Weblog Entry - 01/01/2004: "Uncensored Gore Vidal"

"I'm afraid that 90 percent of Americans don't know where Iraq is and never will know, and they don't care."

Who said this??

The one who answered the question

"Speaking of elections, is George W. Bush going to be re-elected next year?"

with

"No. At least if there is a fair election, an election that is not electronic. That would be dangerous. We don't want an election without a paper trail. The makers of the voting machines say no one can look inside of them, because they would reveal trade secrets. What secrets? Isn't their job to count votes? Or do they get secret messages from Mars? Is the cure for cancer inside the machines? I mean, come on. And all three owners of the companies who make these machines are donors to the Bush administration. Is this not corruption?"

or the question

"So if George W. Bush or John Ashcroft had been around in the early days of the republic, they would have been indicted and then hanged by the Founders?"

with

"No. It would have been better and worse. [Laughs] Bush and Ashcroft would have been considered so disreputable as to not belong in this country at all. They might be invited to go down to Bolivia or Paraguay and take part in the military administration of some Spanish colony, where they would feel so much more at home. They would not be called Americans – most Americans would not think of them as citizens."

Well, it is our great inimitable Gore Vidal, in an interview given to Marc Cooper of LA Weekly and published as Uncensored Gore Vidal on AlterNet yesterday. Don't miss it! It is full of important historical insights and warnings accordingly. His basic assumptions may not be yours, politically he is neither anarchist, left or right, or anarcho-capitalist nor anything of the sort, more a liberal than a libertarian, more a conservative (in the best sense of the word) than the latter, but certainly no neo-con. That's already something and maybe enough these days. ;-) Anyway, he is, as I said, inimitable and his very own category. An elitist, consistent with the immense stature of his intelligence and education, no populist (right or left) for sure, but with his heart on the left, thus at the right natural biological place. True intelligence has always been on the side of the moral good, not the bad. And on the side of the poor, of the oppressed. At least, that's how I see it. And being gay gave him from the start some special grip on seeing realities as they are, not as they are being told, a talent that straights sometimes may take longer to develop, unless they suffer from some other very personal conflict with the status quo.

Please watch in particular what Gore has to say on the USA PATRIOT Act. The importance of this cannot be stressed enough. This is not just a dreadful danger for the wonderful American people [not all, mind you :-)], but for the whole world, since especially in Europe governments in their incompetence and their intrinsic malice (though that's not what their PR efforts are trying to tell us) are APING these days the worst part of America. Agreed, this is no news: it has only extended to matters of greater negative impact. Is it not a disgrace that even countries like the Netherlands or Denmark are not capable anymore to fully resist the bad influence?!

I would not mind getting comments on this.