General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTerrific quote I came across!!!!!
"Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun."- Kurt Vonnegut from his book, "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine", 1965.
God, I wish I could write like that. Especially that last sentence.
Any doubt who those "rapacious citizens" might be...?
* In the book, Rosewater is the fictional U.S. Senator Lister Ames Rosewater of Indiana who started a foundation so his descendants could avoid paying taxes on the family estate in Rosewater County.
enough
(13,237 posts)Has anything changed?
JHB
(37,132 posts)Somehow, lowering those taxes had no effect on the zeal to dodge them.
Why one might even be lead to think that the objection wasn't about "high taxes" but about the very existence of taxes.
plimsoll
(1,664 posts)The rest of us have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and haul their bloated eminences around too.
aggiesal
(8,864 posts)and it shows!
peacebuzzard
(5,124 posts)great inspiration.
young_at_heart
(3,758 posts)55 years ago one brilliant author could see what was happening in this country!
Escurumbele
(3,340 posts)If you have a chance read "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis, written in 1926. He knew then that a buffoon like trump would become president, and many of his predictions have come true, hopefully not all of them will.
young_at_heart
(3,758 posts)An online independent British Canadian newspaper (thetyee.ca) has a great review of this book. Headline: "The Depression-Era Novel That Saw Trump Coming". Here's a snippet: "What Lewis doesnt mention is that the American Founding Fathers saw them coming as well. They were the educated elite of the British colonies, familiar with the politics of ancient Rome and contemporary Europe."
japple
(9,773 posts)all the truthisms from his work. He was brilliant AND funny!
Escurumbele
(3,340 posts)"Cat's Cradle" I have read twice, a great essay on human stupidity.
I have not read the one you reference, I will need to get it.
Thank you
cp
(6,543 posts)Wrote a high-school paper on that book (longer ago than I care to tell you). Have loved his work all my life.
Thank you.
ananda
(28,783 posts)That was amazingly descriptive of us here today!
calimary
(80,700 posts)Beauty!
Bang and BOOM!
OMGWTF
(3,901 posts)BobTheSubgenius
(11,535 posts)Liked, but not loved. Heresy, I know. This, I love.
Sogo
(4,967 posts)in the 1960s, just a couple of years before I entered school there.
mountain grammy
(26,571 posts)I love Kurt Vonnegut.
Marcuse
(7,399 posts)dchill
(38,324 posts)GREAT quote.
RussellCattle
(1,506 posts)There are words in the English language that do not get used nearly enough in today's reality, and cupidity is one of them.
Nitram
(22,671 posts)Nitram
(22,671 posts)TexasBushwhacker
(20,044 posts)Blue Owl
(49,934 posts)Dark n Stormy Knight
(9,760 posts)but every aspect of it is so blatant now thanks to the revelation of the hideous true colors Trump has inspired & enabled in his fellow RW charlatans, crooks & cultists.