“Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.
NO. THERE THEY GO AGAIN WITH CIVILIZED SOCIETY NOW BEING WORSE THAN EVER.
I WON'T HAVE IT.
IF SOME CRAZY PROFESSORS AND KIDS AT UNIVERSITIES CELEBRATE JIHAD,
IT'S BECAUSE THEY ARE BRAIN DEAD.
THEY DO NOT REPRESENT OUR CULTURE OR OUR CIVILIZED SOCIETY.
HERE IN THE REAL WORLD, PEOPLE HATE JIHAD BECAUSE OF DAN PEARL AND THE TWIN TOWERS. THE FEELING IN OUR CIVILIZATION IS SIMPLY NOT NUMBED BY VIOLENCE AND BEREFT OF ITS GIFT TO BE DISGUSTED BY EVIL.
THIS IS A LIE. MY CIVILIZED SOCIETY, THE KIND I MEET AND MESS WITH WHENEVER I CAN IS KIND AND HOPEFUL. THEY ARE HAVING BABIES, WRITING PAPERS FOR THEIR SEVENTH GRADE SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHERS, AND LIVING THEIR LIFE, ALL OF THEM MEN AND WOMEN IN FULL. AND QUITE ABLE TO BE DISGUSTED BY EVIL.
Acts of terror are no longer taboo, but are just a legitimate means to a political end. Until you get what you want, terrorism is perfectly acceptable.
ACTS OF TERROR HAVE NEVER BEEN TABOO. THEY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THE LEGITIMATE MEANS TO WIN WARS AND PROTECT OUR SOLDIERS IN THE FIELD.
THIS IS SO DEEP. WE DONT' HAVE THE ANSWERS. AMERICA KILLED A MILLION PEOPLE IN DRESDEN. FIRE BOMBING. INNOCENT CIVILIANS, WOMEN CHILDREN PETS.
DOGS AND CATS AND KITTENS AND PUPPIES, AND TODDLERS, AND KIDS ON SWINGS, IN HOSPITALS RECOVERING FROM HAVING THEIR TONSILS OUT.
DONT TALK TO ME ABOUT CIVILLY CONDUCTED WARFARE...
.. TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND CIVILIANS IN JAPEN,AND UNTOLD RADIOACTIVE GENETIC DAMAGE FOUR HUNDRED INNOCENT MEN WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN IRAQ.
WAR, MY GOOD FRIEND, IS TERROR. TERROR, TERRORISM, THE KILLING OF INNOCENTS. THE CEREMONY OF INNOCENCE IS DROWNED, IN BLOOD, SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME.
The Palestinians should continue the slaughter of innocents until Israel yields to their demands. JUST SUBSTITUTE AMERICA AND JAPAN.
AMERICA SHOULD CONTINUE THE SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENTS UNTIL JAPAN YEILDS TO THEIR DEMANDS. -----HARRY TRUMAN PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED MISTAKES OF AMERICA.
AMERICA SHOULD CONTINUE THE SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENTS UNTIL AL QUAIDA YEILDS TO THEIR DEMANDS.
EIGHT YEARS AND NO HOMELAND CASUALTIES. DENY AND ARGUE. BUT HOW ELSE TO ACCOUNT FOR EIGHT YEARS WITHOUT A STATESIDE BLOODBATH.
THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT WE ARE RIGHT AND THE PALESTINIANS ARE WRONG.
WAR IS TERROR. MURDER IS MURDER. COMBAT IS MURDER.
WAR IS HELL. TERRORISM IS HOW A WEAK NATION FIGHTS A STRONG ONE. FORGET WHAT THE REASONS ARE. BAD REASONS OR GOOD, WAGING WAR IS AS OLD HAS THE RACE ITSELF, AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN TERRORISTIC. AND THE WEAK HAVE ALWAYS USED CUNNING. AMERICAN PATRIOTS INVENTED THE SNIPER, KILLING FROM AMBUSH. THE BRITS WERE SCANDALIZED. AND LOST THE WAR. WERE THE BRITS ON THE SIDE OF WRONG OR RIGHT. MILLIONS OF CANADIANS ATTEST TO THE LATTER
MUTILATION AND TORTURE ARE COMMON ON THE FRONT LINES. COMMON. MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT THAT. AND KILLING BABIES IS ONE WAY THAT SOLDIERS GET INFORMATION, THAT SAVES LIVES AND MOVES ARMIES. MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT THAT. MUTILATE A BABY, LEAVE IT ALIVE, YOU WILL LEARN WHAT YOU NEED.
THE CRIMES OF SOLDIERS, ON BOTH SIDES OF ANY CONFLICT, THE RIGHT SIDE AND THE WRONG SIDE, EQUALLY, WOULD DRIVE YOU TO DISTRACTION. THAT'S WHY SO MANY SOLDIERS ARE DAMAGED GOODS WHEN THEY RETURN FROM COMBAT. THAT'S WHY THE SUICIDE RATE OF SOLDIERS IS HIGHER THAN ANY OTHER PROFESSION IN THAT AGE GROUP. BECAUSE THEY WITNESS THINGS, HORRIBLE, INHUMAN THINGS. INCLUDING TORTURING BABIES IN FRONT OF MOTHERS, TO SAVE THE LIVES OF TROOPS IN ACTION.
THE INCIDENCE OF TORTURE AND BABY KILLING BY AMERICANS, IN VIETNAM, ON THE WRONG SIDE OF A CONFLICT BY THE WAY, IS WELL DOCUMENTED AND IMMENSE. IMMENSE. NOT ONLY ARE THERE NO ATHEISTS IN THE FOX HOLES. THERE ARE NO HUMANS IN THE FOX HILLS.
SOLDIERS ARE TAUGHT, BRAINWASHED TO KILL. TO MAIM. TO GO THROUGH THE ENEMY LIKE SHIT THROUGH A GOOSE. NOT TO DIE FOR YOUR COUNTRY BUT TO MAKE THE OTHER POOR BASTARD DIE FOR HIS. --- OLIVER STONE, PATTON.
BLOW THOSE BASTARDS AWAY. TO KINGDOM COME. TAKE NO PRISONERS. FUCK THE GENEVE CONVENTION.
WUS OBAMA PLANNING TO PUT CIVIL LIBERTIES BEFORE OUR SAFETY? FUCK THAT SHIT.
ISRAEL IS RIGHT AND PALESTINE IS WRONG. BUT THE TACTICS?? IT'S THE SAME OUTCOME, PAIN, MUTILATION OR DEATH, WHETHER BY CARPET BOMBING OR SUICIDE BOMBING.
Perhaps the most serious and most dangerous problem we face is the normalization of evil.
EVIL HAS BEEN NORMAL FOREVER. I AM JUST OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER IMAGINING MYSELF IN A DEATH CAMP, KILLED IN A MASS EXECUTION. THE ATTEMPT ON HITLER'S LIFE WAS SIMPLE TERRORISM. A SUITCASE BOMB PLANTED AT A MEETING.
.
Using the most illegitimate, immoral, and illegal ends to achieve their political goals.
]
SOUNDS GOOD BUT IT DOESN'T ANSWER THE QUESTIONS ABOUT HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI AND DRESDEN. BECAUSE THE ANSWER IS, IMMORALITY ILLEGALITY AND ILLEGITIMACY ARE VERY COMPLEX ISSUES. BEYOND ANYONE'S SCOPE REALLY.
WE OPPOSE PALESTINE. WE ARE RIGHT. THEY USE THE ONLY TACTICS THEY HAVE. WHAT MAKES THEM WRONG IS THEIR CAUSE. AMERICANS USED THE SAME TACTICS IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. KNOW THAT.
Jimmy Carter and Bill Moyers have succeeded in transforming the most despicable, immoral, genocidal degenerates into a respectable category freedom fighters, part of a resistance movement.
NO. IT IS THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT THAT IS WRONG. BUT THE TACTICS ARE INEVITABLE, AND HAVE BEEN IN PLAY SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME.
ALGERIANS VS. FRANCE. REBELS VS. OPPRESSORS. WHICH SIDE WAS RIGHT. THE ALGERIANS BLEW UP WHAT WERE CALLED MILK BARS. SODA SHOPS IN THE PARLANCE OF ARCHIE. AND JUGHEAD. WHO HAD HIS JUGHEAD BLOWN OFF HIS SHOULDERS BY ALGERIAN TERRORISTS WHO WERE RESISTING FRENCH IMPERIALISM. WHAT SIDE DO I TAKE. HOW THE FUCK DO I KNOW. BUT I DO KNOW THE TACTICS. TERRORISM. SO I GUESS THE ALGERIANS HAD TO BE WRONG.
WHICH LEAVES US WITH, THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY SNIPERS, KILLING AT A THOUSAND YARDS. TERRORISM.
Jimmy Carter, in effect says, “Keep killing women and children, and blowing up babies; as a former president of the U.S. I find your terrorism and even genocide perfectly acceptable.” And a subtext of that translation: The Palestinians should continue the slaughter of innocents until Israel yields to their demands, however
Monday, March 16, 2009
WORSE THAN ANYTHING IN HIS INAUGURATION TEAR JERKER
STUPID 2004 OBAMA SPEECH
TIME TO LIE. GET THIS ONE. WORSE THAN ANYTHING IN HIS INAUGURATION TEAR JERKER.
in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.
AND, EVEN WORSE. I AM MY BROTHER'S KEEPER.
John Kerry believes in America. And he knows that it’s not enough for just some of us to prosper -- for alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we’re all connected as one people. If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there is a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs, and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.
It is that fundamental belief -- It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.
WELL, BOY HOWDY, THAT IS A CROCK OF STEAMING SHIT. HOW IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE RHETORICAL. SOARING. ITS RUBBISH. ALONGSIDE OUR FAMOUS INDIVIDUALISM IS THE BELIEF THAT WE ARE OUR BROTHERS' KEEPER?? THAT IS A LIE. A PERVERSION OF TRUTH. A STUPID HIGH SOUNDING TURD OF SPEECH. FUCK THAT SHIT.
Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before..WORKED HARDER THAN ANYONE ELSE. NOT PARTICULARLY BRIGHT, JUST, PERSEVERANT AND HARD WORKING. BUCKLED DOWN MORE THAN ANY BODY ELSE IN HIS LITTLE VILLAGE. FLEW A PIG TO WORK EVERY DAY. FUCK THIS GODDAMNED SHIT.
People don’t expect -- People don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.
What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -
- a recognition, on the part of every American,
YOU IRRESPONSIBLE AMERICANS
honesty and hard work, courage and fair play,
tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism
YOU NEED TO RETURN TO THESE VALUES
That is the true genius of America, a faith -- a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution.
I’m not talking about blind optimism here -- the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; WHO MARRIED A BILLIONAIRE, the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; WHAT ODDS. VOTED MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED? the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name AND A 150 IQ who believes that America has a place for him, too.
THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.
Hope -- Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!
I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us.
America! Tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do -- if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November..
rise up YES WE CAN. CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN. I AM MY BROTHER'S KEEPER, EXCEPT MY ACTUAL OWN BROTHER, WHO I WOULDN'T LEND A HELPING HAND TO.
People don’t expect -- People don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.
REALLY. IS THAT WHAT MAKES A DEMOCRAT? IS THAT WHAT WE THINK??
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
That is the true genius of America, a faith -- a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution.
SUDDEN KNOCK ON THE DOOR?? WHERE IS THAT? ONLY IN AMERICA ARE WE SAFE FROM A SUDDEN KNOCK ON THE DOOR??? IS HE OUT OF HIS MIND?!!
in a tolerant America
in a generous America
I’m not talking about blind optimism here -- the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. COURSE IT HELPS IF HE HAS A 170 IQ. OR, LIKE JOHN EDWARDS, WAS THE CUTEST BOY IN HIS GRADUATING CLASS. HOPE. FOR THE SHMOES, THE LESSER SHMOES WHO DON'T HAVE A CHANCE. BUT THEY CAN HOAPE AND THEY BELIECVE. AND THEY CAN VOTE, WITH AUACIOUS, SUPID HOPOE, DRIVING THEM ONWAY ONWARD AND UPWARD. RUN IT UP THE FLAG.... RUNI IT UP THE FLAG AND SEE WHO SALUTES IT!
In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.
I believe that we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity.
I believe we can provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair.
I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us.
America! Tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do -- if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry will be sworn in as President, and John Edwards will be sworn in as Vice President, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come.
THIS SPEECH STINKS. ITS GOT NOTHING IN IT BUT PLATITUDES.
