Our Rome correspondent Gaither Stewart has filed this little gem of an interview with the controversial author. We trust it will be of interest to many of our readers.—Ed
Vidal lived large, unapologetically, and his villa in Ravello, on the Amalfi coast, remains a must-see location for the knowledgeable visitor.
DATELINE (Gaither Stewart in Rome)When I interviewed Gore Vidal in October, 1983, in his penthouse apartment on Largo (Piazza) Argentina in the very center of Rome, he related the time a lady from the New York Times asked as her first question: “Mr. Vidal, you really hate the United States, don’t you.” He answered: “No, I hate the New York Times.”
Like the time, he recalled, he was introduced on an NBC television show as “the outrageous Gore Vidal”, he stopped the show when he asked why outrageous. “Ronald Reagan is outrageous,” he replied.
During the over two hours we spoke about politics and literature which I recorded on tape, Vidal never once minced his words or resorted to niceties toward anyone or anything. Forever irreverent as was his nature.
From the huge transcript, I fashioned articles subsequently published in various European leftwing newspapers and magazines, including L’Unità, the official daily newspaper of the Italian Communist Party, De Morgen, the major Belgian Socialist daily in Gent, The Haagse Post, an Amsterdam leftwing weekly, and others I no longer recall.
We tried sitting on his terrace overlooking Piazza Argentina and the ruins of four Roman temples but the noise from the late Sunday afternoon traffic was so deafening we soon retired to the huge salon. Yet this apartment that he had owned for 20 years, he called his retreat, reserved for work—reading and writing and thinking. The only reason he agreed to the interview here was because I lived in Rome.
American artists were all over a cheap Europe in the early post-war period. And they all passed through Rome: that catastrophic driver Tennessee Williams, writer and composer Paul Bowles, William Styron, Normal Mailer and Saul Bellow. Here on the loud Rome piazza he wrote his famous Myra Breckenbridge. Though the figure of Gore Vidal that Sunday loomed larger than expected against the reflections of the flashing lights from the heart of Rome below us, I had the thought that we could just as well have been in New York or his beloved California.
Rather than try to reconstruct the interview, I have recalled here some of his chief political points, familiar to older readers, but most likely new to the younger generation, which Vidal describes as a ‘non-reading generation.’ Surprisingly, most of his words of nearly 30 years ago ring quite contemporary today.
“American leaders never deal with real political and social problems. The Founding Fathers feared most of all democracy and monarchy and saw to it that we could never have either. We should scrap the Constitution and start over. It is only a document to protect property owners while America has the weakest union movement in the Western world, with only 20% of workers organized. I attack the system that has done this to the American people. Meanwhile we should get rid of both the New York Times and the Constitution.
“On the other hand the people are not concerned about real problems either. Americans don’t vote, while corporations select and pay for the politicians and get the Senators and Presidents they pay for. They function like Italy’s mafia that buys its votes.
“The Left-Right classifications are complex. I have said I am a man of the Left. But I think we need a new definition of the Left and its goals and how they can be achieved. It’s a good thing for people to govern themselves but it must be explained how it can be done. We need a new document, a new analysis, a new synthesis of those goals.”
Gore Vidal, 30 years ago, saw literature in a grim situation. “In my visits to some 125 university campuses I have seen that literature has become something that is taught, not actually read. Literature is chiefly a subject of university study. Even that wouldn’t be so bad if the universities preserved the best of our literary past, Instead, it is often a case of Professor x writing a book and Professor y teaching it in his classes. The university campus is not real life, but 90% of our writers are connected with universities.”
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Remembering Gore Vidal
By Steven Lendman
This file photo taken on October 5, 2006 shows Gore Vidal the iconoclastic commentator on American life and history posing for a photo in his Los Angeles home.
STEPHEN LENDMAN AUGUST 2, 2012
Reflecting on his accomplishments, he said “I just played the game harder.” He hoped to be remembered as “the person who wrote the best sentences of his time.” He thought of himself as a modern-day Voltaire.
Many labels characterize him: distinguished author, essayist, playwright, historian, acerbic sociopolitical/cultural critic, freethinker, intellectual, and humanist.
In 2009, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him honorary president.
On July 31, Gore Vidal died from complications of pneumonia at his Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles home.
He was 86. He’ll be missed. Los Angeles Times writer Elaine Woo called him a “gadfly on the national conscience” and “literary juggernaut.” He was that and much more.
New York Times writer Charles McGrath said he was “an Augustan figure who believed himself to be the last of a breed, and he was probably right. Few American writers have been more versatile or gotten more mileage from their talent.”
Random House editor Jason Epstein called him “an American version of Montaigne.”
As an essayist, New York Time Book Review writer RWB Lewis said he was “so good that we cannot do without him. He (was) a treasure of state.”
London Guardian writer Richard Lea called him “one of the towering figures of American cultural and political life for more than six decades.”
