{"id":898,"date":"2003-01-30T02:43:15","date_gmt":"2003-01-30T18:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/01\/30\/vonnegut-weighs-in-on-iraq\/"},"modified":"2019-12-06T08:46:11","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T16:46:11","slug":"vonnegut-weighs-in-on-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/01\/30\/vonnegut-weighs-in-on-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"Vonnegut weighs in on Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:15392,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/inthesetimes.com\\\/comments.php?id=38_0_4_0_C&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/inthesetimes.com\\\/comments.php?id=38_0_4_0_C&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:15393,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.metafilter.com\\\/mefi\\\/23185&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20050920043034\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.metafilter.com:80\\\/mefi\\\/23185&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.metafilter.com\\\/mefi\\\/23185&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Author Kurt Vonnegut (whom I really need to go re-read, it&#8217;s been years) has some good comments on the current brouhaha in <a href=\"http:\/\/inthesetimes.com\/comments.php?id=38_0_4_0_C\" title=\"Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&amp;#*!@\">In These Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  <strong>Based on what you&#8217;ve read and seen in the media, what is not being said in the mainstream press about President Bush&#8217;s policies and the impending war in Iraq?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>  That they are nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>  <strong>My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that many people are beginning to despair. Do you think that we&#8217;ve lost reason to hope?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>  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&#8217;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 &#8220;Christians,&#8221; and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or &#8220;PPs.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  <strong>How have you gotten involved in the anti-war movement? And how would you compare the movement against a war in Iraq with the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>  When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and spiritually and financially and militarily ruinous mistake our war in Vietnam was, every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the thing. We formed what might be described as a laser beam of protest, with everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high.<\/p>\n<p>  And so it is with anti-war protests in the present day. Then as now, TV did not like anti-war protesters, nor any other sort of protesters, unless they rioted. Now, as then, on account of TV, the right of citizens to peaceably assemble, and petition their government for a redress of grievances, &#8220;ain&#8217;t worth a pitcher of warm spit,&#8221; as the saying goes.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metafilter.com\/mefi\/23185\" title=\"MetaFilter comments thread\">MeFi<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 detat 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 &#8216;PPs.&#8217;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2042],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}