Wednesday, January 27, 2016

"...all... are created equal and shall not starve." Kurt Vonnegut (11 November 1922 - 11 April 2007).


(M)an: Dude! There’s an exclusive club for growth comprised of the Teabag Democrats, and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s involvement with this underground organization becomes apparent when she cannot guarantee that she will incorporate Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley into her administration if she becomes the forty-fifth president of the United States. Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley would do onto her that which she doth not want to do onto them.

(D)ude: Man! It is a crucial hypothetical in the Democratic race for the nomination this year. The primaries can be so much more gratifying to American voters if Hillary Rodham Clinton would stop her husband’s foolish rant against socialism. Bernie Sanders is a secular humanist and folks need only to read Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without a Country to know the truth about the issues of the day, because although published in 2005, Vonnegut’s observations of the American political process at home and abroad under the neoconservative Republican President George Walker Bush still stand through the test of time.

M: Dude! There are some timeless lines in Vonnegut’s work, which especially ring true today.

D: Man! President Bill Clinton needs to reread page 10 in the latest paperback edition, where Vonnegut states judiciously,

“Most Americans don’t know what the socialists did during the first half of the past century with art, with eloquence, with organizing skills, to elevate the self-respect, the dignity and political acumen of American wage earners, of our working class.

That wage earners, without social position or higher education or wealth, are of inferior intellect is surely belied by the fact that two of the most splendid writers and speakers on the deepest subjects in American history were self-taught workmen. I speak, of course, of Carl Sandburg the poet from Illinois, and Abraham Lincoln of Kentucky, then Indiana, and finally Illinois.”

M: Dude! Kurt Vonnegut brings up Christianity too in his discussion of socialism! What was it that he said? I believe it was something to do with the similarities in essence of both Christianity as religion and socialism as philosophy, no?

D: Man! Page 11! Kurt Vonnegut writes,

““Socialism” is no more an evil word than “Christianity.” Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.

Adolf Hitler, incidentally, was a two-fer. He named his party the National Socialists, the Nazis. Hitler’s swastika wasn’t a pagan symbol, as so many people believe. It was a working person’s Christian cross, made of axes, of tools.

About Stalin’s shuttered churches, and those in China today: Such suppression of religion was supposedly justified by Karl Marx’s statement that “religion is the opium of the people.” Marx said that back in 1844, when opium and opium derivatives were the only effective painkillers anyone could take. Marx himself had taken them. He was grateful for the temporary relief they had given him. He was simply noticing, and surely not condemning, the fact that religion could also be comforting to those in economic or social distress. It was a casual truism, not a dictum.

When Marx wrote those words, by the way, we hadn’t even freed our slaves yet. Who do you imagine was more pleasing in the eyes of a merciful God back then, Karl Marx or the United States of America?”

M: Dude! I don’t get the crude generalizations about Bernie Sanders that the Clintons make. In fact, did you know that Plato defends a grand creator in his famous dialogue between Socrates and Ion? According to the modern translation by W.H.D. Rouse, Socrates declares to Ion the need to remain humble and defer onto a higher power, specifically,

For the poet is an airy thing, a winged and holy thing; and he cannot make poetry until he becomes inspired and goes out of his senses and no mind is left in him; so long as he keeps possession of this, no man is able to make poetry and chant oracles. Not by art, then, they make their poetry with all those fine things about all sorts of matters—like your speeches about Homer—not by art, but by divine dispensation; therefore, the only poetry that each one can make is what the Muse has pushed him to make, one ecstatic odes, one hymns of praise, one songs for dance or pantomime, one epic, one satiric iambic; in every other kind each one of them is a failure. For not by art do they speak these things, but by divine power, since if art taught them how to speak well in one kind, they could do it also in all other kinds. Therefore, God takes the mind out of poets, and uses them as his servants.   

D: Man! The seventh Republican debate tomorrow night on Fox News is being sensationalized foolishly by the American Press Corps. It’s just treacherous, pre-scripted nonsense coming our way over the airwaves. Donald J. Trump pulled out of the debate because he did not receive a pre-scripted dialogue sheet from Roger Ailes and Megyn Kelley or the Republican National Committee. Why didn’t Trump get a script of tomorrow night’s Republican debate?

M: Dude! The Republican GOP Tea Partiers want to place Jeb Bush in the White House in 2016. The Democratic Teabags want to place Hillary Rodham Clinton on the ballot against Jeb Bush for the purposes of her losing to another malevolent absolutist from the Bush dynasty. President Bill Clinton is misleading Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic Teabags are misleading the country, and Jeb Bush is going to be ushered into the White House with the cooperation of the GOP Tea and Democrat Teabags, the Bushes being the leaders of the former and the Clintons being the leaders of the latter.  

D: Man! But why didn’t Trump get a script of tomorrow night’s Republican debate?

M: Dude! The other candidates for the Republican Party nomination have their scripts memorized and do not welcome any abrupt last-minute changes to their dialogue! Plus, the pre-scripts are all targeted against Donald J. Trump’s success as a nominee thus far. The other candidates for the Republican nomination are ready to chew Trump up in their rigmarole and spit him out of the lead in the polls.  

D: Man! Talk about dishonesty! What treacherous, pre-scripted nonsense! The Bush family dynasty and President Bill Clinton are outrageous! They calculated the Democrat losses in 2010 and 2014! And Megyn Kelly created the bogus pre-scripted drama with Trump in return for becoming the cover story inside and cover girl on Vanity Fair [Magazine]. 

M: Dude! Feel the Bern! Vote for Bernie Sanders! Look at me! I’ve been physically sick for two weeks since discovering Hillary Rodham Clinton’s brazenness in wanting to lose the election to Jeb Bush! But I’ve pulled through the vomiting and upset stomach!

D: Man! The moderators should be changed for tomorrow night’s debate. Talk about corruption! The Republican Party is at its sleaziest right now! The Republican Tea Partiers had scripted a televised gang-up on Trump by the other candidates, and now Trump has dropped out to do a competing fundraiser involving wounded veterans. And, get this: Trump’s competition is deciding whether to ditch the debate for the fundraiser as well!

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