AHA said he was “a masterful humanist voice.” He “added an enthusiastic, progressive and dynamic voice” to AHA’s humanist movement.
AHA president David Niose said:
“The progressive and humanist values Gore Vidal repeatedly espoused moved the culture in a positive direction.”
“He spent his life pointing out the places in society that needed the most attention without worrying who might be embarrassed or upset by his opinions.”
Humanist magazine editor Jennifer Bardi added:
“He’s been called an iconoclast, a provocateur, and a misanthrope. And of course Gore occasionally said things that gave humanists pause. But he was forever dedicated to the cause of enlightenment and exposed injustice and hypocrisy at every turn.”
“It’s too hard to list all the appropriate adjectives and accolades that could proceed Gore Vidal’s name. Gore Vidal died tonight and the enlightened world mourns. But what a life he lived!”
He spent decades criticizing the religious right, US imperialism, perpetual wars, political extremism in the name of national security, America’s military/industrial complex, and other political, social and economic injustices.
He succeeded Kurt Vonnegut as honorary AHA president. He accepted at the time, saying he would be “most honored to succeed my old friend as honorary president of the Association.”
“Although he himself is hardly easy to replace, I will do my best to fill the great gap.”
His official web site listed his accomplishments. They include 24 novels, five plays, many screenplays, over 200 essays, his memoir Palimpsest, his National Book Award winning “United States (Essays 1952 – 92),” and numerous other political books. They include:
“Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated”
“Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta”
“Imperial America”
“The Decline and Fall of the American Empire”
“Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship”
“Rocking the Boat”
“The Last Empire: Essays 1992 – 2000”
In 2003, PBS featured Vidal in its American Masters series. His career spanned six decades, it said. He reflected “uncanny unity, a tone of easy familiarity with the world of politics and letters, an urbane wit, and supreme self-confidence as a writer” and sociopolitical critic.
Born in 1925, his web site called his maternal roots “thoroughly political.” As a boy, he lived with his grandfather, Senator TP Gore. His father, Eugene Vidal, served as FDR’s Bureau of Air Commerce director.
His mother, Nina Gore Vidal, divorced when Vidal was 10. She married Hugh Auchincloss. He divorced her and married Jackie Kennedy’s mother. It established a connection between Vidal and the Kennedy clan. It lasted through JFK’s presidency.
In 1943, he enlisted in the Army at age 17. At age 19, he became a warrant officer JG and first mate of the army ship FS 35. On night watch in port, he wrote his first novel, Williwaw.
Colombian novelist/journalist/Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez praised Vidal’s “magnificent series of historical novels or novelized histories.” They cover American life from the 18th to the 21st century.
New York Times literary critic Harold Bloom called him “a masterly American historical novelist, now wholly matured, who has found his truest subject, which is our national political history during precisely those years when our political and military histories were as one, one thing and one thing only: the unwavering will of Abraham Lincoln to keep the states united.”
He added he “demonstrates that his narrative achievement is vastly underestimated by American academic criticism, an injustice has has repaid amply in his essayist attacks upon the academy….”
Vidal’s interest in politics wasn’t limited to novels, essays, other writing, and commentaries. In 1960, he ran for Congress as a liberal Democrat in New York’s Republican 29th district.
Publicly he supported recognizing Red China, cutting the Pentagon’s budget, and spending more on education. He lost but won more votes in his district than JFK. He headed the 1960 Democrat ticket.
In 1982, he placed second in California’s Democrat senatorial primary. He lost to current governor Jerry Brown.
Reflecting on Watergate, he called America “a nation of ongoing hustlers from the prisons and disaster areas of old Europe.”
“I do not think that the America System in its present state of decadence is worth preserving.”
“The initial success of the United States was largely accidental. A rich empty continent was….exploited by rapacious Europeans who made slaves of Africans and corpses of Indians in the process.”
In his 1973 New Statesman essay titled “Political Melodramas,” he said:
“In 1959 when I wrote (“The Best Man”)….the character of the wicked candidate in the play on Richard Nixon, I thought it would be amusing if liberal politicians were to smear unjustly that uxorious man as a homosexual.”
He was condemned for suggesting a “man could rise to any height in American politics if” so labeled. Ronald Reagan was one of the actors he auditioned for the lead role.
At the time, his film career was over. Vidal rejected him. He thought he couldn’t play a credible president. He was right. In office, he faked it for eight years.
Obama’s worse but hides it better.
At age 81, he visited Cuba. He headed a delegation of US intellectuals, historians and politicians. He suggested Bush could end up like Nixon. “We hope he will end up like Nixon, resigning the presidency,” he said.
Comparing the two men, he added:
“When a building begins to fall to pieces, it is very difficult to stop its collapse.”
“Everyone who listens to (Bush) knows he is a liar. It is frightening to have to constantly listen to a man repeating and repeating I am a” wartime president.
“Of all the human vices, the worst is to lie.”
“When the people do not understand what the emperor is saying, what the government is saying, there is no communication” or trust.
