By GORE VIDAL
This is a transcript of Gore Vidals's March 12interview on Dateline, SBS TV Australia.
MARK DAVIS: Gore Vidal, welcome toDateline.
GORE VIDAL: Happy to have crossed thedateline down under.
MARK DAVIS: In the past few years, you haveshifted from being a novelist to principally an essayist or, in yourown words 'a pamphleteer'. It's almost the reverse of most writers'careers. Why the shift for you?
GORE VIDAL: Why the shift in the UnitedStates of America, which has obliged me --since I've spent most of mylife marinated in the history of my country and I'm so alarmed bywhat is happening with our global empire, and our wars against therest of the world, it is time for me to take political action. And Ithink anybody who has the position, has a platform, must do so. It'salso a family tradition. My grandfather lost his seat in the Senatebecause he opposed going into the First World War. And he won it back10 years later on exactly the same set of speeches that he'd lost it.So, attitudes change, attitudes can be changed but, now, I am notterribly optimistic that there is much anyone can do now the machineis set to go. And, to have a major depression going on, economic,really, collapse all round the world and begin a war against an enemythat has done nothing against us other than what our mediaoccasionally alleges, this is lunacy. And I have a hunch --I've beengetting quite a bit around the country --most people are beginning tosense it. The poll numbers are not as good as the Bush regime wouldhave us believe. A great...something like 70% really only wants to gointo war with United Nations sanction and a new resolution. I wouldprefer, however, that we use our constitution, which we often ignore,which is --Article 1 Section 8 says, "Only the Congress may declarewar. The President has no right to go to war and he isCommander-in-Chief once it starts."
MARK DAVIS: Over the past 40 years or so,you've written about the undermining of the foundations of theconstitution --liberty, human rights, free speech. Indeed, you'veprobably damned every administration throughout that period on thatscore. Is George Bush really any worse?
GORE VIDAL: No, he certainly is worse.We've never had a kind of reckless one who may believe --and there'sa whole theory now that he's inspired by love of Our Lord--that he isan apocalyptic Christian who'll be going to Heaven while the rest ofus go to blazes. I hope that isn't the case. I hope that'sexaggeration. No. We've had...the problem began when we got theempire, which was brilliantly done, in the most Machiavellian --and Imean that in the best sense of the word --way by Franklin Roosevelt.With the winning of World War II, we were everywhere on Earth ourtroops and our economy was number one. Europe was ruined. And fromthat, then in 1950, the great problem began when Harry Truman decidedto militarise the economy, maintain a vast military establishment inevery corner of the Earth. Meanwhile, denying money to schools butreally to the infrastructure of the nation. So we have been at warsteadily since 1950. I did a...one of my little pamphlets was 'APerpetual War for Perpetual Peace' --how that worked. I mean, we'vegone everywhere --we have theEnemy of the Month Club.
One month, it's Noriega --king of drugs. Anotherone, it's Gaddafi. We hated his eyeliner or something and killed hisdaughter. We moved from one enemy to another and the press, themedia, has never been more disgusting. I don't know why, but thereare very few voices that are speaking out publicly. The censorshiphere is so tight in all of the newspapers and particularly in networktelevision. So nobody's getting the facts. I mean, I spend part ofthe year in Italy and really, basically, what I find out I find outfrom European journalists who actually will go to Iraq, which ourpeople cannot do or will not do, and are certainly not admired fordoing so.We are in a kind of bubble of ignorance about what is reallygoing on.
MARK DAVIS: Well, is the pamphlet the onlyviable option for voices of dissent at the moment?
GORE VIDAL: Well, it's a weapon. I supposeone could --Khomeini had a wonderful idea, which made him the lord ofall Iran. When the Shah was on his way out, Khomeini flooded Iranwith audio recordings of his voice, very cheaply made in Paris, andthey were listened to by everybody in Iran--it's too late for thatsort of thing for us. There are ways of getting around official mediaand there are ways of getting around a government which is given tolying about everything, and the people eventually pick up on it, butthings are moving so swiftly now.
MARK DAVIS: You charge what you call the'Cheney-Bush junta' with empire-building but hasn't America alwaysbeen an empire and isn't this junta just a little bit more honestabout it? They aren't shy in proclaiming their belief that Americahas something worth exporting?
