V re Bush's paranoid, neo-facist, Christian world view

[pynchonoid]

<http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15326>

Dear Mr. Vonnegut
By Kurt Vonnegut, In These Times
March 6, 2003

The recent Kurt Vonnegut interview (Kurt Vonnegut vs.
!*@) has become the most popular story at
inthesetimes.com, where the article originally
appeared, with hundreds of readers expressing their
opinions in the Comments section. The interview has
also been translated and reprinted in Aftonbladet,
Sweden's largest daily newspaper, and La Jornada,
Mexico's most respected daily newspaper. In light of
this response, Vonnegut has agreed, on an occasional
basis, to entertain readers' questions. If you would
like to submit a question, write to
vonnegut at inthesetimes.com, and the editors will pass
along your question to him. 

What genuinely motivates al-Qaeda to kill and
self-destruct? The president says, "They hate our
freedoms – our freedom of religion, our freedom of
speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree
with each other," which surely is not what has been
learned from the captives being held in Guantanamo, or
what he is told in his briefings. Why do the
communications industry and our elected politicians
allow Bush to get away with such nonsense? And how can
there ever be peace, and even trust in our leaders, if
the American people aren't told the truth?
-Peter Hoyt, Little Deer Island, Maine 


Dear Mr. Hoyt,
One wishes that those who have taken over our federal
government, and hence the world, by means of a Mickey
Mouse coup d'etat, and who have disconnected all the
burglar alarms prescribed by the Constitution, which
is to say the House and Senate and the Supreme Court
and We the People, were truly Christian. But as
William Shakespeare told us long ago, "The devil can
cite Scripture for his purpose." 

And what remains the best-kept secret from the Second
World War, because it is so embarrassing, is that
Hitler was a Christian, and that his swastika was a
Christian cross made of axes, an apt symbol of a
political party for Christians of the working class.
And there were simpler, unambiguous crosses on all
Hitler's tanks and planes. 

Again: One wishes, for the sake of the whole planet,
that the people in and around the White House nowadays
truly mean it when they say, "Forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against
us," and that they respect as children of God the
losers, the nobodies so loved by Jesus in the
Beatitudes, in His Sermon on the Mount: the poor in
spirit, they that mourn, the meek, the merciful, the
peace makers and so on. 

But such is obviously not the case. George W. Bush
smirks and gloats unmercifully as he boasts of his
readiness to loose more than a hundred cruise
missiles, what I call "Timothy McVeighs," into the
midst of the general population of Iraq, nearly half
of whom are children, little boys and girls under the
age of 15. 

His domestic policies, whose viciousness is peewee in
comparison with what he is so eager to do to
foreigners who don't look like him and talk like him,
who don't have names like his, nonetheless inflict
pain on those Americans of the sort enumerated in the
Beatitudes, by depriving them of decent health care
and educations, and of food, shelter and clothing when
times are bad. It seems quite possible that his
opinion of the American people has been formed while
watching the Jerry Springer Show, which is Republican
propaganda of the most pernicious kind. 

But America was certainly hated all around the world
long before this coup d'etat. And we weren't hated, as
George W. Bush would have it, because of our liberty
and justice for all. We are hated because our
corporations have been the principal deliverers and
imposers of new technologies and economic schemes that
have wrecked the self-respect, the cultures of men,
women and children in so many other societies. 

It's that simple. 

What are we to do when confronted by such hatred?
Respond to Code Red and run around like chickens with
their heads cut off. 

Keep in touch,
Kurt Vonnegut


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