Allow me to reprint some short excerpts from an interview Vonnegut gave to In These Times in January, 2003 ( before the Iraq War began ). At 80, he was not fooled at all by the war propaganda.
Based on what you’ve read and seen in the media, what is not being said in the mainstream press about President Bush’s policies and the impending war in Iraq?
That they are nonsense.
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?
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.”
Read it all ( it's only one page )
here.
And here are some lines from what I think was Vonnegut's last public speech, at Ohio State in the first week of March:
Kurt Vonnegut made a very wise and at times humorous speech at Ohio State last night. Here are some of the best lines:
“The only difference between Bush and Hitler,” Vonnegut adds, “is that Hitler was elected.”
“We have people in this country who are richer than whole countries,” he says. “They run everything.
“We have no Democratic Party. It’s financed by the same millionaires and billionaires as the Republicans.
Kurt Vonnegut's books are more likely to be banned in future America than his philosophy is likely to be accepted.