GORE VIDAL: I prefer hypocrisy to honestyany time if hypocrisy will keep the peace. No, we have had animperial streak from the very beginning, but it didn't get goinguntil 1898, when we picked a war with Spain because we had our eye onSpanish colonial possessions, specifically the Philippines, which gotus into your part of the world --into Asia and, from that moment on,we really were a global empire. And then, by the time of the SecondWorld War, we'd achieved it. It was all ours. No, what is going onnow is kind of interesting. We've never seen anything like it.There's a group of what they call neo-conservatives --most of themwere old Stalinists and then they were Trotskyites and then, finally,they are neo-conservatives now. They preach openly and they're allover the war department as we used to call it, the DefenceDepartment. Mr Wolfowitz is one of their brains and they write reallyextraordinarily frightening overviews of the United States and therest of the world that we, after all, have all the military powerthat there is and let's use it. Let's take the Earth. It's there forus. They're talking glibly now about after they get rid ofSaddam--which they think is going to be a very easy thing to do--well, Iran is next. One of them, not long ago, made a publicstatement --"It's time we really had regime change in ALL the Arabcountries." Well, there are 1 billion Muslims and I don't see themtaking this very well, and if a smallish place likewherever it wasultimately can produce so many suicide bombers, 1 billion Muslims cantake out the whole United States or western Europe. I would alwaysopt for peace, as war is always a mess. But I was in a war which thejunta, Mr Bush and Mr Cheney, did everything possible to avoid beinginvolved in --Vietnam. Cheney when asked, as he becamevice--president, they said, "Well, why didn't you serve your countryat the time of Vietnam?" and he said, "Well, I had other priorities."I'll say he did. Those of us who...we are the one group, the WorldWar II veterans, we are a shrinking group obviously, but we are theones that are the most solidly against the war. The people who stayedout of Vietnam, the rest who have never known war, are just gung--hofor other people to go fight. They, themselves, don't do it. Butthere is a split here between those who've had a bit of experience ofthe world and of war and the others who are mostly interested,certainly the junta, as I call them, in Washington, they're all inthe gas and oil business. People ask me, "Are you saying there's aconspiracy?"-- because that's the word where everybody startslaughing. It means you believe in flying saucers. "No," I said, "I'mgoing to change the world." We won't say it's aconspiracy that allthe great offices of state are occupied by gas and oil people --thePresident, the Vice-President, National Security Adviser--it's not acoincidence. "It's a coincidence," and everybody smiles --that's anice word --"Oh, yes, of course, it's a coincidence" that they arerunning the government and getting us into a war in oil-richplaces."
MARK DAVIS: Well, Bush has claimed that theAmerican belief in liberty will deliver a free and peaceful Iraq,even with the stench of oil in the air, George Bush probably candeliver that --a free and peaceful Iraq that is. Isn't there alegitimate case to be argued that there's a greater good at workhere?
GORE VIDAL: There is no greater good atwork. We cannot deliver it. Only the Iraqis can deliver that. Youdon't go in and smash up a country, which we will do, and gain theirlove so that they then want to imitate our highly corrupt politicalsystem and, on the subject of democracy --I happen to be something ofa student of the American constitution --it was set up in order toavoid majority rule. The two things the founding fathers hated weremajoritarian rule and monarchy. So they devised a republic in whichonly a very few white men of property could vote. Then, to make surethat we never had any democracy at work at the highest levels ofgovernance, they created something called the electoral college,which can break any change that might upset them. We saw whathappened in November 2000, when Albert Gore won the popular vote by600,000, he actually won the electoral vote of Florida, but a lot ofdismal things happened and denied him the election. So that's whathappened there. So for us to talk about a democracy that we are goingto translate into other lands is the height of hypocrisy and issimply foolish. We don't invent governments for otherpeople.
MARK DAVIS: The American virtues ofindividual liberties, although viewed by many people with somecynicism, are still meaningful to people around the world. It'sinteresting to note the support that America is getting from theformer eastern bloc European nations--Rumsfeld's "new Europe". TheAmerican message still resonates with them, doesn't it?
GORE VIDAL: They're not clued in to whatsort of country the United States is. They've certainly found outwhat kind of country the Soviet Union was and they didn't like thatone bit and they associate us with their relative liberation. That'sall. What we're really about they don't know. They believe thepropaganda. They believe the media, which is constantly going onabout democracy and freedom and liberty and the greatest country onearth and so on and the only thing wrong in the world is there areEVIL people who hate us because we are SO good. Well, I don't knowhow anybody can buy this line, but people do. People are not verywell informed. The well-informed countries --western Europe --knowperfectly well what our game is. General de Gaulle took France outofNATO because he suspected that we were in the empire--buildingbusiness, and he didn't want to go along with it yet, simultaneously,France remained an ally in case there was a major war with theSoviets. I don't think we should take too seriously those easternEuropean countries. In due course, they will wake up, as Turkey did,that we are dangerous.