In the end -- In the end -- In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope? DON'T VOTE FOR BUSH. HE IS CYNICAL. HE WANTS YOU TO SLEEP ON THE FLOOR. TUCK YOU CHILDREN INTO A DUMPSTER.
fundamental belief -- It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.
E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one
OH, NOT MY BROTHER GEORGE THOUGH. FUCK HIM. HE'S JUST A HALF SIB ANYWAY.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe;
NO SIR, ONLY IN AMERICA CAN WE START A BUSINESS WITHOUT PAYING A BRIBE, UNLESS YOU LIVE IN NEW JERSEY.. BUT IN SWEDEN? GOD, ITS LIKE IMPOSSIBLE TO THRIVE THERE BECASUE OF CRIME AND PAYOFFS AND EVERYTHING.
AMERICA IS JUST A ZILLION TIMES BETTER THAN ANY OTHER PLACE ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH. A GAZILLION TIMES BETTER. THE BESTEST.
an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm;NOT LIKE FINLAND. OR ENGLAND, WHERE EVERYONE SLEEPS IN FEAR, ON THE FLOOR, OUTDOORS, BECAUSE THEY LACK AN INSISTENCE ON SMALL MIRACLES.
THAT IS THE FUCKING STUPIDEST THING I EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE..\
\
we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door;
FINLAND, ENALAND, ITALY, THEY HAVE NO SUCH DREAMS. NO SUCJH SMALL MIRACLES. THEY , WHY STALIN IS EVEYWHERE BUT HERE,K AND WHY, BECAUSE WE DARE TO DREAM THE IMPSSIBLE, CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN, PICK OURSELVES AND DUST OURSELVES OFF AND START ALL OVER AGAIN THEY. WHY IF THEY DID THAT IN FINLAND, AND ALL THOSE OTHER IDEAL-LESS NATIONS, WHY IT WOULD BE , LIKE THROWING FOOD ON THEIR FAMILIES. THEN THE QUESTION IS OUR CHILDREN LEARNING WOULD NEVER HAVE TO BE AXED.
HERE'S SOME RHETORIC; We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
MY INTOLERANCE FOR ALL OTHER NATIONS IS PROFOUD THAT I SAY HERE, STUPIDIST THING YOU COULD IMAGINE. HERE IT IS FOLKS. DON'T HATE FOR IT. THEY MADE ME SAY THIS.
in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.
in no other country on earth, is my story even possible
in no other country on earth, is my story even possible
(CHOIR OF ANGELS)
STUPID FUCK.
WITH HEY NONY NONY NONY LA LA LA LA
AND YET, THERE IS MORE PLAIN DUMB BULLSHIT. LOOK AT THIS.
That is the true genius of America, a faith -- a faith in simple dreams,
Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our Nation -- not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
WHAT OTHER NATION BELIEVES THAT!?? DOES CANADA BELIEVE PEOPLE SHOULD BE HAPPY?
(CROWD CHANTING. NO! NO! NO!)
WHAT OTHER NATION HAS EVER HAD SUCH STERLING EXCEPTIONAL IDEALS? FRANCE
(NO, OBAMA, NO)
ENLAND?? SPAIN? PERU? ITALY? FINLAND???!
(NO. NONE OF THEM ARE EVEN HUMAN. WE HATE THEM. THEY ARE NATIONS OF FUCK HOLES,
And yet, I know that on this night they look down on me with great pride.. I BELIEVE. (ECHO EFFECT)
an improbable love
They imagined -- They imagined me going to the best schools in the land,
They would give me an African name, Barack, or ”blessed,”
WE SHALL HARNESS THE WINDS. the best schools in the land,
the best schools in the land,
I AM AMERICA AND SO CAN YOU., (THANK YOU THANK YOU, PLEASE, )
BORN IN A TOWN ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD!!!!
in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.
in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.
OR IN SPAIN EITHER FOR THAT MATTER. FUCK HOLE.
in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.
=-=--0=-=0=-0=-0=-0=0=-0 =-0=-0=-0=0= =-0=-0=0=-0=-0=-0= -0=-0= -0=-0
Barack Obama
2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address
Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before. HIS 150 IQ HAD NOTHING TO WITH TO DO WITH IT. HARRK AND PERSERVEERANCE, AND A NEGRO CAN BE WHATEVER THE FUCK.
WITH HEY NONY NONY NONY LA LA LA LA
While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas.
WHAT SOARING RHETORICE3. I CAN SEE THEIR PEE PEES. SHE WAS BORN INT A TOWN ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD!!!!
Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. WHAT A TERRIBLE THING. SUCH WOIK. THANKS GOD I NEVER HAD TO LOWER MY NEGRO SELF TO SUCH PERIL AND DESBASEMENT.
(THAT'S THE PART OF THE BUILDING UNDER YOUR HOUSE, DEBASEMENT)
The day after Pearl Harbor my grandfather signed up for duty; joined Patton’s army, marched across Europe. HE MARCH AND HE MARCHED AAND HED MARCHED. LUCKY I DIDN'T HAVE TO BE DRAFTED.
Back home, my grandmother raised a baby
(TO THE TUNE OF I'M IN A LEAGUE OF MY OWN WHEN IT COMES TO MAKING SPEECHES)
Back home, my grandmother raised a
and went to work on a bomber assembly line
After the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through F.H.A., and later moved west all the way to Hawaii in search of opportunity.
And they, too, had big dreams for their daughter. A common dream, born of two continents.
My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation.
AND , IN THEMSELVES??? IN THEIR TALENT?? WHAT COLOR WERE THEY. NEGRO COLORED?? FUCK THIS SHIT.
They would give me an African name, Barack, or ”blessed,”
believing FOLISHLY that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. STUDIES SHOW THAT LASHANDA'S DO WORSE THAN LAURA"S. ITS THE TRUTH. WHY DOES THIS GUY VEER FROM THE TRUTH.
They imagined -- They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.
They're both passed away now. And yet, I know that on this night they look down on me with great pride.
They stand here -- And I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my two precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.
Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our Nation -- not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That is the true genius of America, a faith -- a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted -- at least most of the time.
This year, in this election we are called to reaffirm our values and our commitments, to hold them against a hard reality and see how we're measuring up to the legacy of our forbearers and the promise of future generations.
And fellow Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, I say to you tonight: We have more work to do -- more work to do for the workers I met in Galesburg, Illinois, who are losing their union jobs at the Maytag plant that’s moving to Mexico, and now are having to compete with their own children for jobs that pay seven bucks an hour; more to do for the father that I met who was losing his job and choking back the tears, wondering how he would pay 4500 dollars a month for the drugs his son needs without the health benefits that he counted on; more to do for the young woman in East St. Louis, and thousands more like her, who has the grades, has the drive, has the will, but doesn’t have the money to go to college.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The people I meet -- in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks -- they don’t expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead, and they want to. Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted, by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon. Go in -- Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach our kids to learn; they know that parents have to teach, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.
People don’t expect -- People don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.
They know we can do better. And they want that choice.
In this election, we offer that choice. Our Party has chosen a man to lead us who embodies the best this country has to offer. And that man is John Kerry.
John Kerry understands the ideals of community, faith, and service because they’ve defined his life. From his heroic service to Vietnam, to his years as a prosecutor and lieutenant governor, through two decades in the United States Senate, he's devoted himself to this country. Again and again, we’ve seen him make tough choices when easier ones were available.
His values and his record affirm what is best in us. John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded; so instead of offering tax breaks to companies shipping jobs overseas, he offers them to companies creating jobs here at home.
John Kerry believes in an America where all Americans can afford the same health coverage our politicians in Washington have for themselves.
John Kerry believes in energy independence, so we aren’t held hostage to the profits of oil companies, or the sabotage of foreign oil fields.
John Kerry believes in the Constitutional freedoms that have made our country the envy of the world, and he will never sacrifice our basic liberties, nor use faith as a wedge to divide us.
And John Kerry believes that in a dangerous world war must be an option sometimes, but it should never be the first option.
You know, a while back -- awhile back I met a young man named Shamus in a V.F.W. Hall in East Moline, Illinois. He was a good-looking kid -- six two, six three, clear eyed, with an easy smile. He told me he’d joined the Marines and was heading to Iraq the following week. And as I listened to him explain why he’d enlisted, the absolute faith he had in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service, I thought this young man was all that any of us might ever hope for in a child.
But then I asked myself, "Are we serving Shamus as well as he is serving us?"
I thought of the 900 men and women -- sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, who won’t be returning to their own hometowns. I thought of the families I’ve met who were struggling to get by without a loved one’s full income, or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or nerves shattered, but still lacked long-term health benefits because they were Reservists.
When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.
Now -- Now let me be clear. Let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued. And they must be defeated. John Kerry knows this. And just as Lieutenant Kerry did not hesitate to risk his life to protect the men who served with him in Vietnam, President Kerry will not hesitate one moment to use our military might to keep America safe and secure.
John Kerry believes in America. And he knows that it’s not enough for just some of us to prosper -- for alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we’re all connected as one people. If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there is a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs, and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.
It is that fundamental belief -- It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.
E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one."
Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us -- the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of "anything goes." Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America.
The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an "awesome God" in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
In the end -- In the end -- In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope? DON'T VOTE FOR BUSH. HE IS CYNICAL. HE WANTS YOU TO SLEEP ON THE FLOOR. TUCK YOU CHILDREN INTO A DUMPSTER.
John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope.
I’m not talking about blind optimism here -- the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.
Hope -- Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!
In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.
I believe that we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity.
I believe we can provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair.
I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us.
America! Tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do -- if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry will be sworn in as President, and John Edwards will be sworn in as Vice President, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come.
Thank you very much everybody. God bless you. Thank you.
TIME TO LIE. GET THIS ONE. WORSE THAN ANYTHING IN HIS INAUGURATION TEAR JERKER.
in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.
AND, EVEN WORSE. I AM MY BROTHER'S KEEPER.
John Kerry believes in America. And he knows that it’s not enough for just some of us to prosper -- for alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we’re all connected as one people. If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there is a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs, and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.
It is that fundamental belief -- It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.
WELL, BOY HOWDY, THAT IS A CROCK OF STEAMING SHIT. HOW IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE RHETORICAL. SOARING. ITS RUBBISH. ALONGSIDE OUR FAMOUS INDIVIDUALISM IS THE BELIEF THAT WE ARE OUR BROTHERS' KEEPER?? THAT IS A LIE. A PERVERSION OF TRUTH. A STUPID HIGH SOUNDING TURD OF SPEECH. FUCK THAT SHIT.
Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before..WORKED HARDER THAN ANYONE ELSE. NOT PARTICULARLY BRIGHT, JUST, PERSEVERANT AND HARD WORKING. BUCKLED DOWN MORE THAN ANY BODY ELSE IN HIS LITTLE VILLAGE. FLEW A PIG TO WORK EVERY DAY. FUCK THIS GODDAMNED SHIT.
People don’t expect -- People don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.
What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -
- a recognition, on the part of every American,
YOU IRRESPONSIBLE AMERICANS
honesty and hard work, courage and fair play,
tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism
YOU NEED TO RETURN TO THESE VALUES
That is the true genius of America, a faith -- a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution.
I’m not talking about blind optimism here -- the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; WHO MARRIED A BILLIONAIRE, the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; WHAT ODDS. VOTED MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED? the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name AND A 150 IQ who believes that America has a place for him, too.
THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.
Hope -- Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!
I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us.
America! Tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do -- if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November..
rise up YES WE CAN. CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN. I AM MY BROTHER'S KEEPER, EXCEPT MY ACTUAL OWN BROTHER, WHO I WOULDN'T LEND A HELPING HAND TO.
People don’t expect -- People don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.
REALLY. IS THAT WHAT MAKES A DEMOCRAT? IS THAT WHAT WE THINK??
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
That is the true genius of America, a faith -- a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution.
SUDDEN KNOCK ON THE DOOR?? WHERE IS THAT? ONLY IN AMERICA ARE WE SAFE FROM A SUDDEN KNOCK ON THE DOOR??? IS HE OUT OF HIS MIND?!!
in a tolerant America
in a generous America
I’m not talking about blind optimism here -- the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. COURSE IT HELPS IF HE HAS A 170 IQ. OR, LIKE JOHN EDWARDS, WAS THE CUTEST BOY IN HIS GRADUATING CLASS. HOPE. FOR THE SHMOES, THE LESSER SHMOES WHO DON'T HAVE A CHANCE. BUT THEY CAN HOAPE AND THEY BELIECVE. AND THEY CAN VOTE, WITH AUACIOUS, SUPID HOPOE, DRIVING THEM ONWAY ONWARD AND UPWARD. RUN IT UP THE FLAG.... RUNI IT UP THE FLAG AND SEE WHO SALUTES IT!