He accused Bush of stealing the 2000 election and “high crimes against the Constitution of the United States.”
“It gives me pleasure to be in a place full of hope,” he told a University of Havana audience. In America, “people do not have the basic understanding of what they have lost. There has been a coup and the republic has died.”
In September 2009, he was asked how Obama was doing. He was unsparing, saying:
“Dreadfully. I was hopeful. He was the most intelligent person we’ve had in that position for a long time. But he’s inexperienced. He has a total inability to understand military matters.”
“He’s acting as if Afghanistan is the magic talisman: Solve that and you solve terrorism….we’ve failed in every other aspect of our effort of conquering the Middle East or whatever you want to call it.”
On healthcare reform, he added:
“He f..ked it up. I don’t know how because the country wanted it. We’ll never see it happen.”
On US politics, he said:
“There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party….and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.”
“Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt – until recently….and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand.”
“But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.”
He called democracy a system “where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates” no different from each other.
“By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he’s been bought ten times over.”
On America’s Middle East wars, he said “I don’t see us winning. We have made enemies of one billion Muslims.”
He called himself “a born-again atheist. “Once people get hung up on theology, they’ve lost sanity forever,” he said. “More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world.”
He called monotheism “the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race.”
He said most people misunderstand the First Amendment’s “free exercise of religion” clause. “Yes, everyone has a right to worship any god he chooses,” but he does not have the right to impose his beliefs on others who do not happen to share” his views.
“This separation was absolute in our original republic.” It’s been misinterpreted and distorted. Extremists “got the phrase In God We Trust onto the currency, in direct violation of the First Amendment.”
In his essay titled “Shredding the Bill of Rights,” he wrote:
“It has always been a mark of American freedom that unlike countries under constant Napoleonic surveillance, we are not obliged to carry identification to show to curious officials and pushy police.”
“But now, due to Terrorism, every one of us is stopped at airports and obliged to show an ID which must include a mug shot (something, as Allah knows, no terrorist would ever dare fake).”
He said what too few others dared. He followed in the tradition of Henry James, Oscar Wilde, and Mark Twain, among others. He was one of America’s most astute chroniclers.
Friends said he combined an old-fashioned sense of honor and stubborn will to live as he pleased.
He said George Bush had advance knowledge of 9/11. Roosevelt knew about Japan’s planned Pearl Harbor attack.
Both men took full advantage. Timothy McVeigh was no more killer than Dwight Eisenhower, and America one day will be subservient to China. Characteristically he framed it as “The Yellow Man’s Burden.”
He was mainly self-educated. Classrooms bored him. He skipped college. He acquired wisdom on his own. He admired Montaigne, Italo Calvino, Henry James and Edith Wharton.
He called his conservative rival, William Buckley, a “cryptofascist.” He described The New York Times as the “Typhoid Mary of American journalism.”
He labeled Ronald Reagan “The Acting President.” He called his wife Nancy a social climber “born with a silver ladder in her hand.”
He openly criticized Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. He once called pro-Israeli ideologue/Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz and his journalist wife Midge Dector “Israeli Fifth Columnists.”
At the end, he was wheelchair bound. His mind and wit stayed sharp. He called style “knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”
In 2009, he said America is “rotting away at a funereal pace. We’ll have a military dictatorship pretty soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together.”
Reflecting on his accomplishments, he said “I just played the game harder.” He hoped to be remembered as “the person who wrote the best sentences of his time.” He thought of himself as a modern-day Voltaire.
He’s survived by his half-sister Nina Straight and half-brother Tommy Auchincloss. He’ll be sorely missed.
About the author: Stephen LendmanView all posts by Stephen Lendman
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. He is also the author of “How Wall Street Fleeces America”
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Gore Vidal: the improbable moralist
By Patrice Greanville
The year 2012 is turning out to be a hard year for the enemies of the Empire and its tegument of lies. Death is silencing some powerful voices. In June we lost Alex Cockburn, now Vidal.
Protean in talent and interests, Gore Vidal was a complex man who did not fit under one or two labels. Contrarian by nature, an intellectual lion by any standard, and an early and calmly defiant overt homosexual with some heterosexual frissons thrown in to confuse those who like things nice and predictable, Gore Vidal cast a long and exemplary shadow on American culture for much of the 20th century. He was that rare bird: a true original writer whose public persona easily overshadowed the legacy of his own books, and he had no real competitors or imitators. Enfant terriblism defined him from the start, perhaps as the natural allergic reaction of a free spirit to the stifling parochialism, priggishness and conformity he found in American society, so it was pretty much inevitable that, despite his own ties to the native aristocracy (such as it it exists in the US), he could never resist shocking the bourgeois and the comfortable, a sport he maintained throughout his 86 unapologetic years of residence on earth. Mired in philistinism and banality, to a man like Gore Vidal America provided enormous targets.
