Kurt Vonnegut's Latest!

[Beetwasher]

Read it!

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/i_love_you_madame_librarian/

Some of you might remember that I bumped into him a month or so ago and posted about it. I guess he might have been writing this piece because some of it is stuff we discussed and talked about. I hope I bump into him again.

It saddens me that he's given up hope. I want him to know that it's people like him that inspire people like me to keep fighting for all that is GOOD w/ humanity.

[Beetwasher]

1. Link To My Other Vonnegut Thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1625855

Odd, I just posted this and yet I can't edit it. I'm getting a message that the time has expired.

[Gregorian]

2. I love him!

And I do remember your previous post. That was quite exciting.

I sure hope he's reading DU, because aside from libraries and Inthesetimes, he might have one more shred of optimism.

"So I am a man without a country..." If he only knew how many of us have felt this way for literally decades. For I gave up long before he, on the humans that bully this poor globe. I saw it long ago. Bright as day, the arrogance and inibility to act, except under crisis.

Kurt, can you hear us? There's life out here. Just a spark. But it's better than nothing. Don't suffer alone. Get a computer and start talking with us.

(Darnit. I wish that article was longer. Oh well. Thanks Beetwasher.)

[Karenina]

3. Kurt ALWAYS calls it

EXACTLY as he sees it.

[Lex]

4. An American icon. A gem. A hero. A man who is honest & forthright.

I love you Kurt Vonnegut.

When I did my senior paper in high school on your novels, Mr. Vonnegut, little did I know how I would read your writings later in life and weep for my country like I'm doing now.

[tom_paine]

5. He has given up hope, as Carl Sagan would have done were he alive to see

this.

Time iwll tell whether his opinion was correct.

I tend to agree that it is likely (not 100% absolutely going to happen) to be the correct choice.

"Big darkness, come soon."
--Hunter S. Thompson

[Vickers]

6. If Georgie would have read just ONE Vonnegut book in his youth

I can just about guarantee you that he would not be the way he is now.

Alas, Georgie never truly embraced reading.

God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut! I love you!

[maxsolomon]

7. a little scattered

but he's in his 80's so i say: give em hell kurt!

and i think george could have got through a vonnegut novel - no big words!

[Octafish]

8. Thanks, Beetwasher! Vonnegut is my hero.

And he's been that way for 35 years.

Keep the faith, Kurt!

Beetwasher and DU are on the BFEE's case.



SINK the BFEE!

[Beetwasher]

10. A Kick For Kurt!

n/t

[Ducks In A Row]

14. yeah

[Octafish]

17. Bush is a "Psychopathic Personality."

Vonnegut pegged Bushler. Like a serial killer, the crazy, unelected moron knows no remorse or shame for his actions that kill and injure others. Here's a Joel Blyfuss interview of Kurt Vonnegut from a while back (In These Times' servers may be overloaded and are slow...):


Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !*!@

EXCERPT...

BLYFUSS: My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that many people are beginning to despair. Do you think that we’ve lost reason to hope?

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.”

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

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!

CONTINUED...

http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=38_0_4_0_C

[Beetwasher]

18. Attack of the "C" Students From Yale

I love Kurt. I really hope I bump into him again...

[Octafish]

20. And he's correct about the Librarians.

The Librarians stood up to the new Reich and said "No" to Ashcan and the FBI. We'd be OK if all Americans were so brave.

[Emboldened Chimp]

9. The last paragraph says it all..

"What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without a sense of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations and made it all their own?"

[Kazak]

11. Keep 'em coming, Kurt...

Love it!

[indigobusiness]

12. This part rings in my ears...

In case you haven’t noticed, and as a result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war lovers, with appallingly powerful weaponry and unopposed.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were.
================================
---snip----that just gets me...as does the rest
================================
With good reason.

In case you haven’t noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound and kill ’em and torture ’em and imprison ’em all we want.

Piece of cake.

In case you haven’t noticed, we also dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.

Send ’em anywhere. Make ’em do anything.

Piece of cake.

The O’Reilly Factor.

So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and the Chicago-based magazine you are reading, In These Times.

Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed that there were weapons of mass destruction there.

Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn’t even seen World War I. War is now a form of TV entertainment. And what made WWI so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun. Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don’t you wish you could have something named after you?

Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now am tempted to give up on people too. And, as some of you may know, this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.

My last words? “Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse.”

Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas!

Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler.

[indepat]

13. The Kens of the world make us realize why some have given up on the human

species. (Referring to Ken's diatribe over Kurt's article.)

[Beetwasher]

15. Another Kick for Kurt!

n/t

[Kazak]

16. Three cheers for Kurt!!!

I just well up with glee whenever I see that he's got something new out. Another book in the works perhaps? *crosses fingers*

[LWolf]

19. Kurt Vonnegut

is an all-time favorite of mine. So are Twain and Einstein, come to think of it.

Vonnegut nailed the current state of America a long time ago, imo.

Welcome to the monkey house.

[blindpig]

21. a prophet in the wilderness

Few listen, fewer understand. I regret but understand his dispair.
Thanks again Beetwasher, and thanks too for the link, Octafish.

[blindpig]

22. kick

cause I don't want to be the threadkiller this time.