In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.
I believe that we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity.
I believe we can provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair.
I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us.
America! Tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do -- if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry will be sworn in as President, and John Edwards will be sworn in as Vice President, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come.
THIS SPEECH STINKS. ITS GOT NOTHING IN IT BUT PLATITUDES.
In the end -- In the end -- In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope? DON'T VOTE FOR BUSH. HE IS CYNICAL. HE WANTS YOU TO SLEEP ON THE FLOOR. TUCK YOU CHILDREN INTO A DUMPSTER.
fundamental belief -- It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.
E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one
OH, NOT MY BROTHER GEORGE THOUGH. FUCK HIM. HE'S JUST A HALF SIB ANYWAY.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s keeper.
we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe;
NO SIR, ONLY IN AMERICA CAN WE START A BUSINESS WITHOUT PAYING A BRIBE, UNLESS YOU LIVE IN NEW JERSEY.. BUT IN SWEDEN? GOD, ITS LIKE IMPOSSIBLE TO THRIVE THERE BECASUE OF CRIME AND PAYOFFS AND EVERYTHING.
AMERICA IS JUST A ZILLION TIMES BETTER THAN ANY OTHER PLACE ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH. A GAZILLION TIMES BETTER. THE BESTEST.
an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm;NOT LIKE FINLAND. OR ENGLAND, WHERE EVERYONE SLEEPS IN FEAR, ON THE FLOOR, OUTDOORS, BECAUSE THEY LACK AN INSISTENCE ON SMALL MIRACLES.
THAT IS THE FUCKING STUPIDEST THING I EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE..\
\
we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door;
FINLAND, ENALAND, ITALY, THEY HAVE NO SUCH DREAMS. NO SUCJH SMALL MIRACLES. THEY , WHY STALIN IS EVEYWHERE BUT HERE,K AND WHY, BECAUSE WE DARE TO DREAM THE IMPSSIBLE, CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN, PICK OURSELVES AND DUST OURSELVES OFF AND START ALL OVER AGAIN THEY. WHY IF THEY DID THAT IN FINLAND, AND ALL THOSE OTHER IDEAL-LESS NATIONS, WHY IT WOULD BE , LIKE THROWING FOOD ON THEIR FAMILIES. THEN THE QUESTION IS OUR CHILDREN LEARNING WOULD NEVER HAVE TO BE AXED.
HERE'S SOME RHETORIC; We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
MY INTOLERANCE FOR ALL OTHER NATIONS IS PROFOUD THAT I SAY HERE, STUPIDIST THING YOU COULD IMAGINE. HERE IT IS FOLKS. DON'T HATE FOR IT. THEY MADE ME SAY THIS.
in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.
in no other country on earth, is my story even possible
in no other country on earth, is my story even possible
(CHOIR OF ANGELS)
STUPID FUCK.
WITH HEY NONY NONY NONY LA LA LA LA
AND YET, THERE IS MORE PLAIN DUMB BULLSHIT. LOOK AT THIS.
That is the true genius of America, a faith -- a faith in simple dreams,
Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our Nation -- not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
WHAT OTHER NATION BELIEVES THAT!?? DOES CANADA BELIEVE PEOPLE SHOULD BE HAPPY?
(CROWD CHANTING. NO! NO! NO!)
WHAT OTHER NATION HAS EVER HAD SUCH STERLING EXCEPTIONAL IDEALS? FRANCE
(NO, OBAMA, NO)
ENLAND?? SPAIN? PERU? ITALY? FINLAND???!
(NO. NONE OF THEM ARE EVEN HUMAN. WE HATE THEM. THEY ARE NATIONS OF FUCK HOLES,
And yet, I know that on this night they look down on me with great pride.. I BELIEVE. (ECHO EFFECT)
an improbable love
They imagined -- They imagined me going to the best schools in the land,
They would give me an African name, Barack, or ”blessed,”
WE SHALL HARNESS THE WINDS. the best schools in the land,
the best schools in the land,
I AM AMERICA AND SO CAN YOU., (THANK YOU THANK YOU, PLEASE, )
BORN IN A TOWN ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD!!!!
in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.
in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.
OR IN SPAIN EITHER FOR THAT MATTER. FUCK HOLE.
in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.
=-=--0=-=0=-0=-0=-0=0=-0 =-0=-0=-0=0= =-0=-0=0=-0=-0=-0= -0=-0= -0=-0
Barack Obama
2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address
Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before. HIS 150 IQ HAD NOTHING TO WITH TO DO WITH IT. HARRK AND PERSERVEERANCE, AND A NEGRO CAN BE WHATEVER THE FUCK.
WITH HEY NONY NONY NONY LA LA LA LA
While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas.
WHAT SOARING RHETORICE3. I CAN SEE THEIR PEE PEES. SHE WAS BORN INT A TOWN ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD!!!!
Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. WHAT A TERRIBLE THING. SUCH WOIK. THANKS GOD I NEVER HAD TO LOWER MY NEGRO SELF TO SUCH PERIL AND DESBASEMENT.
(THAT'S THE PART OF THE BUILDING UNDER YOUR HOUSE, DEBASEMENT)
The day after Pearl Harbor my grandfather signed up for duty; joined Patton’s army, marched across Europe. HE MARCH AND HE MARCHED AAND HED MARCHED. LUCKY I DIDN'T HAVE TO BE DRAFTED.
Back home, my grandmother raised a baby
(TO THE TUNE OF I'M IN A LEAGUE OF MY OWN WHEN IT COMES TO MAKING SPEECHES)
Back home, my grandmother raised a
and went to work on a bomber assembly line
After the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through F.H.A., and later moved west all the way to Hawaii in search of opportunity.
And they, too, had big dreams for their daughter. A common dream, born of two continents.
My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation.
AND , IN THEMSELVES??? IN THEIR TALENT?? WHAT COLOR WERE THEY. NEGRO COLORED?? FUCK THIS SHIT.
They would give me an African name, Barack, or ”blessed,”
believing FOLISHLY that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. STUDIES SHOW THAT LASHANDA'S DO WORSE THAN LAURA"S. ITS THE TRUTH. WHY DOES THIS GUY VEER FROM THE TRUTH.
They imagined -- They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.
They're both passed away now. And yet, I know that on this night they look down on me with great pride.
They stand here -- And I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my two precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.
Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our Nation -- not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That is the true genius of America, a faith -- a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted -- at least most of the time.
This year, in this election we are called to reaffirm our values and our commitments, to hold them against a hard reality and see how we're measuring up to the legacy of our forbearers and the promise of future generations.
And fellow Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, I say to you tonight: We have more work to do -- more work to do for the workers I met in Galesburg, Illinois, who are losing their union jobs at the Maytag plant that’s moving to Mexico, and now are having to compete with their own children for jobs that pay seven bucks an hour; more to do for the father that I met who was losing his job and choking back the tears, wondering how he would pay 4500 dollars a month for the drugs his son needs without the health benefits that he counted on; more to do for the young woman in East St. Louis, and thousands more like her, who has the grades, has the drive, has the will, but doesn’t have the money to go to college.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The people I meet -- in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks -- they don’t expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead, and they want to. Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted, by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon. Go in -- Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach our kids to learn; they know that parents have to teach, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.
People don’t expect -- People don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.
They know we can do better. And they want that choice.
In this election, we offer that choice. Our Party has chosen a man to lead us who embodies the best this country has to offer. And that man is John Kerry.
John Kerry understands the ideals of community, faith, and service because they’ve defined his life. From his heroic service to Vietnam, to his years as a prosecutor and lieutenant governor, through two decades in the United States Senate, he's devoted himself to this country. Again and again, we’ve seen him make tough choices when easier ones were available.
His values and his record affirm what is best in us. John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded; so instead of offering tax breaks to companies shipping jobs overseas, he offers them to companies creating jobs here at home.
John Kerry believes in an America where all Americans can afford the same health coverage our politicians in Washington have for themselves.
John Kerry believes in energy independence, so we aren’t held hostage to the profits of oil companies, or the sabotage of foreign oil fields.
John Kerry believes in the Constitutional freedoms that have made our country the envy of the world, and he will never sacrifice our basic liberties, nor use faith as a wedge to divide us.
And John Kerry believes that in a dangerous world war must be an option sometimes, but it should never be the first option.
You know, a while back -- awhile back I met a young man named Shamus in a V.F.W. Hall in East Moline, Illinois. He was a good-looking kid -- six two, six three, clear eyed, with an easy smile. He told me he’d joined the Marines and was heading to Iraq the following week. And as I listened to him explain why he’d enlisted, the absolute faith he had in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service, I thought this young man was all that any of us might ever hope for in a child.
But then I asked myself, "Are we serving Shamus as well as he is serving us?"
I thought of the 900 men and women -- sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, who won’t be returning to their own hometowns. I thought of the families I’ve met who were struggling to get by without a loved one’s full income, or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or nerves shattered, but still lacked long-term health benefits because they were Reservists.
When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.
Now -- Now let me be clear. Let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued. And they must be defeated. John Kerry knows this. And just as Lieutenant Kerry did not hesitate to risk his life to protect the men who served with him in Vietnam, President Kerry will not hesitate one moment to use our military might to keep America safe and secure.
John Kerry believes in America. And he knows that it’s not enough for just some of us to prosper -- for alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we’re all connected as one people. If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there is a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs, and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.
It is that fundamental belief -- It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.
E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one."
Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us -- the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of "anything goes." Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America.
The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an "awesome God" in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
In the end -- In the end -- In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope? DON'T VOTE FOR BUSH. HE IS CYNICAL. HE WANTS YOU TO SLEEP ON THE FLOOR. TUCK YOU CHILDREN INTO A DUMPSTER.
John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope.
I’m not talking about blind optimism here -- the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.
Hope -- Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!
In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.
I believe that we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity.
I believe we can provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair.
I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us.
America! Tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do -- if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry will be sworn in as President, and John Edwards will be sworn in as Vice President, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come.
Thank you very much everybody. God bless you. Thank you.
Michael Ledeen By Michael Ledeen
Michael Ledeen
By Michael Ledeen
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | To: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President
Islamic Republic of Iran
Tehran
Dear Mr. President,
I’m writing to you about death, one of your favorite themes. Your adult life has revolved around it. You’re from the Revolutionary Guards, the military organization that was created in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon in the 1970s. The then-incipient Revolutionary Guards were trained there by the expert terrorists of al Fatah, Yasser Arafat’s gang of killers (Sunnis, by the way, as you well know). One day, the camp was bombed by the Israelis, and a considerable number of your men were killed. Later on, the graduates entered Iran, and killed members of the shah’s security forces. Today, Revolutionary Guardsmen crush Iranian dissent at home, and they are on the prowl all over the world, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Buenos Aires, Argentina. So you’ve been around death for 30 years or more. Training for it, training others for it, and participating in it.
You glorify it. You think it’s beautiful. “Art reaches perfection when it portrays the best life and best death,” you’ve said. After all, art tells you how to live. That is the essence of art. Is there art that is more beautiful, more divine, and more eternal than the art of martyrdom? A nation with martyrdom knows no captivity. Those who wish to undermine this principle undermine the foundations of our independence and national security. They undermine the foundation of our eternity.
Interestingly, you talk about “independence” and “national security,” rather than the interests of Islam, or the Muslim community, or even the Shiites, your sect. I’ll come back to this odd language shortly.
You’re a veteran of one of the bloodiest wars of recent times, the Iran-Iraq conflict that probably cost your country more than a million dead and maimed. You extol that sacrifice, as any patriotic Persian would; Iran was invaded by Saddam Hussein’s armies, and the Iranian people defended their country, bravely and desperately.
But your praise of Iranian fighters isn’t limited to men shot down on the battlefield in that bloody war; you celebrate cases of what you call — and extol — “martyrdom.” I call it the deliberate, criminal slaughter of many tens of thousands of young children. Some of those kids were only 12 years old. They were sent across the battlefields into Iraqi territory, as human mine-detectors. They walked across the minefields, and got blown up. The Iraqi soldiers were so horrified that they shouted at the children to stop, to go back. But they didn’t; you’d indoctrinated or hypnotized them, and you wanted them to die. Indeed, you were so certain they would be killed, that these little children were provided with plastic keys that were said to open the gates to paradise.
That’s not martyrdom; that’s mass murder of your own people. You indoctrinated those kids and sent them to their doom. And it didn’t stop with the war. Afterwards, you sent other children to walk across areas you suspected were mined, and many of them were sacrificed in the same way.
