The Existentialist Cowboy: Gore Vidal: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated

Monday, August 30, 2010

Gore Vidal: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Some of the early reviews of Gore Vidal's 'Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace' called it 'inflammatory'. That's because truth is often inflammatory. It is a measure of the American descent into fascism when distinguished authors are denied access to the audience that their work, in fact, created. Neither self-publishing or the blogosphere is, as yet, the solution. Those venues, themselves, are under threat if the news we hear about Google is, in any way, true.

So --what was said by Vidal that scared the pants off the MSM, the mentally constipated, the poohbahs at the Pentagon? Vidal made the case that there are no evils greater than those of the 'state' against its own people! Vidal found fatal flaws in U.S. foreign policy that inspire desperate measures abroad and, of late, at home. An empire whose exploitation of ever greater numbers, leaves its victims desperate, inviting response and retaliation. A nation-state so exploited may fight back with conventional means --armies and weapons! But a 'people' so exploited has only 'terrorism' to fight back with. Tyrants leave them no other choice. Other voices as disparate as Thomas Jefferson and Che Guevara have said the same thing.

Vidal found parallels between Timothy McVeigh and Bin Laden. That, of course, assumes that we know anything at all about Bin Laden. For all we know, Bin Laden is long dead or never existed. He could very well have been a creation of clever video editors. Think about it: how many people do you know who have actually met him? What hard evidence do YOU have that he exists? He probably does (or did) exist, but --to be honest --I don't know that for a fact and cannot prove it! Neither does anyone else who, like me, never met him. Bin Laden is a name in a newspaper article or a blurry image on a TV

Vidal makes little or no distinction between U.S. Foreign policy as practiced by George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. That is consistent with my position that the U.S. has but two wings of a single 'Capitalist Party'. Of the two, I believe the Democrats are preferable but that is a highly 'qualified' endorsement based entirely upon the fact that Democrats have consistently outperformed the GOP economically. For example, every Democratic regime since WWII has presided over greater job growth and GDP growth than any GOP regime. The margin by which the GOP are beaten is impressive, clearly, a result of their utterly wrong and 'top down' ideas about economics. Trickle-down or supply-side economics is the best example.

'Preferable' is, admittedly, a qualifying word used when none of the choices are precise. Neither party has articulated a truly desirable or noble 'America'. Neither party inspires us! Neither party has delivered a 'higher pie'! Both parties have, in fact, triangulated not even a center but an 'electorate' of some amorphous sort. No one --most certainly not Bush --has articulated what is right, noble and correct, merely whatever it is that might get one elected to office. Ronald Reagan, for example, had only to make psychopaths feel good about themselves.

On Phil Donahue, Studs Terkel spoke of the need for a 'major voice' to address the un-addressable of which 911 is the most notable example. Even now --no one dares speak realistically about 911. That, of course, was the perfect cover openly desired by Bush who warned against 'outrageous conspiracy theories' while putting forward his own 'conspiracy theory', the 'official' conspiracy which was, in fact, the most outrageous of them all! It was, in fact, the only conspiracy theory for which there is not a shred of rational or admissible evidence. Just propaganda and bullshit!

The 'patriotism' of anyone daring to speak openly or truthfully about 911 was impugned, castigated. Critics of Bush were called, in effect, 'traitors'. A legitimate government of broad-based support does not behave in this manner. It was Bush and his stolen 'office' who was, rather, the traitor to the people and the last time I checked, the people are sovereign. But America seems to have forgotten that.

Vidal's voice needs to be heard now more than ever. 911 must not simply fade away. What was done to this nation and by whom are issues that must be faced and will be --now or later! Calling opinions of any kind 'un-American' is, itself, 'un-American' and must not be tolerated. The alternative is censorship and fascism; conformity and totalitarianism, in this case, a dictatorship in which Fox and one or two other big networks play the role of 'The Ministry of Truth' i,e. 'The Ministry of Propaganda'.

Vidal committed the unpardonable sin. He questioned U.S. assumptions about the bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center bombings in New York. He wrote: "That our ruling junta might have seriously provoked McVeigh and Osama was never dealt with."

Writing prior to many 911 revelations, many of which utterly disprove the official conspiracy theory, his critique of the 911 cover story is incomplete. You will find proof that the Bush version of 911 is impossible, defying the principles of physics, mathematics and common sense at: 911 Inside Job Chronicles

Perhaps the only surprise in this book is Vidal's convincing argument that McVeigh had not been behind the bombing of the Murrah building in OKC. Only Vidal could have held this collection of essays together with a single thesis: that we must take seriously people like Timothy McVeigh whom Vidal proves was genuinely outraged by the outrageous murder of civilians at Waco. We must take seriously people like Bin Laden, who may or may not exist. Vidal stopped short of the simplistic 'evil begats evil' but he might have said it outright and would have been correct had he done so.

The point of the book is captured in the first and only new essay - "September 11, 2001 (A Tuesday)", and it is this essay that, presumably, kept the book from being published in this country until now. Has anyone noticed how quiet Vidal has been since 9/11? Well, it wasn't by choice. Just after the 9-11 attacks on the United States, Vidal's initial comments appeared in Portuguese when he shared his views with a Brazilian publication. Those comments were then translated into Spanish and published in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada. Vidal later revised and expanded these early remarks for a piece intended for Vanity Fair. The magazine—among others, including The Nation, where Vidal is a longtime contributing editor—passed on the piece as a result of its "anti-American sentiments", thereby keeping our leading publishers and primary voices of dissent in lockstep with the rest of the mainstream media's newfound desire to censor itself for the supposed good of the country.

Even in those heady days immediately following the attacks, and given the "unified front" rhetoric that has enveloped the country since (a united front that has since made shopping, and consumption in general, as the way to return to those happy-go-lucky days of last summer), it seems astounding that a major American literary figure and cultural critic would have a hard time placing one of his works concerning the most significant domestic event since W.W.II.
--Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated by Gore Vidal (Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books)

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