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have
\nabsolutely no say in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven’t
\nnoticed, they’ve already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in
\nthe war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one
\nwith a perfectly enormous debt that you’ll be asked to repay.<\/p>\n

Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because
\nthey have disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the
\nSenate, the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been
\nembedded, has forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People.<\/p>\n

About my own history of foreign substance abuse. I’ve been a
\ncoward about heroin and cocaine and LSD and so on, afraid they might put me
\nover the edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and
\nthe Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn’t seem to do anything to me, one
\nway or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or
\nwhatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple of
\ndrinks now and then, and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit. No
\nproblem.<\/p>\n

I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep
\nhoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other. <\/p>\n

But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even
\ncrack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license! Look
\nout, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.<\/p>\n

And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was
\npowered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today,
\nand electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and
\ndestructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized
\nworld was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there
\nwon’t be any more of those. Cold turkey.<\/p>\n

Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is
\nit?<\/p>\n

Here’s what I think the truth is:  We are all addicts
\nof fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.<\/p>\n

And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our
\nleaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we
\n‘re hooked on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve enjoyed Vonnegut for a few years now.  So I was a captive audience when this ran across my electronic world. May 10, 2004 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-n2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}