This barbarous campaign, of which you are so proud, and which you acclaim as a work of art, produced some particularly gruesome technical problems: according to one of your leading newspapers, many of those children were vaporized by the land mines, while others were blown to pieces, their body parts scattered over the earth. Your religious leaders insisted that everything be done to keep the bodies intact, and so at a certain point the children were sent to the mine fields wrapped tightly in blankets. Instead of charging bravely to eternity, they rolled across the ground. That way, their cadavers were more likely to hold together, and their families could be given the remains, wrapped in a bloody blanket, for burial.
Sending fighters into battles in which their leaders know many, or even most of them, are going to die is hardly new. The Russians did it in the First World War, for example, when the second ranks were not armed, but were told that there would be plenty of weapons available; they could just pry them from the hands of their dead comrades. But your massacre of the innocents is something uniquely dreadful.
Ironically, the notion that Muslims love death, thereby gaining an advantage against their life-loving adversaries, was first directed against your very own country, Iran itself, during the famous battle at Qadisiyya in 636, between the Muslim armies of Caliph Abu Bakr and the Persians. The Caliph sent a message to the Persians, calling upon them to conver t to Islam or pay onerous taxes and accept Muslim rule. Otherwise, he said, “you should know that I have come to you with an army of men that love death, as you love life.” (The Muslims won the battle, which marked the end of the Sassanid dynasty in Persia).
Such language during war is, so to speak, normal, but your deliberate mass sacrifice of your young, along with your ode to martyrdom, is different. It’s what the great Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno called “necrophilous” thinking, a pathological love of death.
Unamuno used that word in a face-to-face confrontation at the University of Salamanca, where he was the rector, with the famous Spanish general Millan Astray. The Spanish Civil War had just begun, and the general was celebrated in nationalistic circles for his motto, viva la muerte, Long Live Death. The general was a cripple, and Unamuno noted that the great Spanish writer, Cervantes, was also handicapped, and then he continued, “it pains me to think that General Milan Astray should dictate the pattern of mass psychology. A cripple who lacks the spiritual greatness of a Cervantes is wont to seek ominous relief in causing mutilation around him.” Unamuno denounced “Long Live Death” as a “necrophilous and senseless cry.”
Today, you are in the same position as General Milan Astray. Although you have not been wounded, your celebration of death is as necrophilous as the general’s. This is not a philosophical matter, despite your efforts to elevate it to the stature of aesthetics. It’s a disease, with well-known symptoms and consequences. People like you, who are fascinated by death are terribly destructive, of others and of themselves. You’re a textbook case.
Necrophilia is defined as:
The passionate attraction to all that is dead, decayed, putrid, sickly; it is the passion to transform that which is alive into something unalive; to destroy for the sake of destruction... It is the passion to tear apart living structures.
That is the language you use, especially about the Jews, the Israelis, and the Americans. It’s all about the rot of death, and the stink of death, as when you said that Israel is a “rotten and stinking corpse” that is destined to disappear, and you went on to proclaim that Israel “has reached the end like a dead rat.”
As I say, you’re a textbook case of mental illness. And we’re very well acquainted with the political consequences of your diseased mind. It’s all about fascism.
Fascists like you have always loved death. Hitler’s SS had a death skull on their insignia, and celebrated a brave death. As you say you do. And, like Hitler, you don’t just love death because of its aesthetics. You think that martyrs — suicide bombers, of whom you claim to have recruited some forty thousand, for example — have geopolitical significance. You say that “all independent nations are indebted to martyrs,” and your website modestly claims that the oppressed peoples of the world all love Iran’s leaders, particularly you and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (That doesn’t sound right at all, by the way. Have you polled the Burmese and the Chinese, or the North Koreans? I haven’t heard them singing your praises, frankly).
But there’s a big difference between you and the Nazi leaders. You, and your fellow Iranian leaders, don’t actually fight. With the exception of your Revolutionary Guards forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, very few Iranians put themselves on the line (and even your foreign legions rarely fight, and when they are captured, they often give us the information we need to defeat you, as we have in Iraq and soon will in Afghanistan). You lure others to die, but you’re not willing to put your own lives on the line. You talk a lot about the “culture of martyrdom,” but in practice it’s not Iranians who blow themselves up. I don’t know of a single case of an Iranian suicide bomber in Iraq or Afghanistan. They’re all Arabs: Saudis, north Africans, and the odd Syrian tossed in for ethnic balance. But not Iranians. All of which tells me that your big talk about martyrdom is phony. Martyrdom is for others — in the current campaign, others you and most other Iranians despise, like the Arabs — but you’re not about to blow yourself up, or send your comrades to blow yourselves up.
You’ve won the status of the world’s leading antisemite, which is not easy, and you’ve lied about it a lot. Indeed, you have denied — on CBS television — hating any religion, which is manifestly false; you’ve been seen on Iranian TV spouting venom against all non-Muslims, with special contempt for Christians and Jews. But, when you are talking to the infidels, you pretend to be tolerant. For a guy who has distinctly medieval convictions — your very literal belief in the imminent return of the Shiite messiah, your beloved Twelfth Imam, and the onset of the End of Days, for example — you’ve certainly mastered some of the nuances of contemporary Western politics. You never chant “death to the Jews!” It’s always “death to Israel!” Or “death to the Zionists!” Or “death to America!”
That’s entirely in keeping with the “new” antisemitism. It’s always about Zionists, or the Israel lobby, or the lackeys of Sharon. But every now and then you just can’t resist, and out it comes. Instead of remembering to say that you respect all monotheistic religions, you tell your followers “We are in the process of a historical war between the World of Arrogance and the Islamic world, and this war has been going on for hundreds of years.” Zionists haven’t been around that long. And your followers aren’t nearly as careful with their language as you are. The Iranian creation, Hezbollah, told us in 1992 that they were engaged in “ an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth.” And ten years later, the leader of the “Party of God,” Lebanese Sheikh Nasrallah, was quoted by the Lebanon Daily Star, encouraging all the Jews to move to Israel, the better to annihilate them in one blow. “If they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”
Your senior adviser, Mohammad Ali Ramin (said to be the man behind your infamous Holocaust Denial Conference), says the Jews have been accused of spreading deadly plagues throughout history because “they are very filthy people.” And, almost in the same breath, he added, “So long as Israel exists in the region there will never be peace and security in the Middle East...so the resolution of the Holocaust issue will end in the destruction of Israel.”
That you are engaged in a global campaign to destroy the Jews is evident from your actions as well as your words; Hezbollah and the Iranian regime were joint partners in the bombing of the Jewish Social Center in Buenos Aires in 1994.
There’s obviously a big difference for you between dead Muslims and dead Jews; it’s only your dead that count; ours don’t count as martyrs. This is the point of your infamous diatribes against the very idea of the Holocaust. “ (The Zionists and their agents) have concocted a myth of deprivation and innocence for the Jews of Europe,” you’ve said. “They use this pretext of the innocence of Jews and the suffering of some Jews during the Second World War...” We know all about that line, “the pretext of innocence.” It’s been the trademark of antisemites for centuries.
In short, you’re not what you say you are. You’re a poseur, a fraud, a vulgar chauvinist pretending to be an inspired religious leader. You’ve proclaimed Iran “the most powerful and independent country in the world.” The implication of that silly claim is that the weaker and dependent nations — that is, everyone else in the world — must bend to your will. You’ve said this more than once and in somewhat different ways, as when you said that the Iranian people must prepare themselves to rule the world.
Those statements are very surprising, coming from one of the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Those words put you in direct conflict with the founder, Ayatollah Rohallah Khomeini. On the Air France plane carrying him to Tehran, Khomeini famously proclaimed that nationalism was paganism, that he didn’t give a hoot about Iran, and that his revolution was for all of Islam, not for one country. Indeed, if Iran perished in order to advance the global triumph of Islam, it would be fine with him.
So what’s up with your pagan statement about the glory of Iran? You constantly claim to be the heir to Khomeini, a true believer in the imminent return of the 12th Imam, but as a matter of fact you embrace an heretical doctrine. The 12th Imam is supposed to bring about the global triumph of the Muslim peoples, as Khomeini said. Not Iran. And another thing: you often talk as if global chaos and conflagration were welcome, because it would hasten the Mahdi’s arrival. But Khomeini did not say that, nor did he act as if he believed it. Quite the contrary, in fact: When an Iranian passenger plane was accidentally shot down by an American missile, he didn’t welcome it at all; he surrendered. That American missile ended the Iran-Iraq war.
You’d do well to study the history of your own country, which so far as I know is the only one to have had a Jewish queen — Esther, of the Purim story. The Book of Esther recounts the life and death of one of your direct predecessors, the evil politician Haman, who convinced his ruler, Ahasverous, to order the massacre of the Jews of the Persian Empire. The Book of Esther nicely summarizes what happens to those, like you, who attempt to destroy the Jewish people. Haman and his sons were hanged; then, a few days later, in the fighting he had authorized, some 75,000 Persians were killed by their would-be Jewish victims, and Esther reigned.
It’s your destiny, too.
I don’t know exactly how you will be destroyed. There are many possible scenarios, most of which you’ve undoubtedly contemplated in your reflections on the beauty of death. My own favorite is to turn your own hate upon yourself and your regime, and fulfill your dream of a world without Jews. You don’t want to be contaminated by us, right? Very well, then we’ll seal you off from everyone and everything Jewish. The ultimate embargo: You’ll have no Jewish doctors or lawyers, no access to Jewish hospitals, you’ll be isolated from music or art by Jews, and everything invented by Jews. It’s quite a long list, including chemotherapy, the cure for syphilis, the polio vaccine, blue jeans, oral contraceptives, azathioprine (the first immuno suppressant used in organ transplants), septicemia (treatment for bacterial infections), the Barbie doll, hand-held video cameras, various antibiotics including streptomycin and penicillin, the push-up bra, and, of course, most everything nuclear (sorry about that) including the fission reactor (as you must know, the American atomic bomb began with a letter to President Roosevelt from two Jewish physicists, and the Manhattan Project involved numerous others).
Poetic justice, don’t you think? You’ll be throttled by your own bile.
By Michael Ledeen
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | To: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President
Islamic Republic of Iran
Tehran
Dear Mr. President,
I’m writing to you about death, one of your favorite themes. Your adult life has revolved around it. You’re from the Revolutionary Guards, the military organization that was created in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon in the 1970s. The then-incipient Revolutionary Guards were trained there by the expert terrorists of al Fatah, Yasser Arafat’s gang of killers (Sunnis, by the way, as you well know). One day, the camp was bombed by the Israelis, and a considerable number of your men were killed. Later on, the graduates entered Iran, and killed members of the shah’s security forces. Today, Revolutionary Guardsmen crush Iranian dissent at home, and they are on the prowl all over the world, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Buenos Aires, Argentina. So you’ve been around death for 30 years or more. Training for it, training others for it, and participating in it.
You glorify it. You think it’s beautiful. “Art reaches perfection when it portrays the best life and best death,” you’ve said. After all, art tells you how to live. That is the essence of art. Is there art that is more beautiful, more divine, and more eternal than the art of martyrdom? A nation with martyrdom knows no captivity. Those who wish to undermine this principle undermine the foundations of our independence and national security. They undermine the foundation of our eternity.
Interestingly, you talk about “independence” and “national security,” rather than the interests of Islam, or the Muslim community, or even the Shiites, your sect. I’ll come back to this odd language shortly.
You’re a veteran of one of the bloodiest wars of recent times, the Iran-Iraq conflict that probably cost your country more than a million dead and maimed. You extol that sacrifice, as any patriotic Persian would; Iran was invaded by Saddam Hussein’s armies, and the Iranian people defended their country, bravely and desperately.
But your praise of Iranian fighters isn’t limited to men shot down on the battlefield in that bloody war; you celebrate cases of what you call — and extol — “martyrdom.” I call it the deliberate, criminal slaughter of many tens of thousands of young children. Some of those kids were only 12 years old. They were sent across the battlefields into Iraqi territory, as human mine-detectors. They walked across the minefields, and got blown up. The Iraqi soldiers were so horrified that they shouted at the children to stop, to go back. But they didn’t; you’d indoctrinated or hypnotized them, and you wanted them to die. Indeed, you were so certain they would be killed, that these little children were provided with plastic keys that were said to open the gates to paradise.
That’s not martyrdom; that’s mass murder of your own people. You indoctrinated those kids and sent them to their doom. And it didn’t stop with the war. Afterwards, you sent other children to walk across areas you suspected were mined, and many of them were sacrificed in the same way.
