Thursday, April 12, 2007

Vonnegut

From In These Times.

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!

That said, do you have any ideas for a really scary reality TV show?

"C students from Yale." It would stand your hair on end.

What targets would you consider fair game for a satirist today?

Assholes.

Go read more about Vonnegut. I was a little surprised to learn that he was a Saab dealer back when they were two-strokes. Oddball little cars, like they were built by folks who had never seen a car before and had to figure out how to build it all by themselves. Or didn't care how others did it. Fits right in with his writing perspective, I think.

That's not trite, obvious, or overly sentimental of me, is it? So it goes...

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