“Everybody with an IQ above room temperature is on to the con act of our media. They are obeying bigger, richer interests than informing the public — which is the last thing that corporate America has ever been interested in doing.”—Gore Vidal
It hardly needs stating that to most of his legion of conservative critics and defamers Vidal was a degenerate, a shameless libertine, a man without decency or social restraint, a contumacious hedonist… an American de Sade. (He rightly considered such invective a mark of honor). Given this invidious billing, this crowd will probably be surprised to hear Gore Vidal described as a social moralist, but that’s what he was, for at the end of the day a true moralist in the deepest sense of the term is one who fights for the higher virtues: justice, tolerance, the advance of reason, and the triumph of compassion. All core Enlightenment values. And as Vidal said on a number of occasions (claiming no originality): a social peace not grounded in social justice is suspect.
Intermittently in self-imposed exile in Europe, whose cultural atmosphere he found much less toxic despite the surrounding decadence (which he enjoyed but also criticized), Vidal never lost sight of his self-assigned “civilizing mission” toward his own country and the obstacles that such work entailed. In this context, the performance of the American media rightly revolted him (see video interview above). Along with Herbert Schiller, Michael Parenti, Alex Carey, Noam Chomsky, Ed Herman, and the recently departed Alex Cockburn, all pioneers in media criticism in the postwar era, Vidal clearly understood the urgency of tearing down the corporate monopoly of access to the American mind as an indispensable step in the struggle to liberate his compatriots from the yoke of capitalistic mythology. When Cyrano’s Journal was finally born in 1982 as America’s first radical media review, he was extremely encouraging and supportive. (Eventualy he would become editor emeritus.)
And although the magazine did not survive long for the usual reasons that afflict undercapitalized left publications, he never lost faith in the possibility of its rebirth. Eventually Cyrano was reborn, albeit as an online political affairs monitor. Later, in 1986, another fine publication, FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) came to the fore as a dedicated media watchdog serving the left. In part the new outfit, much as Cyrano had been, was a response from the left to the lies and propaganda spread by the odious Reed Irvine and his misnomered Accuracy in Media (AIM), amply financed since the early 1970s by rightwing tycoons to fight what they cynically claimed to be the “media’s leftist anti-corporate bias”—an oxymoron if there ever was one.
The right was correct in assigning great value to the culture wars, and they often strove to foist Bill Buckley Jr. as Vidal’s natural equivalent. While Buckley, theatrical to the point of self-parody, and blessed with a quick wit and great media connections, was in time recognized as an intellectual provocateur of some merit, he could never begin to match the overall caliber and output of Vidal. (In fact not even Norman Mailer could and he was a lion in his own right.)
In Gore Vidal the American and international left had a unique and honorable champion. Unburdened by false modesty, he saw himself as something of a Voltaire for our age, and in that he was correct. But by character and disposition, in the sheer pleasure he derived from battling the outsize forces of privilege and obscurantism, I would say he was also very much like Cyrano de Bergerac. And like Cyrano, he leaves behind his immaculate panache.
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Sarah Cupp: Pinup pretty with reactionary sawdust for a brain. Perfect critter for the corporate media corral.
Like a fresh-baked loaf of sanity resting on the window of human possibility, atheism is on the rise in the United States. Will this growing constituency become a formidable political force before global warming decimates civilization? I’m skeptical. But according to the Pew Research Center, 1 in 5 of Americans now say they’re either atheist, agnostic, or that they simply don’t believe in anything in particular. That godless number was a scant 6 percent in 1990, and this spring roughly 20,000 atheists showed up—rain and all—at the first ever Reason Rally in DC, so, surely, despite the protestations of Texas Republicans, this newfangled thing called “critical thinking” is poised to better the national discourse, yes? Well…
The thing about the so-called “rationalist” movement in America is that disbelief in gods seems to be the only qualification to join the club. Disbelief in a supernatural creator, especially as the movement becomes more popular or “hep,” as I’m pretending the kids say, in no way guarantees rationality in matters of foreign policy or economics, for example. Many notable atheists believe in some powerfully stupid stuff—likely owing their prominence to these same benighted beliefs, lending an air of scientific credibility to the myths corporate media seeks to highlight, and thereby eroding the credibility of all atheists in the long-term. In other words: The crap always rises to the top.
So while we wait around to fully succumb to drought, crop failure, and famine, here’s a list of the five most awful atheists.
Sam Harris
Dubbed one of the “Four Horsemen” of “new atheism,” along with philosopher Daniel Dennett, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, and the late Christopher Hitchens, Harris’ atheist fame is both wholly undeserved and utterly embarrassing. Harris represents a disturbing anti-Muslim confluence between atheists and neoconservatives in this here post-9/11 ‘Murka. While it’s fine to ridicule Islam, for the oppression of women, or say, the ridiculous story about Muhammad (PB&J) flying to Jerusalem on a Buraq (a winged and inexplicably shame-ridden horse with a dude’s face), it’s quite another thing to defend torture [3] and racial profiling [4].