This barbarous campaign, of which you are so proud, and which you acclaim as a work of art, produced some particularly gruesome technical problems: according to one of your leading newspapers, many of those children were vaporized by the land mines, while others were blown to pieces, their body parts scattered over the earth. Your religious leaders insisted that everything be done to keep the bodies intact, and so at a certain point the children were sent to the mine fields wrapped tightly in blankets. Instead of charging bravely to eternity, they rolled across the ground. That way, their cadavers were more likely to hold together, and their families could be given the remains, wrapped in a bloody blanket, for burial.
Sending fighters into battles in which their leaders know many, or even most of them, are going to die is hardly new. The Russians did it in the First World War, for example, when the second ranks were not armed, but were told that there would be plenty of weapons available; they could just pry them from the hands of their dead comrades. But your massacre of the innocents is something uniquely dreadful.
Ironically, the notion that Muslims love death, thereby gaining an advantage against their life-loving adversaries, was first directed against your very own country, Iran itself, during the famous battle at Qadisiyya in 636, between the Muslim armies of Caliph Abu Bakr and the Persians. The Caliph sent a message to the Persians, calling upon them to conver t to Islam or pay onerous taxes and accept Muslim rule. Otherwise, he said, “you should know that I have come to you with an army of men that love death, as you love life.” (The Muslims won the battle, which marked the end of the Sassanid dynasty in Persia).
Such language during war is, so to speak, normal, but your deliberate mass sacrifice of your young, along with your ode to martyrdom, is different. It’s what the great Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno called “necrophilous” thinking, a pathological love of death.
Unamuno used that word in a face-to-face confrontation at the University of Salamanca, where he was the rector, with the famous Spanish general Millan Astray. The Spanish Civil War had just begun, and the general was celebrated in nationalistic circles for his motto, viva la muerte, Long Live Death. The general was a cripple, and Unamuno noted that the great Spanish writer, Cervantes, was also handicapped, and then he continued, “it pains me to think that General Milan Astray should dictate the pattern of mass psychology. A cripple who lacks the spiritual greatness of a Cervantes is wont to seek ominous relief in causing mutilation around him.” Unamuno denounced “Long Live Death” as a “necrophilous and senseless cry.”
Today, you are in the same position as General Milan Astray. Although you have not been wounded, your celebration of death is as necrophilous as the general’s. This is not a philosophical matter, despite your efforts to elevate it to the stature of aesthetics. It’s a disease, with well-known symptoms and consequences. People like you, who are fascinated by death are terribly destructive, of others and of themselves. You’re a textbook case.
Necrophilia is defined as:
The passionate attraction to all that is dead, decayed, putrid, sickly; it is the passion to transform that which is alive into something unalive; to destroy for the sake of destruction... It is the passion to tear apart living structures.
That is the language you use, especially about the Jews, the Israelis, and the Americans. It’s all about the rot of death, and the stink of death, as when you said that Israel is a “rotten and stinking corpse” that is destined to disappear, and you went on to proclaim that Israel “has reached the end like a dead rat.”
As I say, you’re a textbook case of mental illness. And we’re very well acquainted with the political consequences of your diseased mind. It’s all about fascism.
Fascists like you have always loved death. Hitler’s SS had a death skull on their insignia, and celebrated a brave death. As you say you do. And, like Hitler, you don’t just love death because of its aesthetics. You think that martyrs — suicide bombers, of whom you claim to have recruited some forty thousand, for example — have geopolitical significance. You say that “all independent nations are indebted to martyrs,” and your website modestly claims that the oppressed peoples of the world all love Iran’s leaders, particularly you and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (That doesn’t sound right at all, by the way. Have you polled the Burmese and the Chinese, or the North Koreans? I haven’t heard them singing your praises, frankly).
But there’s a big difference between you and the Nazi leaders. You, and your fellow Iranian leaders, don’t actually fight. With the exception of your Revolutionary Guards forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, very few Iranians put themselves on the line (and even your foreign legions rarely fight, and when they are captured, they often give us the information we need to defeat you, as we have in Iraq and soon will in Afghanistan). You lure others to die, but you’re not willing to put your own lives on the line. You talk a lot about the “culture of martyrdom,” but in practice it’s not Iranians who blow themselves up. I don’t know of a single case of an Iranian suicide bomber in Iraq or Afghanistan. They’re all Arabs: Saudis, north Africans, and the odd Syrian tossed in for ethnic balance. But not Iranians. All of which tells me that your big talk about martyrdom is phony. Martyrdom is for others — in the current campaign, others you and most other Iranians despise, like the Arabs — but you’re not about to blow yourself up, or send your comrades to blow yourselves up.
You’ve won the status of the world’s leading antisemite, which is not easy, and you’ve lied about it a lot. Indeed, you have denied — on CBS television — hating any religion, which is manifestly false; you’ve been seen on Iranian TV spouting venom against all non-Muslims, with special contempt for Christians and Jews. But, when you are talking to the infidels, you pretend to be tolerant. For a guy who has distinctly medieval convictions — your very literal belief in the imminent return of the Shiite messiah, your beloved Twelfth Imam, and the onset of the End of Days, for example — you’ve certainly mastered some of the nuances of contemporary Western politics. You never chant “death to the Jews!” It’s always “death to Israel!” Or “death to the Zionists!” Or “death to America!”
That’s entirely in keeping with the “new” antisemitism. It’s always about Zionists, or the Israel lobby, or the lackeys of Sharon. But every now and then you just can’t resist, and out it comes. Instead of remembering to say that you respect all monotheistic religions, you tell your followers “We are in the process of a historical war between the World of Arrogance and the Islamic world, and this war has been going on for hundreds of years.” Zionists haven’t been around that long. And your followers aren’t nearly as careful with their language as you are. The Iranian creation, Hezbollah, told us in 1992 that they were engaged in “ an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth.” And ten years later, the leader of the “Party of God,” Lebanese Sheikh Nasrallah, was quoted by the Lebanon Daily Star, encouraging all the Jews to move to Israel, the better to annihilate them in one blow. “If they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”
Your senior adviser, Mohammad Ali Ramin (said to be the man behind your infamous Holocaust Denial Conference), says the Jews have been accused of spreading deadly plagues throughout history because “they are very filthy people.” And, almost in the same breath, he added, “So long as Israel exists in the region there will never be peace and security in the Middle East...so the resolution of the Holocaust issue will end in the destruction of Israel.”
That you are engaged in a global campaign to destroy the Jews is evident from your actions as well as your words; Hezbollah and the Iranian regime were joint partners in the bombing of the Jewish Social Center in Buenos Aires in 1994.
There’s obviously a big difference for you between dead Muslims and dead Jews; it’s only your dead that count; ours don’t count as martyrs. This is the point of your infamous diatribes against the very idea of the Holocaust. “ (The Zionists and their agents) have concocted a myth of deprivation and innocence for the Jews of Europe,” you’ve said. “They use this pretext of the innocence of Jews and the suffering of some Jews during the Second World War...” We know all about that line, “the pretext of innocence.” It’s been the trademark of antisemites for centuries.
In short, you’re not what you say you are. You’re a poseur, a fraud, a vulgar chauvinist pretending to be an inspired religious leader. You’ve proclaimed Iran “the most powerful and independent country in the world.” The implication of that silly claim is that the weaker and dependent nations — that is, everyone else in the world — must bend to your will. You’ve said this more than once and in somewhat different ways, as when you said that the Iranian people must prepare themselves to rule the world.
Those statements are very surprising, coming from one of the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Those words put you in direct conflict with the founder, Ayatollah Rohallah Khomeini. On the Air France plane carrying him to Tehran, Khomeini famously proclaimed that nationalism was paganism, that he didn’t give a hoot about Iran, and that his revolution was for all of Islam, not for one country. Indeed, if Iran perished in order to advance the global triumph of Islam, it would be fine with him.
So what’s up with your pagan statement about the glory of Iran? You constantly claim to be the heir to Khomeini, a true believer in the imminent return of the 12th Imam, but as a matter of fact you embrace an heretical doctrine. The 12th Imam is supposed to bring about the global triumph of the Muslim peoples, as Khomeini said. Not Iran. And another thing: you often talk as if global chaos and conflagration were welcome, because it would hasten the Mahdi’s arrival. But Khomeini did not say that, nor did he act as if he believed it. Quite the contrary, in fact: When an Iranian passenger plane was accidentally shot down by an American missile, he didn’t welcome it at all; he surrendered. That American missile ended the Iran-Iraq war.
You’d do well to study the history of your own country, which so far as I know is the only one to have had a Jewish queen — Esther, of the Purim story. The Book of Esther recounts the life and death of one of your direct predecessors, the evil politician Haman, who convinced his ruler, Ahasverous, to order the massacre of the Jews of the Persian Empire. The Book of Esther nicely summarizes what happens to those, like you, who attempt to destroy the Jewish people. Haman and his sons were hanged; then, a few days later, in the fighting he had authorized, some 75,000 Persians were killed by their would-be Jewish victims, and Esther reigned.
It’s your destiny, too.
I don’t know exactly how you will be destroyed. There are many possible scenarios, most of which you’ve undoubtedly contemplated in your reflections on the beauty of death. My own favorite is to turn your own hate upon yourself and your regime, and fulfill your dream of a world without Jews. You don’t want to be contaminated by us, right? Very well, then we’ll seal you off from everyone and everything Jewish. The ultimate embargo: You’ll have no Jewish doctors or lawyers, no access to Jewish hospitals, you’ll be isolated from music or art by Jews, and everything invented by Jews. It’s quite a long list, including chemotherapy, the cure for syphilis, the polio vaccine, blue jeans, oral contraceptives, azathioprine (the first immuno suppressant used in organ transplants), septicemia (treatment for bacterial infections), the Barbie doll, hand-held video cameras, various antibiotics including streptomycin and penicillin, the push-up bra, and, of course, most everything nuclear (sorry about that) including the fission reactor (as you must know, the American atomic bomb began with a letter to President Roosevelt from two Jewish physicists, and the Manhattan Project involved numerous others).
Poetic justice, don’t you think? You’ll be throttled by your own bile.
Making Peace With the 60s
David Burner's Making Peace With the 60s
The second counter-proposition, in its scholarly form, belongs almost entirely to American historians of the United States. It is the position that the things that happened in the sixties--there is full recognition that distinctive things did happen--on the whole had harmful effects on the societies in which they happened. The polemical form we have already met in the words I quoted from Margaret Thatcher. The more scholarly version, in its application to the United States, is well expressed in the title Allen J. Matusow chose for his general history of America in the period, The Unraveling of American Society, a theme not dissimilar to that expressed in the title of an earlier book by W. L. O'Neik, Coming Apart; recent versions of the `unraveling' thesis are John M. Blum's Years of Discord and David Burner's Making Peace With the 60s. In Destructive Generation, former radicals Peter Collier and David Horowitz maintained that sixties developments turned American society `into a collection of splinter groups'. All of these historians were deeply sympathetic to the liberal reform policies of President J. F. Kennedy and his advisers, as they were to the entire civil rights movement. They were profoundly shocked by the assassination of Kennedy in 1963, and then by the assassinations in 1968 of Martin Luther King and of Robert Kennedy. They deplored the way in which social welfare programmes were curtailed as a result of the colossal expenditure on the Vietnam war; even more they regretted the bitter divisions in American society provoked by that war, the often violent demonstrations, and the still more violent repressions by the police. They were shocked, again, by the split in the civil rights movement after 1964, with blacks moving towards violence and separatism; shocked too by the destructive and murderous rioting in the black ghettos in the major cities. They had put faith in the liberal instincts of the Democratic party, then found that party in utter turmoil by 1968, before its defeat by Richard Nixon and the Republicans. Havoc, largely involving white students and white police, was wreaked in 1968 and 1969; attacks by the secret terrorist organization, the Weathermen, continued into 1970, which was also the year in which white student protesters were shot dead at Kent State University. Horrific events, indeed. But they were not, in my view, indications of new fractures in American society; they were indications rather that fractures which had long existed and had been too long ignored were now being brought out into the open. The Vietnam War was a tragedy and a crime; but by 1973-4 the anti-war cause had achieved a wonderful victory. Despite the advent to power of Nixon and the Republicans, welfare programmes did continue, and in some cases were actually improved. American socially did not `unravel': forms of discrimination continued, but blacks did win basic civil rights, and some prospered as never before.
It will be a major theme of this book that it is a mistake to concentrate on politics and changes of government: the social and cultural movements I am concerned with continued largely irrespective of the political complexions of governments. If we look outside America, it is true that racial discrimination got worse in both Britain and France from about 1968 onwards. It is also indisputably true that in 1969-70 a new era of terrorism and violence, `the years of the bullet', began in Italy. We are not studying a `golden age'--there are no golden ages--and many appalling events took place in the sixties. We may well throw up our hands in horror, but we must also make long-term assessments. Italy survived its crisis, as America did not `come apart': on the other hand, it will be argued in this book, the true gains of the sixties proved enduring.
