Corcoran Brothers

Jake has posted over on BlahStuff about a new Kurt Vonnegut article. He rightly assumes that the tone and substance of the article would throw us boyos into a bit of a fit. Save one thing, in my case. I am a giant hypocrite.

Sort of. The biggest thing in my mind that I am realizing is that I am being dismissive of the argument presented without fury mostly because I love Kurt Vonnegut’s work so much. Hocus Pocus is by far my most favoritist book evah!

When I read what Vonnegut wrote, my indignation is not raised, I get a sense of, “oh you silly old man! What did getting firebombed do to you? Ha ha ha. I wish you were still writing novels.” I relish his mentioning of Eugene Debs, it reminds me that Vonnegut has always stuck to his principals. I strongly disagree with his principals, but his manner of presentation always struck me with wonder.

I was going to start this paragraph with bthis sentence: Still, there is much silliness in his ideas. The proceed to argue the points I disagree with, what I agree with, etc. etc… I think I’ll just hit a couple of major points. There is more than conservative and liberal. It goes to my post, On Being a Libertarian. A platform for a political party can and should be separated from the morality of your personal life. KV can and to my knowledge, does, live his life to his personal convictions. But enforcing his beliefs in law? Hmmm not so much.

I also note he does not truly push liberalism over conservatism either. While it is a much more blatant attack on the current administration, I think it is only because they are the ones in power now. This seems to me an indictment of human kind. Give anyone power, they will take it to the extreme of their beliefs.

“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

This line is the one I have the most issue with. While I disagree with someone smoking a joint and going to jail, there are a lot of bad people doing bad things. I see no offer of a solution besides prison that would protect us. Do more than bitch about how wrong it is to imprison, show me another way to “save the children.” As for there being no peacemakers in the Pentagon. Explain to me what stopped the Communist Soviets of the 80’s from marching all the way to Portugal? Without a shot fired, the presence of the US Military alone kept the peace in Europe for 40 years, where 2 distinct and diametrically opposed forces existed, one with the desire to destroy and conquer the other. The US Military is THE world’s peacekeeper. When violence is wrought by the US, it is always to end violence.

Even writing this, I am aware of the hypocrisy in myself. If this were a Helen Thomas piece (link via C&S) I would have been seething the whole time. Since it was Kurt Vonnegut, I was much calmer and much much more willing to listen (figuratively) to his points, give them weighted consideration, and reason if/why I agreed/disagreed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 11th, 2004 at 15:15 and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.