For a guy who purportedly came to be an atheist through his intellect, Harris routinely fails to demonstrate the faintest capacity to reason. By shamelessly trotting out the same “ticking-nuke” fairy tale as every other Jack and Jill Bauer on Fox News, he failed to notice that torture rarely produces reliable intelligence [5], and that it’s a wildly counterproductive jihadist recruitment tool [6]. And according to security expert Bruce Schneier, profiling on the basis on ethnicity is useless [7]. But for all Harris’ sometimes lofty rhetoric about science, he’s just not amenable to evidence.
Most grating, for someone who wrote a book titled The Moral Landscape, Harris’ “War on Islam” zealotry is numerically unjustifiable. You’re four times as likely to die of a lightning strike than you are from a terrorist attack [8], and yet this constitutes the gravest threat to Western civilization, but 100,000 (at least) civilian casualties in Iraq is mere fodder for thought experiment apologia. Harris is basically a low-rent Hitchens, sans wit or the wisdom to waterboard himself.
Bill Maher
The “Real Time” host’s thinly veiled misogyny, obtuse notion that fat, poor people just need to, like, shop at Whole Foods, and self-righteous condescension in all things religious and political might be tolerable were it not for the fact that he’s on comedic par with cervical cancer. The only difference being: cervical cancer doesn’t blame its victims for failing to laugh. Compounding the unpleasant nature of Maher’s wheat-grass pomposity is that, from vaccines to the news items he discusses, he’s just not very well informed.
In ’09, he told America that getting “[a] flu shot is the worst thing you can do.” He then tried to “clarify” his Luddite remark with a piece on the anti-vax Huffington Post that conflated scientific consensus with…(wait for it)…religion!
If one side can say anything and its not challenged, then of course dissent becomes heresy in the minds of many.
No, Bill, that’s not how that works. In the same article [9], Maher commits a classic bandwagon fallacy by claiming it’s a “conversation worth having” because so many people believe vaccinations are harmful. Color me disappointed for presuming an American atheist couldn’t possibly be so myopic. But, no worries; I have a “New Rule” that should fix everything: Bill Maher has to either stop booking half-bright libertarians who rhetorically roll his uninformed ass, or he needs to start reading books.
Penn Jillette
Jillette: A born social darwinist, and with a mind soaked in Randian libertarian manure, his working-class roots have not prevented a mean-spirited attitude toward the poor.
Like many skeptics, the bloviating, ponytailed half of Penn & Teller arrived at his disbelief via the world of magic. However, like giant mystified toddlers, the smoke and mirrors of economic libertarianism has the two performers completely duped. Unable to call bullshit on Ayn Rand, they used to carry a dogeared copy of Atlas Shrugged around on tour—to give you some idea. For a better glimpse into Jillette’s intellectual compartmentalization, consider this article he wrote for CNN called “I don’t know, so I’m an atheist libertarian [10].” While vast ignorance is a valid reason to be an economic libertarian, not knowing things is not a good reason to be an atheist. Jillette’s profoundly illogical explanation defies deconstruction:
What makes me libertarian is what makes me an atheist — I don’t know. If I don’t know, I don’t believe…
OK…care to add any Cato Institute canards?
It’s amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness.
Translation: If the dern gubmint would just stop overtaxing the rich at gunpoint, which is a super-accurate description of reality, then they could have enough money left over for charity, you guys! While private charity is important in America, especially because of our highly regressive gunpoint tax code, it’s demonstrably wrong to suggest that it’s an apt substitute for a just tax structure. Americans would have to give roughly 10 times what they do to cover the cost of social welfare programs. But you know how facts [11] can be. They’re not awesome like Glenn Beck [12]. Facts are all self-righteous and bullying and lazy and objectively accurate and junk. At least Teller has the decency never to speak.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
While she’s to be commended for her staunch defense of women suffering under Sharia law, the Somali-born former Dutch politician’s few good deeds shouldn’t absolve her for being to Islam what Ayn Rand was to Communism. Hirsi Ali notoriously received death threats for writing the screenplay to Submission, the documentary which inspired the assassination of its director Theo van Gogh, and her ridiculous objectivist spin [13] on this tragedy was nothing short of shameful:
“[The killer] was on welfare….he had the time to plot a murder, which in the United States he would not be.”
The consummate over-reactionary, what could have been an inspiring career based on reason and social justice quickly devolved into one of neoconservative lunacy. As a former Muslim and current fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, she lends an illusion of street cred to all manner of egregious “free-market” worship, global warming denial, and Western aggression. From her call to violently “crush [14]” Islam or convert Muslims to Christianity [15] to her desire to deny Muslims their First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution [14], Hirsi Ali consistently demonstrates both galling hypocrisy and a stupefying lack of self-awareness. Like Rand, she’s traded one form of totalitarian dogma for another—openly contending that reason must be shunted when confronting an irrational enemy. Mission accomplished.
