Tuesday, January 25th, 2005
We are joined now byGoreVidal. He is one ofAmerica's most respected writers and thinkers. He is the author ofmore than 20 novels and 5 plays. He is author, most recently, of thenational bestsellers"DreamingWar" and"Perpetual War forPerpetual Peace." Hislatest book is called"Imperial America:Reflections on the United States ofAmnesia."
AMYGOODMAN: As we continue our discussion ofPresident Bush's January 20, 2005 inaugural address, let's hear asection of that speech:
PRESIDENTBUSH: America will not impose our ownstyle of government on the unwilling. Our goal, instead, is to helpothers find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make theirown way. The great objective of ending tyranny is the concentratedwork of generations. The difficulty of the task is no excuse foravoiding it. America's influence is not unlimited; but fortunatelyfor the oppressed, America's influence is considerable, and we willuse it confidently in freedom's cause.
AMYGOODMAN: President Bush, his secondinaugural address. Today we're joined by Gore Vidal, one of America'smost respected writers and thinkers. Author of more than twentynovels, five plays. Author most recently of, "Dreaming War" and"Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace". His latest book is, "ImperialAmerica: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia". Yesterday wecaught up with Gore Vidal and I asked him his reaction to theinaugural address.
GOREVIDAL: Well, I hardly know where to end,much less begin. There's not a word of truth in anything that hesaid. Our founding fathers did not set us on a course to liberate allthe world from tyranny. Jefferson just said, "all men are createdequal, and should be," etc, but it was not the task of the UnitedStates to "go abroad to slay dragons," as John Quincy Adams so wiselyput it; because if the United States does go abroad to slay dragonsin the name of freedom, liberty, and so on, she could become"dictatress of the world," but in the process "she would lose hersoul." That is what we--the lesson we should be learning now, insteadof this declaration of war against the entire globe. He doesn'tdefine what tyranny is. I'd say what we have now in the United Statesis working up a nice tyrannical persona for itself and for us. As welose liberties he's, I guess, handing them out to other countrieswhich have not asked for them, particularly; and what he says--thereaction in Europe--and I know we mustn't mention them becausethey're immoral and they have all those different kinds ofcheese&endash;but, simultaneously, they're much better educated thanwe are, and they're richer. Get that out there: The Europeans percapita are richer than the Americans, per capita. And by the timethis administration is finished, there won't be any money left of anykind, starting with poor social security, which will be privatized,so that is the last gold rush for (as they say) men with an eye foropportunity.
No, I would have to parse this thing line by lineand have it in front of me. It goes in one ear and out the other aslies often do, particularly rhetorical lies that have been thought upby second-rate advertising men, which are the authors of this speech.It is the most un-American speech I've ever heard a chief executivegive to the United States; and thanks at least to television, we weregiven every inaugural from Franklin Roosevelt on (and it's quiteinteresting to see who said what), and only one was as gruesome andas off-key as this, and that guy is Harry S. Truman, who's being madeinto a hero because he fits into the imperial mode. He starts out hisinaugural--we're on top of the world we're the richest country, themost powerful militarily, and what does he do? Within three linesHarry Truman is starting the Cold War, which the Russians were notstarting. They thought they could live in peace because of theiragreement at Yalta with his predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt, whoseunfortunate death gave us Harry Truman and gave us the Cold War,which is now metastasized into a general war against any nation thatthis president of ours, if he is--was elected, wants to commit us to,and we--preemptive wars. That's just never existed in our history,that a president--"Well, I think I'm going to take on Costa Rica.There may be some terrorists down there one day. Oh, they aren'tthere yet, but they're planning for it. And they've got bicarbonateof soda. Once you have that, you know, you can build all sorts ofbiochemical weapons." This is just blather. Blather.
And that an American audience would sit therebeside the capitol or reverently in front of their TV screens andwatch this and not see the absurdity of what was being said--absoluteproof of a couple of things that I have felt, and most of us who areat all thoughtful feel: We've got the worst educational system of anyfirst world country. We are shameful when we go abroad, because weknow nothing. Just to watch the destruction of the archaeologists'work at Babylon. Babylon is a center of our culture. Nobody knowsthat. Nobody knows what it is, except it's a wicked city that thelord destroyed. Well, it was the center of our civilization, thecenter of mathematics, of writing, of everything.
And apparently our troops were allowed to go inand smash everything to bits. Why did they do it? Was it because theyare mean bad boys and girls? No. They're totally uneducated. Andtheir officers are sometimes mean and bad, and allow them to have aromp, as they also had in the prisons, none of which we heard aboutin the last election. We were too busy with homosexual marriage andabortion, two really riveting subjects. War and peace, of course, arenot worth talking about. And civilization, God forbid that we evercommit ourselves to that.