We now come to the most fraught field of contention when it comes to the scholarly analysis of the sixties, as well as the popular mythology. This counter-proposition is inextricably bound up with the arguments and debates which actually took place in the sixties, since most of the activists and protesters at the time themselves believed in it. At its heart lies what I shall call the Great Marxisant Fallacy: the belief that the society we inhabit is the bad bourgeois society, but that, fortunately, this society is in a state of crisis, so that the good society which lies just around the corner can be easily attained if only we work systematically to destroy the language, the values, the culture, the ideology of bourgeois society. (I say `Marxisant' because I am speaking of a broad metaphysical view about history and about how society works, derived from Marxism, but forming the basis for the structuralism, post-structuralism, and theories of ideology and language developed in the sixties.) In reality the society we live in has evolved through complex historical processes, very different from the Marxist nonsense about `the bourgeoisie' overthrowing the feudal aristocracy. It contains genuinely democratic elements as well as gross inequalities and abuses of power; the only thing we can do is to work as systematically and rationally as possible to reform that society. In the eyes of the upholders of the Great Marxisant Fallacy, of course, that opinion condemns me as a dupe of bourgeois ideology. Practically all the activists, student protesters, hippies, yippies, Situationists, advocates of psychedelic liberation, participants in be-ins and rock festivals, proponents of free love, members of the underground, and advocates of Black Power, women's liberation, and gay liberation believed that by engaging in struggles, giving witness, or simply doing their own thing they were contributing to the final collapse of bad bourgeois society. To say that is not to withold admiration from the activism and the idealism, nor to deny the many positive achievements of the protesters; but it is to recognize that their ultimate objectives were based on a fundamental fallacy. There was never any possibility of a revolution; there was never any possibility of a `counter-culture' replacing `bourgeois' culture. Modern society is highly complex with respect to the distribution of power, authority, and influence. Just as it was not formed by the simple overthrow of the aristocracy by the bourgeoisie, so, in its contemporary form, it does not consist simply of a bourgeois ruling class and a proletariat. Contemporary societies, as I shall stress throughout this book, are certainly class societies--using `class' as the ordinary people we shall be studying (as distinct from the ideologists and activists) used the term when, say, they talked of `upper-class education', `upper-middle-class professions', `lower-middle-class leisure activities', or `working-class housing', and not in the loaded Marxist way with its assumptions of class conflict and class ideologies.
Mention of the term `counter-culture' brings me to one of the most important aspects of the whole muddied field of controversy we are now tramping our way through. One of the most basic problems in the production and consumption of history is that many of the most important words we have to use are actually used in different ways, that is to say, have different meanings. `Culture' is one of the classic instances. Often the word is used as a collective noun embracing opera, painting, poetry, and so on, broadly what is dealt with in the arts, entertainments, and books pages of our posher newspapers. Sometimes `popular culture' is also spoken of, referring to films, popular music, romantic, crime, and other less ambitious fiction, and, perhaps, spectating at football matches. Sometimes in this book I use `culture' in that way--there is no space for elaborate reformulations. But when we come to terms like `counter-culture', `culture' is being used in a wider sense to mean `the network or totality of attitudes, values and practices of a particular group of human beings'. This definition is far from solving all of our problems, because much uncertainty remains as to the size of the `group of human beings' which would be appropriate. One might speak of American culture, or of aristocratic culture, or of youth culture, or, perhaps, of Western culture, signifying `the Western way of life'--all the attitudes and values and practices springing from the traditions of ancient Athens, modified by Christian religion, by the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, by the French Revolution, by Romanticism, by overseas conquests and colonialism, by the upheavals of the twentieth century. A single `culture', obviously, may be very big, or it may be quite small, depending upon the context in which the concept is being used. For myself, I intend throughout this book (though such is the slippery nature of language that it is always difficult to achieve total obedience even to self-imposed rules) to use the word `subculture' where I want to drive home the point that the `network' I am speaking of is, in the last analysis, a part of a larger network, or culture. Thus I speak of `youth subculture', because I do not believe that there was a `youth culture' which ever became completely independent of, or alternative to, the larger culture involving parents, educational institutions, commercial companies, technology, and the mass media. Indeed, it is one of the absolutely fundamental contentions of this book that the essence of what happened in the sixties is that large numbers of new subcultures, were created, which then expanded and interacted with each other, thus creating the pullulating flux which characterizes the era. I shall return to that, but meantime let us stick with the concept of `counter-culture'.
The term does originate within the period (1958-74) itself: those indulging in the various practices and activities I have already listed began to feel themselves to constitute a counter-culture. It was introduced to a limited audience by a young American academic, Theodore Roszak, in an article, `Youth and the Great Refusal' published in The Nation on 25 March 1968:
The counter culture is the embryonic cultural base of New Left politics, the effort to discover new types of community, new family patterns, new sexual mores, new kinds of livelihood, new aesthetic forms, new personal identities on the far side of power politics, the bourgeois home, and the Protestant work ethic.
The term went into wide usage when Roszak put together a number of previously published essays as a book and called the book The Making of a Counter Culture. Readers of the over-written and elaborately rhetorical introduction which Roszak wrote specially for this potential (and actual) bestseller perhaps did not notice how muted his claims actually were on behalf of his counter-culture: he surmised that it might over the next four generations `transform this disoriented civilization of ours into something a human being can identify as home'. His counter-culture consisted of `a strict minority of the young and a handful of their adult mentors': it was opposed to `technocratic society', and drew its ideas from `the psychology of alienation, oriental mysticism, psychedelic drugs, and communitarian experiments'. In the same year another young professional, Charles Reich, in an even more speculative and less precise work, The Greening of America, suggesting that adoption of the new lifestyles and new ways of thinking would completely transform the world. These books give us insights into concerns of the time about the spoliation caused by the unrestrained application of technology and into some of the euphoric responses; they cannot be taken as embodying authoritative historical assessments. For myself, I accept that the term `counter-culture' was and is widely used, and that most people have a firm sense of what it signifies: my position is that it is a convenient term, valuable if it is deployed in the manner of everyday usage but dangerous if it is taken to imply any Marxisant assumptions about the dialectic, the overthrow of bourgeois society, the triumph of the alternative society. (The theory of the dialectic, I should explain, poses a sharp conflict between existing (bourgeois) culture and an oppositional culture, this conflict resulting in a new stage in human development, a new culture or society--there is no more evidence for the existence of `the dialectic' than there is for the existence of `the Holy Ghost'.)
It is, then, perfectly legitimate to use the term `counter-culture' to refer to the many and varied activities and values which contrasted with, or were critical of, the conventional values and modes of established society: the contrast, in slightly hackneyed common usage, is between `counter-culture' and `mainstream culture'. These are terms I shall occasionally use in this book, though my preference is for using the adjective, `counter-cultural', rather than the substantive, `counter-culture'. The crucial point is that there was no unified, integrated counter-culture totally and consistently in opposition to mainstream culture. When I demonstrate the many commercial transactions between those who probably saw themselves as mainly belonging to counter-culture, and those who indisputably belonged to money-making mainstream culture, I am not condemning or mocking the former. We can none of us escape from the larger culture to which we belong--and, in any case, there is nothing inherently objectionable about commercial transactions. Pointing out that hippies and drop-outs, while in some ways making the most complete break from mainstream society, did absolutely nothing to further the reform, let alone the supercession, of that society is not to condemn or mock them either, but merely to point out that what is called the counter-culture was in reality made up of a large number of very varied subcultures. Sometimes commentators, particularly those writing on American society, make a distinction between the counter-culture and `the Movement' or `the New Left': there is no rigid distinction, but in speaking of counter-culture the emphasis is on dress, general values, lifestyles, leisure activities, while in speaking of the Movement or the New Left the preoccupation is entirely with those who were genuinely politically active and took part in protests and demonstrations. The British `New Left', a more restricted grouping of non-dogmatic Marxists, appeared in the fifties; in France and Italy the term `New Left' is applied to the non-Communist radical groups consolidating in the later sixties, above all the `student movement'. These are convenient labels and it is sensible to make use of them, provided always that they are not made to carry a greater load of assumptions and implications than they can bear, and that their deployment is not made a substitute for fully substantiated explanations.
The second counter-proposition, in its scholarly form, belongs almost entirely to American historians of the United States. It is the position that the things that happened in the sixties--there is full recognition that distinctive things did happen--on the whole had harmful effects on the societies in which they happened. The polemical form we have already met in the words I quoted from Margaret Thatcher. The more scholarly version, in its application to the United States, is well expressed in the title Allen J. Matusow chose for his general history of America in the period, The Unraveling of American Society, a theme not dissimilar to that expressed in the title of an earlier book by W. L. O'Neik, Coming Apart; recent versions of the `unraveling' thesis are John M. Blum's Years of Discord and David Burner's Making Peace With the 60s. In Destructive Generation, former radicals Peter Collier and David Horowitz maintained that sixties developments turned American society `into a collection of splinter groups'. All of these historians were deeply sympathetic to the liberal reform policies of President J. F. Kennedy and his advisers, as they were to the entire civil rights movement. They were profoundly shocked by the assassination of Kennedy in 1963, and then by the assassinations in 1968 of Martin Luther King and of Robert Kennedy. They deplored the way in which social welfare programmes were curtailed as a result of the colossal expenditure on the Vietnam war; even more they regretted the bitter divisions in American society provoked by that war, the often violent demonstrations, and the still more violent repressions by the police. They were shocked, again, by the split in the civil rights movement after 1964, with blacks moving towards violence and separatism; shocked too by the destructive and murderous rioting in the black ghettos in the major cities. They had put faith in the liberal instincts of the Democratic party, then found that party in utter turmoil by 1968, before its defeat by Richard Nixon and the Republicans. Havoc, largely involving white students and white police, was wreaked in 1968 and 1969; attacks by the secret terrorist organization, the Weathermen, continued into 1970, which was also the year in which white student protesters were shot dead at Kent State University. Horrific events, indeed. But they were not, in my view, indications of new fractures in American society; they were indications rather that fractures which had long existed and had been too long ignored were now being brought out into the open. The Vietnam War was a tragedy and a crime; but by 1973-4 the anti-war cause had achieved a wonderful victory. Despite the advent to power of Nixon and the Republicans, welfare programmes did continue, and in some cases were actually improved. American socially did not `unravel': forms of discrimination continued, but blacks did win basic civil rights, and some prospered as never before.
It will be a major theme of this book that it is a mistake to concentrate on politics and changes of government: the social and cultural movements I am concerned with continued largely irrespective of the political complexions of governments. If we look outside America, it is true that racial discrimination got worse in both Britain and France from about 1968 onwards. It is also indisputably true that in 1969-70 a new era of terrorism and violence, `the years of the bullet', began in Italy. We are not studying a `golden age'--there are no golden ages--and many appalling events took place in the sixties. We may well throw up our hands in horror, but we must also make long-term assessments. Italy survived its crisis, as America did not `come apart': on the other hand, it will be argued in this book, the true gains of the sixties proved enduring.
We now come to the most fraught field of contention when it comes to the scholarly analysis of the sixties, as well as the popular mythology. This counter-proposition is inextricably bound up with the arguments and debates which actually took place in the sixties, since most of the activists and protesters at the time themselves believed in it. At its heart lies what I shall call the Great Marxisant Fallacy: the belief that the society we inhabit is the bad bourgeois society, but that, fortunately, this society is in a state of crisis, so that the good society which lies just around the corner can be easily attained if only we work systematically to destroy the language, the values, the culture, the ideology of bourgeois society. (I say `Marxisant' because I am speaking of a broad metaphysical view about history and about how society works, derived from Marxism, but forming the basis for the structuralism, post-structuralism, and theories of ideology and language developed in the sixties.) In reality the society we live in has evolved through complex historical processes, very different from the Marxist nonsense about `the bourgeoisie' overthrowing the feudal aristocracy. It contains genuinely democratic elements as well as gross inequalities and abuses of power; the only thing we can do is to work as systematically and rationally as possible to reform that society. In the eyes of the upholders of the Great Marxisant Fallacy, of course, that opinion condemns me as a dupe of bourgeois ideology. Practically all the activists, student protesters, hippies, yippies, Situationists, advocates of psychedelic liberation, participants in be-ins and rock festivals, proponents of free love, members of the underground, and advocates of Black Power, women's liberation, and gay liberation believed that by engaging in struggles, giving witness, or simply doing their own thing they were contributing to the final collapse of bad bourgeois society. To say that is not to withold admiration from the activism and the idealism, nor to deny the many positive achievements of the protesters; but it is to recognize that their ultimate objectives were based on a fundamental fallacy. There was never any possibility of a revolution; there was never any possibility of a `counter-culture' replacing `bourgeois' culture. Modern society is highly complex with respect to the distribution of power, authority, and influence. Just as it was not formed by the simple overthrow of the aristocracy by the bourgeoisie, so, in its contemporary form, it does not consist simply of a bourgeois ruling class and a proletariat. Contemporary societies, as I shall stress throughout this book, are certainly class societies--using `class' as the ordinary people we shall be studying (as distinct from the ideologists and activists) used the term when, say, they talked of `upper-class education', `upper-middle-class professions', `lower-middle-class leisure activities', or `working-class housing', and not in the loaded Marxist way with its assumptions of class conflict and class ideologies.