S.E. Cupp
Pop quiz: Who wrote the book Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity? Although it’s tempting to presume such dreck must be the work of a religious demagogue like Bryan Fischer or John Hagee, the answer is obviously one Sarah Elizabeth Cupp. As a devout Randroid and atheist outlier, the co-host of MSNBC’s newly minted phony-balance-media-abortion “The Cycle” is more at home bashing atheism than she is defending it—per market demand.
Like Jillette, she’s chummy with Glenn Beck because idiotic atheists and idiotic Mormons have a natural alliance. Cupp’s self-loathing-token-atheist-in-the-conservative-media routine seems so geared toward delegitimizing atheism, and selling books to fundie Fox types, that is strains credulity. She recently said [16], “I would never vote for an atheist president. Ever,” because she thinks religion serves as a “check” on presidential power.
When not claiming that imaginary things can affect real things, Cupp’s biggest passion—aside from classical dance and NASCAR, of course—is to spout moronic Americans for Prosperity talking points about the evils of “collectivism [17],” like public roads and bridges and so forth, which are ostensibly destroying the American Dream. In an atheist integrity contest, she loses to Stalin by a mustache. That’s not hyperbole; she doesn’t have a mustache.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ian Murphy is the editor of The Beast. Feel free to evangelize him on Twitter.
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The conundrum of guns in our lives
By Patrice Greanville
The issue of guns and violence in America usually go together, provoking huge debates and divisions within the liberal camp. Rightwingers, chiefly thanks to temperament, massive ignorance (a lot of it willfully ingested), and a simplistic understanding of reality, usually avoid such basic ideological clashes. They’re lucky in that regard because, not too prone to handwringing as liberals, over time it helps them preserve tactical and strategic unity.
The question of under what circumstances guns in private hands are useful and necessary, and whether social violence manifested in crime and psychotic killings is aided or not by the ready supply of all types of weapons, is difficult to sort out without examining the fabric of society.
The Swiss reportedly have about half the American rate of guns in private hands, yet their overall rate of violence and mayhem is practically nil. Canadians, with one-third the American rate, a significant stat in any country, are not besieged by fear of their fellow citizens (or government) the way Americans are, and still in 2012, even in the larger towns and cities, they refuse to lock their doors. (A surprising fact presented in bold relief by Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine). The rate of violent crime, and especially serial killings, as in Switzerland, is negligible. And even Serbia, a nation convulsed by war, civil war, and foreign meddling (that has yet to cease); a society that should have more than its share of sociopaths and psychopaths, traumatized ex-soldiers, and which occupies the #2 spot in gun ownership in the world, with 58 guns per 100 people as opposed to 89 per 100 in the US, has a pallid rate of violent crime, insignificant by American standards. This is recognized by the usually over-protective if not paranoid US State Department which notes in its advisory for Serbia, “Belgrade does not have high levels of street crime, but pick-pocketing and purse snatchings do occasionally occur…” Wow. Start trembling, folks.
So what does it all mean? In my view, that as is common knowledge, the US is a sick society, sicker than just about any other nation on the planet, a situation directly related to a putrid value system rooted in selfishness and hyper individualism, a culture in perpetual frenzy (due to the bombardment of imbecilic and invidious commercial images and plots), and a profound inequality and economic insecurity that has been eroding public morale and morality for well over a century.
In this toxic atmosphere, the number of unhinged people, isolated ticking bombs roaming around in America’s streets and public spaces, people like James Holmes, is probably growing due to the rapidly accelerating breakdown of society and its supporting mechanisms. Given such conditions of life, can anyone lay down absolute rules of conduct in connection with guns, in the household, of example? Can anyone tell a woman that keeping a gun nearby is wrong when home invasions are on the rise across the country? (The term “home invasion” is elusive, and statistics on it as a separate category of crime not reliable, but “burglar striking an occupied residence,” or “home invasion with intent to rape, murder or kidnap” are congruent categories covering the same terrain and easily extrapolated.)
So, going back to the question, is it a good idea to keep a gun at home for personal defense (assuming you know how to use a gun and how to use it responsibly), or to take a gun in the car when traveling at night or to unknown places, especially in the case of women, the answer can’t be a categorical “No” in the United States. In some situations a gun is indeed the only element that tips the scales toward safety and survival. As one of the most famous gun manufacturers once advertised, “God made man but Samuel Colt made them equal”. So I respect those who choose to have a weapon for self-defense. In fact, though I never kept weapons of any kind to hunt non-human animals, an activity I regard as brutal, and anachronistic in modern society, where a trip to the nearest supermarket is almost always a lot cheaper than a foray into the woods, I’ve always had guns myself and am fairly familiar with their use under a variety of circumstances.