MARK DAVIS: Well, unlike Iraq, indeed anymembers of the 'axis of evil', Americans can change their governmentwith some drawbacks, they can express their opinions. On the eve of awar, whatever Machiavellian benefits might accrue to them isn't therestill moral weight in the voice of America, given its history as ademocratic force over the past century?
GORE VIDAL: I spoke to 100,000 people twoweeks ago in Hollywood Boulevard, down the hill from where I'mspeaking to you now. There were 100,000, lots of police, manyhelicopters overhead which, as the speaker got up, would lowerthemselves to try and drown your voiceout. The press did not recordthat there were 100,000 people. They said, "Oh, 30,000 perhaps. Thatmight be an exaggeration," they said. Unfortunately for them, the'Los Angeles Times', generally a fairly good paper, had a long shotfrom La Brea where I was speaking on a stage straight up to VineStreet, which was a mile or two away, and you saw 100,000 people, sotheir very picture undid them. What I'm saying is the censorship isvery tight. Don't think we're a free country to say anything we want.We can say it, but it's not going to be printed and you're not goingto get on television. One of our great voices for some time now forpeace in theworld is Noam Chomsky. I've never seen his name in the'New York Times' in any context other than linguistics of which he'sa professor at MIT. We go totally unnoticed. I can do a pamphlet andit's the Internet that gets it to people. So I can sell a couple ofhundred thousand copies of a pamphlet. No word of it will appear inthe 'New York Times'. To my amazement this time, they actually put iton their bestseller list. Generally, they won't do that. I can't tellyou how tightly controlled this place is and it's beginning to show,because talk radio and so on --I've done a lot of that lately--thequestions you get, the people are so confused. They don't know whereIraq is. They think Saddam Hussein, because he's an evil person,deliberately blew up the twin towers in Manhattan. He didn't. Thatwas Osama bin Laden or somebody else. We still don't know becausethere has been no investigation of that, as Congress and theconstitution require. So we are totally in the dark and we have apresident who is even in a greater darkness, who's totally uninformedabout the world, leading us into war because, becausebecause.
MARK DAVIS: Well, the defence of Americancivil liberties has been a consistent theme of yours, most vocally inrecent months, in response to the Patriot Act and the new HomelandDefence Agency. But it would seem that Americans don't share yourviews in any significant numbers. Why not?
GORE VIDAL: They do. What I do is quitepopular. Now, mind you, we're not much of a reading country, but wecertainly watch a lot of television. You can pick up a tremendousaudience across --you know, millions of people have been marching. Ifyou read the American press...
MARK DAVIS: And yet there's been verylittle political response to the establishment of those agencies orthe very dramatic constitutional changes that have been made in thePatriot Act. We're not really hearing a strong movement, not from theDemocrats, not in the media. There is a certainacquiescence.
GORE VIDAL: Well, we don't hear it becausethey're part of it. You know, we have elections --very expensive onesand very corrupt ones. But we don't have politics. We made atrade-off somewhere. This was after Harry Truman established thenational security state, and suddenly television came along andelections cost billions. It cost $3 billion to elect Bush. That's alot of money. And it was a campaign almost without issues exceptpersonalities. Nothing was talked about. Nothing was talked aboutgoing to war as quickly as possible, which of course obviously was inhis mind. So you have a country that is not political, withoutpolitical parties. There are movements of people, which go largelyunrecorded. There are eloquent voices out there, but you don't seethem in print, you don't hear them on the air.
MARK DAVIS: Well, one of those voices isone of your contemporaries, Norman Mailer. He wrote recently that,after a long life, he's concluded that fascism, not democracy, is thenatural state and that America as a nation is in a pre-fascist era, amega banana republic increasingly dominated by the military. Is it aview that you share?