AMYGOODMAN: We're talking to Gore Vidal.He--President Bush said in his speech: "Across the generations, we'veproclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one's fit tobe a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing theseideals is the mission that created our nation. It's the honorableachievement of our fathers. Now it's the urgent requirement of ournational security, and the calling of our time."
GOREVIDAL: Well, proof of his badeducation--he seems not to know that the principle founders of theUnited States, from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson to Madison,were all slave holders. So, we started a country with half of thecountry quite prosperous because of black slaves, African slaves, whowere not in the least happy about being slaves, but they had beencaptured, brought over here and sold back and forth around thecountry. So, I don't see how the founding fathers could havecommitted us to the principle that 'no man should be a slave, andevery man should be a master,' or whatever the silly-Billy said.Well, this is a country based on slavery, is also based upon thedispossession of what we miscall the Indians. They were the nativeAmericans, at least before--long before our arrival. So, we were notdedicated to any of these principles. We were dedicated to making asmuch money and stealing as much land as we could and building up arepublic, not a democracy. The word democracy was hated by thefounding fathers. It does not appear at any point in theconstitution, nor does it appear in any pleasant sense in theFederalist Papers. So, we are not a democracy, and here we areexporting it as though it were just something--well, we just happenedto make, a lot of democracy, and cotton and tin and stuff like that.So, let's--let's do some exports of democracy. We don't have it, andmost countries don't have it, and not many countries want it.Democracy was tried only once, and that was in the Fifth CenturyB.C., at Athens, and finally, they were overcome by an oligarchy fromSparta, and nobody ever tried again to establish a democracy in anycountry on earth. And if any history had been taught to thecheerleader from Andover--I'm ashamed that I even went to the brotherschool Exeter nearby, where at least we were taught enough historynot to make gaffs like that in public.
AMYGOODMAN: Gore Vidal, President Bush alsosaid, "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the UnitedStates will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors whenyou stand for your liberty, we will stand with you. Democraticreformers facing repression, prison or exile can know America seesyou for who you are--the future leaders of your few [free]country. The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe,as Abraham Lincoln did, 'Those who deny freedom to others deserve itnot for themselves and under the rule of a just God, cannot longretain it.'"
GOREVIDAL: Oh, what bull. I notice all thehelp that we gave Mandela before he himself extricated his peoplefrom the white rule of the Boers and the English in South Africa. Wewent to great lengths to see that he was silenced, that he was nothelped at any time. And we were--is that how we stood up for othercountries trying to liberate themselves? We've never done that. Wewent into the first two world wars for self-aggrandizement. We didvery well out of it. We've gone into Latin America, and every timethat there's been a democratically elected government, from Arbenz inGuatemala in 1953 to Allende in Chile, we have played a vicious game.Sometimes we assassinate the president, sometimes we overthrow him.Sometimes--all the time, eventually, we establish a militarydictatorship. We've been doing that for 200 years.
But, for a people that knows no history, does notwant to know history, with a corrupt media that will not tell you thetruth about anything going on in the world, what else could we have,but a dumb, cheerleader president?
AMYGOODMAN: But if it was Franklin DelanoRoosevelt who said, "democratic reformers facing repression, prison,or exile can know, America sees you for who you are, the futureleaders of your free country," would you object?
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT: I can only tellyou that I feel your pain, and I know that you will be rulers oneday. But meanwhile, I'm staying here in Washington, and you must lookto your own future, and your own freedom.
AMYGOODMAN: Yes.
GOREVIDAL: That's Franklin Delano Roosevelt.The fact he said that meant that he was on the side of that; but wenever did anything about it. Roosevelt never made a move, even whenit came to the time of great tyranny, when his statedepartment&endash;I must say he didn't like it&endash;but his statedepartment turned away the infamous ship in which the Jews trying toescape Europe and Hitler were sent back. That's how we helped out.
AMYGOODMAN: What is your hope for the future,as President Bush inaugurated his second term with this speech?
GOREVIDAL: I don't see much future for theUnited States, and I put it on economic grounds. Forget moralgrounds. We're far beyond any known morality, and we are embarkedupon a kind of war against the rest of the world. I think that thething that will save us, and it will probably come pretty fast, whenthey start monkeying around with Social Security, that will causeunrest. Meanwhile, the costs of the wars the cost of rebuilding thecities immediately after we knock them down, if we didn't knock themdown, we wouldn't have to put them back up again, but that would meanthat there was no work for Bechtel and for Halliburton. We are goingto go broke. The dollar loses value every day. I live part of theyear in Europe, which is always held against me. What a vicious thingto do, to have a house in Italy; but I also have one in SouthernCalifornia. We are a declining power economically in the world, andthe future now clearly belongs to China, Japan, and India.
They have the population, they have theeducational systems. They have the will. And they will win. And wewill--we only survive now by borrowing money from them in the form oftreasury bonds which very soon we won't have enough revenue toredeem, much less service. So, I put it down to economic collapse maysave the United States from its rulers.
