My Humble Attempt to Reduce the Rotation of Vonnegut in his Grave…

[Junkdrawer]

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my heroes, but tonight he is spinning in his grave.

It seems that several on the web have chosen to use an early short story by Vonnegut as proof that Vonnegut, a man who cited Eugene Debs as one of his heroes, was against "cheese sandwich socialism that would attempt to make us all equal."

In the mid ‘50s, at the height of the Red Scare, a young Kurt Vonnegut kept bread on the table by writing short stories for various magazines. And several of these stories could be construed, if you squint just right, as having an Anti-Communistic flavor. I remember one in particular where a brave American officer saved himself and his family from a sadistic Asian Communist and his Russian advisor who used captured soldiers in a life-or-death game of chess.

So what.

An older and more mature Vonnegut inspired millions of us with his common sense humanity. The following is my favorite Vonnegut essay written toward the end of his life:

Cold Turkey

Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

….

Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran 5 times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:

As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
As long as there is a criminal element, I’m of it.
As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

Doesn’t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools or health insurance for all?

….

When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those. Cold turkey.

Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is it?

Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/cold_turkey/

[iamjoy]

1. Harrison Bergeron

That short story seemed to mock the idea of government regulated equality.

Anyway, Harrison Bergeron was the first thing I ever read by Vonnegut and I mistook him for a Right Wing author. It's only after having read a few other things by him and saw a few interviews that I realized he was probably making fun of the free-market types and what they think socialism means.

[navarth]

2. thanks for this.

I read a lot of Vonnegut for a long time, but hadn't looked at any for years. This is righteous stuff.

[slay]

3. Vonnegut is one of my heroes as well

Just finished Hocus Pocus - loved it.

Vonnegut on Socialism from his 2001 Carl Sandburg Literary Award speech:

~snip~

But tonight seems an apt occasion as well for celebrating what he and other American 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 of Illinois and Abraham Lincoln, of Kentucky, then Indiana, and finally Illinois. Both, may I say, were continental, freshwater people like ourselves.

Hooray for our team!

I know upper-class graduates of Yale University who can't talk or write worth a nickel.

"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 shalt not starve.

~snip~

Entire speech at: http://socialistworker.org/2001/382/382_08_VonnegutFull.shtml

[Junkdrawer]

6. Thank you. I think ole Kurt is down to 16 RPM now....

:hi:

[tomp]

11. thank you. what a beautiful quote on socialism and christianity. nt

[Gregorian]

4. I'm always shocked at how perfectly he speaks for me.

And he used one word once that told me he is more aware than almost anyone. And to hear him using the same words as I do on this forum just gives me a sense of companionship.

I wish more people would wake the hell up. Look ahead. Look in your god damned rear view mirror.

I'm saddened that at least two people in my life are not going to be here much longer. Two people so very very much like Kurt. There must be somewhere to turn when they're gone. 90 year olds reading the New York Times in their gardens. What will we do when their collective wisdom dies. I hope this forum serves as a place where we are passing on and correcting our knowledge.

On second thought, was Jesus a socialist?

[glitch]

5. You're lucky you still have 90 year olds in your life. My 77 year olds passed last year.

They "got" Vonnegut, I miss them terribly.

Of course Jesus was a socialist IMO.

K & R

[FloridaJudy]

7. I just wish Vonnegut had lived long enough

To see Obama elected. I suspect he would have been pleased - by our President's ability to construct a decent sentence, if by nothing else!

[ananda]

8. Don't forget Steinbeck too!

I learned about Eugene Debs and the heart
of the labor movement through the books
of the greatest author of all time, John
Steinbeck!

I really enjoy Vonnegut for the way he
uses a childish persona with a wickedly
simple style in order to serve up the
truths and issues that are so disturbing
in the times after WWII.

[watrwefitinfor]

10. Another Steinbeck reader here.

I've loved him since I was a teen-ager in the deep south, growing up with a conscience, searching for reason. I haunted the public library, and stumbled across Steinbeck there. He opened those same doors for me that you mention. Plus, he provided a name for my first child, who was named after Rosasharn. :-)

Vonnegut came later.

Wat

[KoKo]

9. Good post...that "Cheese Sandwich" though might be the crux of new issues...

we face in figuring out the "small things" that have gone wrong to build larger.

as you quote:

As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
As long as there is a criminal element, I’m of it.
As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

In that context...singling out "cheese sandwiches" seems very arbitrary...unless it connects in small way to larger picture of our society.

[leveymg]

12. Same Zombie instinct that drove Neocons to try to claim Orwell as one of their own in '84

Anyone else remember Podhoretz's claim twenty five years ago, "If he were alive today, George Orwell would be a Neoconservative"?

Eric Blair would despise the Neocons for their self-deceptive, self-congratulatory sense of destiny as the political "chosen people" of the post-totalitarian era. He would have recognized the Bush Administration and its ideological helpers for what they are - mimickry of the Soviet "other" they claim to have defeated - a more technologically savvy version of the same, dreary power-for-its-own-sake group of chickenshit frat boys.

[tbyg52]

13. Thank you!

People use Heinlein to "prove" stupid things as well. He may not be politically correct here, but I am a fan.

[readmoreoften]

14. Thanks for the information on Vonnegut. If I remember correctly, he had some sweet things to say

to young queer and transgendered people in Kate Bornstein's "Men, Women, and the Rest of Us"