GORE VIDAL: I have those days, yes, such asNorman is having. But I am more deeply rooted in the old constitutionwith all of its flaws and in the Bill of Rights with all of itsvirtues. That was something special on Earth and Jefferson wassomething special on Earth when he said that life, liberty and thepursuit of happiness --nobody had ever used that phrase in theconstitution before or set that out as a political goal for everyone.So, out of that came the energies of the United States to have madeit the number one country in the world and the most inventive and themost creative, and then the Devil entered Eden and we ended up withan Asiatic empire, and a European empire, and a South Americandependency and we are not what we were. The people get no education.I call it 'the United States of Amnesia'. I've written now is it 12books I think,doing American history from the Revolution up to theMillennium. They're very popular because they don't get it in schooland they don't get it from the media. So people do read my books. Butthere should be more by other people too. It is a terrible thing tolose your past, particularly when you had such an interesting one, aswe did. In the 18th century, we had three of the great geniuses ofthe 18th century all living in this little colonial world of 3million people. We had Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Thesewere extraordinarily wise men and understood the ways of the world,and they gave us a very good form of government. No, it was not aliberal government. It was a very reactionary one. But it was the18th century --1787 was when the constitution was written. It was asadvanced as the human race had ever got at that time in devising arepublic. To have lost that and to have lost all memory of it --we'vebeen having a big argument about we've got "In God we trust" on themoney. Well this is over the dead bodies of Thomas Jefferson and theother founders, most of whom did not believe in God and wanted tokeep Church and State separate. Every American seems to think, "InGod we trust" was put on the money by George Washington. Well, it wasput on there by Dwight Eisenhower in trying to get some southernvotes, Baptist preachers.
MARK DAVIS: Well, you're one of America'sharshest cultural and political critics and yet you write and clearlytalk very romantically about the republic. You've documented thoseebbs and flows where you believe it's verged from its foundingprinciples. In the broader sweep, what is the state of Americatoday?
GORE VIDAL: Adrift, but adrift toward war,and it's a war that we can't win. I suppose we can blow up Baghdadbut I think, when that starts, if that happens, we can count onretaliation from 1 billion Muslims and who knows what other? We areopening up --I don't know, a Pandora's box --it's as if we're openinga tomb and God knows what will come out of it. This is dangerouscountry. This isn't just ordinary colonial aggression --a Europeanpower that wants to take over Panama, something like that. This isn'tit at all. First of all, they're proudly talking about a cultural andreligious clash between Christianity and Devil's work. Well, that'svery dangerous and very stupid. And I don't know how you win thatone.
MARK DAVIS: Well, there are definite echoesof the 1950s in Americatoday. Some of the loudest critics of thatshift are also products of that era --yourself, Norman Mailer, ArthurMiller. Where are the young Vidals, the young Mailers, the youngMillers?
GORE VIDAL: One of the things thathappened, although we don't have much of an educational system forthe general public --the writers of the Second War, all except a fewlike the three that you've just named went into the universities toteach. Eisenhower in a rather great speech when he left office --hewarned against the military industrial complex, which he said wastaking over too much of this nation's money and life. A part of itthat is never quoted --he said, in effect, that "The universities andlearning will be hurt the most because, because when places oflearning and knowledge, investigation are dependent upon governmentbounty, subsidies, for their very lives --which we were doing, wewere giving everything to the science department to develop weapons,well that also went for the humanities, the history department too,the English department. We have a whole generation of school teachersand they're not very good school teachers. Some of them are verytalented writers, but they're quiet. They don't want to rock theboat. They want to keep their jobs. They saw in the '50s --whathappened if you got associated with radical movements. You lost yourjob and they weren't easy to find. Now, they're quiet as couldbe.
MARK DAVIS: Is the '50s back, or are the1950s back with us?
GORE VIDAL: Well, nothing repeats itselfexcept human folly, so no. I do feel an energy across the country--this may be because I go to energetic groups --that are fightingtheir own government, but they're going to lose because thegovernment is now totally militarised and ready for war --a war theycan't really sell to the rest of the world, but they're going to doit anyway. This is something new. We've never had a period like thisand it was --to somebody like me, who is really hooked intoconstitutional America --this is incredible. We cannot trust theSupreme Court after their mysterious decisions on the election of2000. We have no political parties. We've never had much of them --Imean the Democrats, the Republicans. We have one party --we have theparty of essentially corporate America. It has two right wings, onecalled Democratic, one called Republican. So in the absence ofpolitics, with a media that is easy to manipulate and, in the handsof very few people with interests in wars and oil and so on, I don'tsee how you get the word out, but one tries because there is nothingelse to be done.
MARK DAVIS: Gore Vidal, thanks for joiningus on Dateline.
GORE VIDAL: Thank you.
of two excellent pamphlets on 9/11 and Bush'swars:
"Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace" and, mostrecently, "Dreaming War".