AMYGOODMAN: President Bush in this inauguraladdress, and in his second term, can you make comparisons to RichardNixon, and won by a landslide, much more than Bush, in terms of howhe beat his opponent, and yet ultimately is forced to resign?
GOREVIDAL: Well, let us hope history repeatsitself, and there's a possibility that the American people will getfed up with endless war, and endless deaths coming out--Americandeaths. That's all we care about. We don't care about foreignersdying. But that is getting on people's nerves. I think that hethinks, and many of the American people appear to think, that we'rein a movie. Lousy movie, but it's just a movie. And, once the finalcredits run, all those dead people, who were just extras anyway, willstand up and come home, or go back to the old actors' home. It isn'ta movie we're in. It's real life. And these are real dead people. Andthere are more and more of them, and the world won't tolerate it. So,he might very well end up like Mr. Nixon. Nixon at least when he ranagain, curiously enough, was rated among the most liberal andprogressive of our presidents in the 20th century. Not that he reallywas; it's just that he felt domestic affairs were best left alone.Let labor unions and capital worry about that while the presidentprosecuted foreign wars. He loved foreign affairs because it was fun.You got to make a lot of trips and see people in fancy uniforms andhear "Hail to the Chief" in various tunes. That was Nixon's take. Andthen, of course, once he got in-- into war, he couldn't get out.Didn't try very hard to get out. He wanted to be victorious. Well, hewasn't victorious.
Then he lied and cheated. This one lies andcheats, too. So far he's not had his Watergate. Let us hope thatthere is one looming.
AMYGOODMAN: Do you take heart from theopposition, from the resistance on the ground, from the grassrootsprotests?
GOREVIDAL: Well, you know, I spent three yearsin the second world war in the Pacific, and I was born at West Point,and I have some affinity for the army; and what I am hearing, thetom-toms that are coming not only from those who have returned to theUnited States, particularly reservists, but what I also hear fromoverseas, is that there's great distress and dislike of thisgovernment, and certainly of this war, which is idly done. Andeverybody is at risk with insufficient armature--arms, and nomotivation at all except the vanity of a--of the lowest grade ofpoliticians that we've ever had in the White House. They aredisturbed, and I can see that there may be suddenly something comingfrom them once they get back home, if they can get back home. Theymay turn things around.
AMYGOODMAN: And, in general, young people inthis country protesting the inauguration, for example. More than10,000 people out in the streets, almost--although there was almostno coverage except for Pacifica and independent media of thosevoices. People--hosts on CNN saying they didn't want to'over-exaggerate' the images that would be so easy to go to, so theyjust didn't.
GOREVIDAL: Or be honest about them. The famousFebruary, a year ago, when everybody demonstrated. I spoke to 100,000people in Hollywood Boulevard. And the L.A. Times, which is betterthan most of the establishment papers, said there's just hardlyanybody there. However, they were undone by the photograph takenof--when I was up on the platform at very end of Hollywood Boulevardwith La Brea in back of me and way up ahead Vine Street, you saw100,000 people. You saw what they looked like, unlike New York wherethey got everybody into side streets so you couldn't see them at allin a photograph, because they just didn't show up. So, out here, amakeup man at the Times helped the cause.
AMYGOODMAN: As the Democratic Party chooses anew leader, do you have words of advice for the direction?
GOREVIDAL: Remember that the UnitedStates--the people of the country have always been isolationists, aword which has been demonized, thrown out, an isolationist issomebody who believes in a flat earth and is racist and so forth andso on. Well, none of that is true. Isolationists--most of the left inthe second world war, from Norman Thomas on to Burton K. Wheeler,were progressive Americans, the very best liberal Americans wereanti-war. We have never been for imperial foreign wars. We have to bedragged screaming into them, as we were after Pearl Harbor and therewas a lot of machinations going on to make sure that that happened.And it goes on all the time. Events are made so horrible people likeSaddam and so on are demonized, and we all have to immediately beginby saying how awful he is for 25 minutes before we can get down tothe fact that he was no threat to the United States, no threat atall. He was not involved with al Qaeda. He was not involved with9/11. He was not. He was not. You can say it a million times, butthere you have a president with the help of the most corrupt media inmy lifetime bouying his words across the land and telling lies aboutthe--'We're 45 minutes away from being blown up by the weapons ofmass destruction that this master of evil has in his hands.' To whichthe answer is: Why? Why would he do that? There must be somemotivation. You see, they are now beyond motivation, and that isinsanity. So, an insane government is not one that you can look towith any confidence.
AMYGOODMAN: Gore Vidal, speaking to us fromCalifornia. His latest book, "Imperial America: Reflections on theUnited States of Amnesia".
Copyright 2005 Gore Vidal