Now for the caveats. Psychotic violence —and even common crime— occur with little or no warning, so guns can rarely protect in an absolute manner. Once “they got the drop on you” —as they say—the game is pretty much over. And guns in general are also as likely to hit a friendly target (beginning with their owner) as a real or imagined threat. So the gun as a protective device is only of relative merit. Its presence may actually serve far more to steady the nerves and act lucidly on a tight spot than actually decide confrontations by regular shoot-em-ups. That may be a desirable benefit. Fact is, many people on the left, like people in general, quietly keep guns in their homes or place of work. As well, small business owners, especially those in direct service to the public, like gas stations, bodegas, or “package goods” are often armed. Such choice does not make them—or me—pals of the hideous Anne Coulter or Wayne LaPierre, nor hidden fans of the equally detestable Glenn Beck. It’s a personal question.
The long shadow of the (miscontrued) 2nd Amendment
But, let’s say it for the record: I’m firmly against the “gun culture” mob, the 2nd Amendment baloney (about that more below), and the NRA, and its baleful influence on American politics, society, the treatment of animals, and the wackadoodlery it generally encourages. It’s obvious that the unrestricted hoarding and easy access to guns and all sorts of weapons in America, to the degree that more than a few individuals have been able to accumulate minor arsenals, has become a monstrous deformation and a clear danger to civil society, as so many instances of serial killers and random gun violence attest.
But what about guns as protection against government tyranny or as revolutionary weapon of last resort? This comment is not intended as a wide-ranging discussion of these issues so I will make only passing reference to some points that deserve attention.
First, I doubt very much that an armed citizenry can successfully contain or neutralize the armed might of the American state—if the latter decides to go for broke. Barring an outright civil war from the beginning—with the US armed forces split down the line—I can only envision —at best—some form of sporadic partisan-type resistance as existed in the German-occupied territories during WW2 or today’s Iraq and Afghanistan, increasingly successful over time if the tyranny becomes obvious to most, which again may take a long time, as the stubborn obtuseness of at least half of the American population in the face of enormous abuse and fraud by the reigning plutocracy sorrily demonstrates. In sum, the romantic idea of a “rebel army” with no connection to formal units of the US military, and created by an accretion of armed citizens, is far more fantasy than reality. Isolated individuals, no matter how heavily armed, would be easily surrounded and blotted out one by one. In that sense, the 2nd Amendment loyalists and would-be militiamen are only deluding themselves. Far more likely, the nation may descend gradually from chaos into some type of civil war, where the proliferation of guns will surely play a role. Which role is not easy to say at this point.
Some voices have suggested that the case of Syria presents an interesting (and to many liberals, discomfiting) example of what small-caliber weapons can do to shake a government. Here small arms in the hands of irregulars have apparently made a difference in wearing down and even occasionally defeating heavily armed forces.
The lesson may not be so clear or so exportable to the home ground as it appears at fist blush. Syria is caught in a rapidly shifting and very fluid civil war by now, with ample supplies of weapons of all types flowing into the country courtesy of the rebels’ foreign sponsors, improbable in the case of an American conflict, at least during its inception. And the cultural, historical, and tribalistic fissures that apply to Syria do not apply to the same degree or at all in the US. If anything, Syria today is the inverse of what might eventually obtain in the US, where a largely static, urban and semi-rural population might be receiving an all-out assault of heavily armed police and military, not “rebel” forces of some indeterminate stripe. We’re assuming, of course, that the vast majority of the people in this case would be opposing the government (assuming again for good reasons, not wacko reasons as propounded by the right), an unlikely event given the atrocious and deeply entrenched political confusion obtaining in America at this juncture. In short, the actual value of small-caliber weapons to resist a state attack remains unclear and at best circumstantial.
The above brings up the question of so-called “revolutionary violence.” As is the case with owning a private handgun I’m afraid this can’t be resolved in the abstract, nor with anything approaching absolutistic certainty. Only confronted with specific and concrete situations can we approach a reasonable position. Historically it has been the state, representing the forces and interests of a corrupt minority, that has made the first moves toward a liberal use of violence, both to intimidate and later on decapitate and smash the insurgency. In such cases I think revolutionary self-defense is inevitable and just. Those who preach nonviolence at all times and under all circumstances are leading the people to the abattoirs. And they’re not being historical but idealistic in the worst possible sense of that term.
My position on pacifism is well set forth in my critique of Ward Churchill’s book, Pacifism as Pathology
And you can read it here.
But for those who will not travel the distance, here it is in a nutshell: I’m not a pacifist, am not an absolutist about the idea the left, the revolutionists, should always refuse to defend themselves, and so on. Even the great modern “apostles” of tactical nonviolence (yes, nonviolence in contemporary conflicts is much more a tactic than a philosophical position), Martin Luther King and Gandhi, especially the latter, are clear about the role of violence: it has a legitimate place at the table. Some passages from my review may help to clarify my position further:
Seeking to drive a stake through the heart of middle-class pacifism, Churchill goes on to detail (and rebuke) some of the main claims made by the peaceful legions, particularly the almost universally accepted notion that it was the protests and demonstrations in the US that finally forced US policymakers to order a withdrawal from Vietnam. Churchill refutes this conceit by noting that the war was lost in the field, which is undeniable, as the humiliating images of Americans escaping Saigon from the rooftop of the US embassy amply demonstrated, and that, therefore it was first and above all a military defeat inflicted on the imperial armies (and their puppets) by the Vietnamese people that created the necessary conditions for a “pragmatic rethinking of the war” by its architects back in the imperial capital. Haven’t we seen this terrible movie before?