Mention of the term `counter-culture' brings me to one of the most important aspects of the whole muddied field of controversy we are now tramping our way through. One of the most basic problems in the production and consumption of history is that many of the most important words we have to use are actually used in different ways, that is to say, have different meanings. `Culture' is one of the classic instances. Often the word is used as a collective noun embracing opera, painting, poetry, and so on, broadly what is dealt with in the arts, entertainments, and books pages of our posher newspapers. Sometimes `popular culture' is also spoken of, referring to films, popular music, romantic, crime, and other less ambitious fiction, and, perhaps, spectating at football matches. Sometimes in this book I use `culture' in that way--there is no space for elaborate reformulations. But when we come to terms like `counter-culture', `culture' is being used in a wider sense to mean `the network or totality of attitudes, values and practices of a particular group of human beings'. This definition is far from solving all of our problems, because much uncertainty remains as to the size of the `group of human beings' which would be appropriate. One might speak of American culture, or of aristocratic culture, or of youth culture, or, perhaps, of Western culture, signifying `the Western way of life'--all the attitudes and values and practices springing from the traditions of ancient Athens, modified by Christian religion, by the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, by the French Revolution, by Romanticism, by overseas conquests and colonialism, by the upheavals of the twentieth century. A single `culture', obviously, may be very big, or it may be quite small, depending upon the context in which the concept is being used. For myself, I intend throughout this book (though such is the slippery nature of language that it is always difficult to achieve total obedience even to self-imposed rules) to use the word `subculture' where I want to drive home the point that the `network' I am speaking of is, in the last analysis, a part of a larger network, or culture. Thus I speak of `youth subculture', because I do not believe that there was a `youth culture' which ever became completely independent of, or alternative to, the larger culture involving parents, educational institutions, commercial companies, technology, and the mass media. Indeed, it is one of the absolutely fundamental contentions of this book that the essence of what happened in the sixties is that large numbers of new subcultures, were created, which then expanded and interacted with each other, thus creating the pullulating flux which characterizes the era. I shall return to that, but meantime let us stick with the concept of `counter-culture'.
The term does originate within the period (1958-74) itself: those indulging in the various practices and activities I have already listed began to feel themselves to constitute a counter-culture. It was introduced to a limited audience by a young American academic, Theodore Roszak, in an article, `Youth and the Great Refusal' published in The Nation on 25 March 1968:
The counter culture is the embryonic cultural base of New Left politics, the effort to discover new types of community, new family patterns, new sexual mores, new kinds of livelihood, new aesthetic forms, new personal identities on the far side of power politics, the bourgeois home, and the Protestant work ethic.
The term went into wide usage when Roszak put together a number of previously published essays as a book and called the book The Making of a Counter Culture. Readers of the over-written and elaborately rhetorical introduction which Roszak wrote specially for this potential (and actual) bestseller perhaps did not notice how muted his claims actually were on behalf of his counter-culture: he surmised that it might over the next four generations `transform this disoriented civilization of ours into something a human being can identify as home'. His counter-culture consisted of `a strict minority of the young and a handful of their adult mentors': it was opposed to `technocratic society', and drew its ideas from `the psychology of alienation, oriental mysticism, psychedelic drugs, and communitarian experiments'. In the same year another young professional, Charles Reich, in an even more speculative and less precise work, The Greening of America, suggesting that adoption of the new lifestyles and new ways of thinking would completely transform the world. These books give us insights into concerns of the time about the spoliation caused by the unrestrained application of technology and into some of the euphoric responses; they cannot be taken as embodying authoritative historical assessments. For myself, I accept that the term `counter-culture' was and is widely used, and that most people have a firm sense of what it signifies: my position is that it is a convenient term, valuable if it is deployed in the manner of everyday usage but dangerous if it is taken to imply any Marxisant assumptions about the dialectic, the overthrow of bourgeois society, the triumph of the alternative society. (The theory of the dialectic, I should explain, poses a sharp conflict between existing (bourgeois) culture and an oppositional culture, this conflict resulting in a new stage in human development, a new culture or society--there is no more evidence for the existence of `the dialectic' than there is for the existence of `the Holy Ghost'.)
It is, then, perfectly legitimate to use the term `counter-culture' to refer to the many and varied activities and values which contrasted with, or were critical of, the conventional values and modes of established society: the contrast, in slightly hackneyed common usage, is between `counter-culture' and `mainstream culture'. These are terms I shall occasionally use in this book, though my preference is for using the adjective, `counter-cultural', rather than the substantive, `counter-culture'. The crucial point is that there was no unified, integrated counter-culture totally and consistently in opposition to mainstream culture. When I demonstrate the many commercial transactions between those who probably saw themselves as mainly belonging to counter-culture, and those who indisputably belonged to money-making mainstream culture, I am not condemning or mocking the former. We can none of us escape from the larger culture to which we belong--and, in any case, there is nothing inherently objectionable about commercial transactions. Pointing out that hippies and drop-outs, while in some ways making the most complete break from mainstream society, did absolutely nothing to further the reform, let alone the supercession, of that society is not to condemn or mock them either, but merely to point out that what is called the counter-culture was in reality made up of a large number of very varied subcultures. Sometimes commentators, particularly those writing on American society, make a distinction between the counter-culture and `the Movement' or `the New Left': there is no rigid distinction, but in speaking of counter-culture the emphasis is on dress, general values, lifestyles, leisure activities, while in speaking of the Movement or the New Left the preoccupation is entirely with those who were genuinely politically active and took part in protests and demonstrations. The British `New Left', a more restricted grouping of non-dogmatic Marxists, appeared in the fifties; in France and Italy the term `New Left' is applied to the non-Communist radical groups consolidating in the later sixties, above all the `student movement'. These are convenient labels and it is sensible to make use of them, provided always that they are not made to carry a greater load of assumptions and implications than they can bear, and that their deployment is not made a substitute for fully substantiated explanations.
VELIKOVSKY WORLDS IN COLLISION.
Velikovsky was born on June 10, 1895, in Sosoniki near Vitebsk (present day Belarus), in Russia. He was the third son of Simon Yehiel Velikovsky and Beila-Rachel, born Grodenski. Velikovsky studied medicine at the University of Montpelier in the South of France (1913), at the University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland (1914), and at Kharkov University (1914-1918). He received his M.D. degree from the University of Moscow in 1921.
Between 1921 and 1923 he took different post graduate courses in Berlin at the Charité and at the Kaiser Wilhelm Academie. While in Berlin he was involved in the founding and editing of the Scripta Universitatis, which is a collection of works in the sciences and in the fields of Judaica and Orientalia, and for which Albert Einstein prepared the mathematical-physical section. Velikovsky's work on the Scripta ultimately led to the birth of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
It was also in Berlin that he met the violinist Elisheva Kramer, and they got married in 1923. They had two daughters, Shulamit and Ruth Ruhama. From 1924 to 1939 Velikovsky and his family lived in Palestine where in 1928 he began his specialization in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. He also worked at the Brain Institute of Monakow in Zurich, Switzerland, and studied psychoanalysis under Wilhelm Stekel in Vienna, Austria, in 1933. Dr. Velikovsky and his family moved to the United States and settled in New York City in 1939, where he conducted his research at Columbia University. The family later moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where Velikovsky got reacquainted with Albert Einstein.
As he was working on a book on Freud and his work on Moses and Akhenaton, he began his research on the history of Egypt, Greece, and the Jewish past. In 1940 he conceived the ideas that would lead to his writing of Ages in Chaos and Worlds in Collision. He concluded that a natural catastrophe had taken place at the time of the Israelites' Exodus from Egypt, and found a similar record in an obscure papyrus, in Leiden, Holland which parallels the Book of Exodus. He discovered the reason for the catastrophe was mentioned in the Book of Joshua that says that a destructive shower of meteorites occurred before the sun stood still in the sky, and that Venus played a role in all this. He used this catastrophe, which brought the downfall of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, as a starting point from which to synchronize the history of Ancient Egypt and that of Israel. This work was titled Ages in Chaos.
His most criticized work, Worlds in Collision, completed in 1946, states that around the 15th century B.C. a comet (now called the planet Venus) separated from Jupiter, and passed near the Earth, changing its orbit and axis and causing innumerable catastrophes. Fifty two years later, it passed close by again, stopping the Earth's rotation, and causing more catastrophes. In the 8th and 7th centuries B.C. Venus and Mars almost collided near Earth, causing another round of disasters, after which the current celestial order was established. All these events had a profound effect on the lives and beliefs of mankind.
After more than a dozen publishers rejected both manuscripts, Macmillan published Worlds in Collision, in 1950. A few weeks before the book was released, it was widely publicized in Harper's Magazine (January 1950) with an article by Eric Larrabee titled "The Day the Sun Stood Still". There was also an article by Fulton Oursler in Reader's Digest (March 1950), and one by Gordon Atwater who was the curator of Hayden Planetarium and chairman of the Department of Astronomy at the Museum of Natural History.
After the publication of the book, many scientists were very critical of it, mainly Dr. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Phillips Astronomer at Harvard College, Dr. Harlow Shapley of the Harvard University Observatory, who called Velikovsky's theory "rubbish and nonsense" (Science Newsletter, February 25, 1950), and later Carl Sagan, also of Harvard University.
Due to the threats of many scientists and academic institutions to boycott Macmillan's scientific textbook department, Macmillan ceased publication of the book, even though it had reached the number one spot on the best-sellers' list, and the publishing rights were transferred to Doubleday and Company.
In 1952 Doubleday published the first volume of Ages in Chaos. A sequel, extending Velikovsky's reconstruction of historical events, was supposed to follow, but it was re-worked and enlarged to two volumes, Ramses II and His Time and Peoples of the Sea. In 1955 Earth in Upheaval was published. Here Velikovsky presented geological and paleontological evidence to prove the theories he presented in Worlds in Collision. In 1960, Oedipus and Akhnaton was published.
Box 49, Item 13
Pluto
Box 49, Item 14
The Rotation of the Planets
Box 49, Item 15
The Sun
Box 49, Item 16
The Moon
Box 49, Item 17
Cosmic Rays
Box 49, Item 18
Cosmic Changes
Between 1921 and 1923 he took different post graduate courses in Berlin at the Charité and at the Kaiser Wilhelm Academie. While in Berlin he was involved in the founding and editing of the Scripta Universitatis, which is a collection of works in the sciences and in the fields of Judaica and Orientalia, and for which Albert Einstein prepared the mathematical-physical section. Velikovsky's work on the Scripta ultimately led to the birth of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
It was also in Berlin that he met the violinist Elisheva Kramer, and they got married in 1923. They had two daughters, Shulamit and Ruth Ruhama. From 1924 to 1939 Velikovsky and his family lived in Palestine where in 1928 he began his specialization in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. He also worked at the Brain Institute of Monakow in Zurich, Switzerland, and studied psychoanalysis under Wilhelm Stekel in Vienna, Austria, in 1933. Dr. Velikovsky and his family moved to the United States and settled in New York City in 1939, where he conducted his research at Columbia University. The family later moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where Velikovsky got reacquainted with Albert Einstein.
As he was working on a book on Freud and his work on Moses and Akhenaton, he began his research on the history of Egypt, Greece, and the Jewish past. In 1940 he conceived the ideas that would lead to his writing of Ages in Chaos and Worlds in Collision. He concluded that a natural catastrophe had taken place at the time of the Israelites' Exodus from Egypt, and found a similar record in an obscure papyrus, in Leiden, Holland which parallels the Book of Exodus. He discovered the reason for the catastrophe was mentioned in the Book of Joshua that says that a destructive shower of meteorites occurred before the sun stood still in the sky, and that Venus played a role in all this. He used this catastrophe, which brought the downfall of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, as a starting point from which to synchronize the history of Ancient Egypt and that of Israel. This work was titled Ages in Chaos.
