Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

I read a lot of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s material. I read so much of it in fact that I've read almost all of his books at least twice.

I was thumbing through Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons, which is a wonderful book of his more journalistic work, and found a passage that I wanted to share with the community of people (all three of you) who read this:

Mr. Nixon himself is a minor character in this book. He is the first President to hate the American people and all they stand for. He believes so vibrantly in his own purity, although he has committed crimes which are hideous, that I am bound to conclude that someone told him when he was very young that all serious crime was sexual, that no one could be a criminal who did not commit adultery or masturbate.
He is a useful man in that he has shown us that our Constitution is a defective document, which makes a childlike assumption that we would never elect a President who disliked us so. So we must amend the Constitution in order that we can more easily eject such a person from office and even put him in jail.


I think that the second-such President to hate the American people so wholly is George W. Bush. I believe that you could replace Bush's name with Nixon's in the above statement and it would still be almost wholly accurate. And we still haven't learned our lesson, to amend our constitution so that we may eject bums like these from office and thrown them in jail more easily.

1 comment:

Elias said...

I agree with Mr Vonnegut; a moral man of common sense. One of those "Greatest Generation" old timers whose opinion carries a lot more weight than any of the arrogant blow hards that pollute our airwaves day in, day out.
I believe in the very same essay that Bryan mentioned, Vonnegut adresses the folly of societies that govern themselves according to "God's laws", such as the Taliban and to some degree, the Bush administration. Why should the laws and welfare of man take a back seat to interpretation of ancient scripture that only a fraction of any given population even believe in? It's an important question to ponder. Also read Howard Zinn's "Terrorism and War" published by Seventh Stories Press.