KURT VONNEGUT, L'INSOUMIS TRANQUILLE (2/2)

"L´HOMME SANS PAYS". Dans son dernier ouvrage, A man without a country: a memoir of life in George W. Bush´s America, l'infatigable provocateur fait une dernière charge humoristique contre l'Amérique de Georges W. Bush. Un récit entremêlé d'anecdotes personnelles et de réflexions sur les Etats-Unis... En voici un extrait (p81 - p85):

"Human beings have had to guess about almost everyhting for the past million years or so. The leading characters in our history books have been our most enthralling, and sometimes the most terrifying, guessers. May I name two of them? Artistotle and Hitler. One good guesser and a bad one [...]

But the guessers, in fact, no more than the common people and sometimes less, even when, or especially when, they gave us the illusion that we were in control of our destinies. Persuasive guessing has been at the core of leadership for so long, for all of human experiences so far, that it is wholly unsurprising that most of the leaders of this planet, in spite of all the information that is suddenly ours, want the guessing to go on [...]

Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting. They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they could be right [...]

Loaded pistols are good for everyone

except inmates in prisons or lunatic asylums. That´s correct. Millions spent on public health are inflationnary. That´s correct. Billions spent on weapons will bring inflation down. That´s correct. Dictatorships to the right are much closer to American ideals than dictatorships from the left. That´s correct. The more hydrogen bomb warheads we have, all set to go off at a moment´s notice, the safer humanity is and the better off the world will be that our grandchildren will inherit. That´s correct. Industrial wastes, and especially those that bare radioactive, hardly ever hurt anybody, so everybody should  shut up about them. That´s correct. Industries should be allowed to do whatever they want to do: Bribe, wreck the environment just a little, fix prices, screw dumb customers, put a stop to competition, and raid the Treasury when t

hey go broke. That´s correct. That´s free enterprise. And that is correct. The poor have done something very wrong or they wouldn´t be poor, so their chilkdren should pay the consequences. That´s correct. The USA cannot be expected to look after its own people. That´s correct. The free market will do that. That´s correct. The free market is an automatic system of justice. That´s correct [...] "

A méditer...