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OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 4/29/16

God (or whoever) Bless You Mr. Vonnegut

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Kurt Vonnegut
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Forty-seven years ago I bailed out of a Medieval English Literature class just in time and took a Modern Satire class instead. I knew I'd get an easy "A" because how hard could it be? Read a couple of books, answer questions about the books I'd just read, and then I'd maintain a high grade average. Guys that didn't keep their grades up were destined to become soldiers instead of students. Without a high enough grade-point average it could get pretty drafty going to college in those days.

The assigned reading list was fairly long. I can only remember two of the books from the stack I brought back from the bookstore because they changed my life. To be more precise they changed the way my brain worked. They were The Magic Christian by Terry Southern, and God Bless You Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut. Both books are about money.

The Magic Christian was published in 1959 but it could have been written during any time in human history because people have always made fools of themselves for money. God Bless You Mr. Rosewater is a uniquely American story because it points out with laser-like precision how fortunes were originally made in the U.S. by psychopathic opportunists, and then maintained by cadres of sociopathic lawyers.

The problem with writing about satire or comedy is that it's a losing proposition. As Mark Twain wrote, "Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it."

To say The Magic Christian is about how people humiliate themselves for money and everybody has their price, or that God Bless You Mr. Rosewater is about the inherent evil of income equality, is essentially draining the life out of the books and pumping them full of formaldehyde. But here we all are in the American Spring of 2016 and I thought it was time to revisit God Bless You Mr. Rosewater. Because the United States -- again -- seems doomed to elect as its president a billionaire, or a multimillionaire, both of whom do not give a flying f*ck about what happens to 99% of the people. As Lee Camp said after the New York primary, "Plutocracy is kicking ass!"

I'm not going to explain anything Vonnegut wrote. I'm going to copy and paste his words to try to keep the bloodletting to a minimum.

(Eliot Rosewater writing to his inheritors about the history of the Rosewaters)

"Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.

"Samuel became even more interested in politics than his father had been, served the Republican Party tirelessly as a kingmaker, caused that party to nominate men who would whirl like dervishes, bawl fluent Babylonian, and order the militia to fire into crowds whenever a poor man seemed on the point of suggesting that he and a Rosewater were equal in the eyes of the law.

"And Samuel bought newspapers, and preachers, too. He gave them this simple lesson to teach, and they taught it well: Anybody who thought that the United States of America was supposed to be a Utopia was a piggy, lazy, God-damned fool. Samuel thundered that no American factory hand was worth more than eighty cents a day. And yet he could be thankful for the opportunity to pay a hundred thousand dollars or more for a painting by an Italian three centuries dead. And he capped this insult by giving paintings to museums for the spiritual elevation of the poor. The museums were closed on Sundays."

(Eliot Rosewater on the military)

"You know, I think the main purpose of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps is to get poor Americans into clean, pressed, unpatched clothes, so rich Americans can stand to look at them."

(Eliot Rosewater speaking with his father)

"The least a government could do, it seems to me, is to divide things up fairly among the babies. Life is hard enough, without people having to worry themselves sick about money, too. There's plenty for everybody in this country, if we'll only share more.

"And just what do you think that would do to incentive?

"You mean fright about not getting enough to eat, about not being able to pay the doctor, about not being able to give your family nice clothes, a safe, cheerful, comfortable place to live, a decent education, and a few good times? You mean shame about not knowing where the Money River is?

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Some 45 years ago I became aware of the fact that the government of The United States was trying to kill me. I wasn't paranoid or anything. I mean I knew the government wasn't out to kill me personally. They just wanted to kill as many Vietnamese (more...)
 
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