The reason for the book thus lies in the utterly deformed political landscape presented by contemporary America, where the left, unlike any other in the developed capitalist world (except for the anglo-cultural zone nations that resemble it) has apparently adopted pacifism as the one and only method of “opposing” the empire. Consistent with the pervasiveness of this view, and to justify such narrow policy, many US progressives have embraced a literal idolatry of nonviolence, elevating the tactics and accomplishments of figures such as Ghandi and Dr. King to near infallibility, and believing (wrongly in the eyes of the author and this writer) that moral suasion alone is capable of liquidating well-entrenched institutionalized violence and inequality…
Indeed, one of the things that make this volume especially provocative (and valuable) is that the question of violence vs. nonviolence is not only debated by Churchill, an academic, but also by Ed Mead, who wrote the book’s introduction, and who was himself a participant in what was at the time an attempt at armed struggle.
Edward Allen Mead was one of the young political activists of the 1960s and 1970s whose frustration and rage drove them to resort to violence. He joined the George Jackson Brigade, a guerrilla group that blew up supermarkets, car dealerships, a power station, and other symbols of the system it was bent on destroying. To finance its operations, the Brigade robbed banks. A 1976 bank robbery in Tukwila, Washington, culminated in a shootout in which Mead and another Brigade member were captured. A third member was killed, and a fourth escaped but was later apprehended. Mead received a thirty-year Federal sentence for bank robbery and a forty-year state sentence for first-degree assault on a police officer, though neither of the officers in the shootout was hit.
Mead never abandoned his radical politics, but he did decide that violence was not the way to bring about change at that particular juncture. With the benefit of hindsight he told a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “I really know how wrong it was to do what I did. Not because it’s legally wrong, but because it was just a great political mistake. You want things to happen so bad that you throw yourself into it. Today, I do it with a pen and a computer. . . .It’s about what works.” While time may have mellowed Mead a bit, he remains quite lucid (and some would say adamant) about the options facing the younger generations of would-be world-changers.
“I think that we can agree that the exploited are everywhere and that they are angry. The question of violence and our own direct experience of it is something we will not be able to avoid when the righteous rage of the oppressed manifests itself in increasingly focused and violent forms [this was said in 1997]. When this time comes, it is likely that white pacifists will be the ruling class’ first line of defense.”
Later, zeroing in on his main contention, that the use or non-use of violence is a tactic, not a rigid article of faith good for all seasons, Mead declares:
“I have talked about violence in connection with political struggle for a long time and I’ve engaged in it. I see myself as one who incorrectly applied the tool of revolutionary violence during a period when its use was not appropriate. In doing so, my associates and I paid a terrible price…I served nearly two decades behind bars as a result of armed actions conducted by the George Jackson Brigade. During those years I studied and restudied the mechanics and applicability of both violence and noviolence to political struggle. I’ve had plenty of time to learn how to step back and take a look at the larger picture. And, however badly I may represent that picture today, I still find one conclusion inescapable: Pacifism as a strategy of achieving social, political and economic change can only lead to the dead end of liberalism.”
One last point. The struggle against an unjust social order is always bound to be complicated and morally blurry. Still, I believe that if the Chilean, Argentinean and Uruguayan people had been privately armed to the level Americans are, the imposition of fascistic military rule in those nations would have been a lot more difficult. With weapons in almost every home, the death toll probably would have been much higher, but it would have been an all-out civil war, not a massacre of the innocents. Take your pick.
Conclusion
When it comes to the use of force, there are no absolutes and no easy answers. Only “situational” answers. The existence of guns —not to mention sophisticated weaponry—represents in all spheres and latitudes the failure of human civilization. Guns and weapons in general have never existed in a historical vacuum. The violence of guns issues from social sickness, rooted in profound and widely institutionalized ignorance, poverty and injustice, and above all, the fracture of the human family into two classes, one bent on exploiting the other. Till we deal with these root causes, and stamp them out decisively, these scourges will remain with us.
In America, gun-control activists have advanced a variety of proposals. Some are eminently sensible and quite moderate in their demands: simply that weapons designed for the battlefield should not be licensed for “sport” or home protection. Wherever one may stand on this issue, it’s clear that an honest national debate is long overdue, but such debate is not likely to happen as long as a corrupt Congress in the pocket of the NRA, the gun lobby, and a paranoid right preclude a rational examination of what it means to have guns freely circulating throughout a nation as sick and explosively divided as the United States in the first decades of the 21st century.
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