His most criticized work, Worlds in Collision, completed in 1946, states that around the 15th century B.C. a comet (now called the planet Venus) separated from Jupiter, and passed near the Earth, changing its orbit and axis and causing innumerable catastrophes. Fifty two years later, it passed close by again, stopping the Earth's rotation, and causing more catastrophes. In the 8th and 7th centuries B.C. Venus and Mars almost collided near Earth, causing another round of disasters, after which the current celestial order was established. All these events had a profound effect on the lives and beliefs of mankind.
After more than a dozen publishers rejected both manuscripts, Macmillan published Worlds in Collision, in 1950. A few weeks before the book was released, it was widely publicized in Harper's Magazine (January 1950) with an article by Eric Larrabee titled "The Day the Sun Stood Still". There was also an article by Fulton Oursler in Reader's Digest (March 1950), and one by Gordon Atwater who was the curator of Hayden Planetarium and chairman of the Department of Astronomy at the Museum of Natural History.
After the publication of the book, many scientists were very critical of it, mainly Dr. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Phillips Astronomer at Harvard College, Dr. Harlow Shapley of the Harvard University Observatory, who called Velikovsky's theory "rubbish and nonsense" (Science Newsletter, February 25, 1950), and later Carl Sagan, also of Harvard University.
Due to the threats of many scientists and academic institutions to boycott Macmillan's scientific textbook department, Macmillan ceased publication of the book, even though it had reached the number one spot on the best-sellers' list, and the publishing rights were transferred to Doubleday and Company.
In 1952 Doubleday published the first volume of Ages in Chaos. A sequel, extending Velikovsky's reconstruction of historical events, was supposed to follow, but it was re-worked and enlarged to two volumes, Ramses II and His Time and Peoples of the Sea. In 1955 Earth in Upheaval was published. Here Velikovsky presented geological and paleontological evidence to prove the theories he presented in Worlds in Collision. In 1960, Oedipus and Akhnaton was published.
Box 49, Item 13
Pluto
Box 49, Item 14
The Rotation of the Planets
Box 49, Item 15
The Sun
Box 49, Item 16
The Moon
Box 49, Item 17
Cosmic Rays
Box 49, Item 18
Cosmic Changes
DAVID LETTERMAN MONOLOGUE
DAVID LETTERMAN
Monologue | Aired Tuesday night on CBS: You remember Hillary Clinton? She has been married to Bubba for quite a while. Well, she is now the Secretary of State, and she is on her first big round the world tour. She is on her big Asian tour. She wants to normalize relations with North Korea. No word yet about normalizing relations with Bill.
They were talking to Hillary about what Bill gave her for Valentine’s Day, and I thought this was surprising: sexy lingerie. Well, he had to after she found it in his glove compartment.
I want to tell you something. You think it’s tough in New York City, California is bankrupt. Yeah, things are so - here’s how bad things are California. They’ve canceled the next three mudslides.
Meanwhile, while Obama’s signing the stimulus package bill in Denver, John McCain was busy at Denny’s, sectioning his grapefruit.
Monologue | Aired Monday night on CBS: Everybody has got Fashion Week fever in New York City, where they had a big 50th anniversary tribute to Barbie. Can you believe that Barbie has been around 50 years? During that time, they have had Preppie Barbie, Wedding Barbie, and Republican Running Mate Barbie.
Here’s something exciting. Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State, is on her first big round the world trip. She’s visiting Asia, including a stop in China, where she is trying to do something about those leaky takeout food cartons.
Yeah. Hillary is in Asia; Bill is in heaven.
Monologue | Aired Thursday night on CBS: I don’t know what the deal is, but all of a sudden, we have 40- and 50 mile-an-hour gusts of wind blowing around outside. In fact, it is so windy, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s hair actually moved.
Happy birthday to Abraham Lincoln, who was born 200 years ago today. And to mark the occasion, former Vice President Dick Cheney, earlier today, went into a theater and shot a guy.
Don’t you have a feeling it’s going to be a long time before we have a vice president who shoots a guy in the face? Just doesn’t happen that often.
Monologue | Aired Wednesday night on CBS: You know, this Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner? He gave testimony on Capitol Hill today, but it drew lukewarm response. So, Timothy, welcome to the club!
I hate to be critical this early into the new administration, but I don’t know if this Timothy Geithner is the guy for the job. He may not be up to it. Turns out, he thought the Treasury Secretary was in charge of buried treasure.
How about this? It’s a good example of how strange things are and how time flies. On this date in 2006, then-Vice President Dick Cheney shot his buddy in the face. Tell me again why he’s not in jail? How did that work?
How about this? A celebrity birthday. Today is Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s birthday. I’m not saying how old is, but from her house, she can see 50.
Sarah Palin is actually 45 years old today, and just to tell you a little something about me - Sarah Palin, I think, is the first vice presidential candidate that I have pictured naked. Well, since Lloyd Bentsen.
But Sarah Palin had a big birthday celebration up there in Alaska. She celebrated by shooting wolf cubs from a helicopter. Later, she shot the cake.
Monologue | Aired Tuesday night on CBS: How about President Barack Obama’s first primetime press conference last night? He was cogent, eloquent, and in complete command of the issues. I’m thinking to myself, what the hell am I supposed to do with that?
Obama said he still believes in bipartisanship and he pledges to work with the Republicans to reduce the size of Jessica Simpson.
Monologue | Aired Monday night on CBS: Last night, right here on CBS, they aired the annual Grammy Awards, and no surprise here, the Grammy for Best Duo went to Aretha Franklin and her hat.
Anybody here in New York for the Westminster Kennel Club dog show? Some unfortunate news. A Jack Russell Terrier had to drop out because of tax problems.
Monologue | Aired Thursday night on CBS: I don’t want to just ruin everybody’s day, but there is discouraging news everywhere. Unemployment is high. Foreclosure rate is high. Michael Phelps is high.
Hey, how about that Rod Blagojevich? You know who I am talking about? The former governor of Illinois was on the program Tuesday. He looks like the guy who would sell you retractable awnings.
Blagojevich looks like a guy who runs out of bullets and then throws his gun at Superman.
Man, here’s something chilling. Former Vice President Dick Cheney is now warning that there will be another terrorist attack. He got that information by waterboarding himself.
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February 5, 2009, 12:43 pm
‘Still Chomping at the Bit’
Monologue | Aired Wednesday night on CBS: Either today or yesterday, Barack Obama said Americans are “sick and tired” of people “being rewarded for failure.” Is he talking about me?
I’m sorry you folks weren’t here last night, because you missed a big show. Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was here. You know, it’s funny. The audience really liked him, but they impeached me.
But it was fun to have Rod Blagojevich on the program, because for one night, I was not the creepiest guy on the show. Read more…
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February 4, 2009, 11:01 am
‘Some Tax Problems’
Monologue | Aired Tuesday night on CBS: Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is on the show tonight, ladies and gentlemen. I hope that thing on his head doesn’t bite me.
I like Blagojevich. He looks like your neighbor who never returns the tools.
Blagojevich looks like a guy at K-Mart who says, “The best we can do is store credit.”
Aren’t you tired of bad economic news, ladies and gentlemen? Well, here is some good economic news. President Obama has a great new economic plan. Here’s what he’s going to do. He’s going to make all the cabinet members that he has selected pay their back taxes.
Tom Daschle has withdrawn his cabinet nomination because he had some tax problems. Forgot about $150,000. Remember the old days, when politicians got in trouble for having sex with pages. Those days seem pretty sweet now, don’t they?
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February 3, 2009, 10:13 am
‘Stuff Always Goes Haywire in Alaska’
Monologue | Aired Monday night on CBS: Right after Sunday’s Super Bowl, President Barack Obama placed a congratulatory phone call to the Steelers from his BlackBerry. Meanwhile, John McCain called the Cardinals from his ham radio.
You’ve got to love a guy like John McCain, but stuff is not going his way. He had a huge Super Bowl party, but people started clapping. And every time they did, the lights would go on and off.
Today is Groundhog Day, and I don’t know why this stuff always goes haywire in Alaska. Here is what happened. A little bit of trouble. Groundhog comes out of its hole. Sarah Palin shoots it.
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January 30, 2009, 1:11 pm
‘One Headache After Another’
Monologue | Aired Thursday night on CBS: Cold everywhere. Listen how cold it is. It is so cold out in Illinois, the state of Illinois impeached Al Roker.
On this date in 2002, President Bush, do you remember this, the axis of evil speech? Do you remember his axis of evil? Do you remember what the axis of evil was? Iran, Iraq, Dick Cheney. That was the axis of evil right there.
Blagojevich was impeached today back there in Springfield. And he spoke in his defense at the impeachment proceedings, spoke for 47 minutes. And it really took its toll on the guy, because afterwards, they had to rush him to the emergency room at Supercuts. Read more…
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January 29, 2009, 12:40 pm
‘He’s a Crook’
Monologue | Aired Wednesday night on CBS: You folks know about this Rod Blagojevich, the governor from Illinois? Well, they’re trying to get him out of there because he’s a crook. And he was having an impeachment trial, and he said, “You know what, you kids go and have your little impeachment trial. I’m going to New York City, and I’m going to be on every TV show.” Did you see the guy on TV? He was everywhere. I mean, this guy, he looks like the guy that tells you need new brake pads, you know?
Blagojevich looks like an insurance salesman that keeps calling you “Captain.” “Hey, Captain.”
Blagojevich looks like a guy who backs you up with his aftershave. Whoah!
Blagojevich looks like a guy who disappears with your deposit after he takes your contracting contract.
Blagojevich looks like the guy who tries to set you up with his wife.
And President Bush, after eight years, is also in retirement. How can you tell?
President Bush, of course, has a place just outside of Crawford, Texas — Rancho Inepto.
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January 28, 2009, 11:21 am
‘Just One Complaint’
Monologue | Aired Tuesday night on CBS: Cold outside right now. And I’m not a weatherman, but they say this frigid weather is coming off a cold front between New York Gov. David Paterson and Caroline Kennedy. That’s causing a frost.
Out in the Midwest, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was so cold he was trying to sell a Senate seat warmer.
Scary moment for Gov. Blagojevich earlier today. Several geese were sucked into his hair.
Happy birthday to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. There was an awkward moment at the big party they had in Roberts’ office today when he screwed up the words to “Happy Birthday.” Read more…
Monologue | Aired Monday night on CBS: Cold outside. Lousy cold. Here is how cold it was. It was so cold today that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts screwed up while ordering chowder.
It was so cold, that thing on Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s head went into hibernation.
By the way, today, Governor Blagojevich is being impeached. Of course, the state of Illinois is already searching for a new crooked politician to take his place.
Did you know this? We have a brand-new Miss America, Katie Stam, from Indiana. They choose Miss America based on personality, how the young woman looks in a swimsuit, and how she looks in evening gowns. That is the competition. It’s the same way that John McCain chooses a running mate. Read more…
Monologue | Aired Tuesday night on CBS: You remember Hillary Clinton? She has been married to Bubba for quite a while. Well, she is now the Secretary of State, and she is on her first big round the world tour. She is on her big Asian tour. She wants to normalize relations with North Korea. No word yet about normalizing relations with Bill.
They were talking to Hillary about what Bill gave her for Valentine’s Day, and I thought this was surprising: sexy lingerie. Well, he had to after she found it in his glove compartment.
I want to tell you something. You think it’s tough in New York City, California is bankrupt. Yeah, things are so - here’s how bad things are California. They’ve canceled the next three mudslides.
Meanwhile, while Obama’s signing the stimulus package bill in Denver, John McCain was busy at Denny’s, sectioning his grapefruit.
Monologue | Aired Monday night on CBS: Everybody has got Fashion Week fever in New York City, where they had a big 50th anniversary tribute to Barbie. Can you believe that Barbie has been around 50 years? During that time, they have had Preppie Barbie, Wedding Barbie, and Republican Running Mate Barbie.
Here’s something exciting. Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State, is on her first big round the world trip. She’s visiting Asia, including a stop in China, where she is trying to do something about those leaky takeout food cartons.
Yeah. Hillary is in Asia; Bill is in heaven.
Monologue | Aired Thursday night on CBS: I don’t know what the deal is, but all of a sudden, we have 40- and 50 mile-an-hour gusts of wind blowing around outside. In fact, it is so windy, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s hair actually moved.
Happy birthday to Abraham Lincoln, who was born 200 years ago today. And to mark the occasion, former Vice President Dick Cheney, earlier today, went into a theater and shot a guy.
Don’t you have a feeling it’s going to be a long time before we have a vice president who shoots a guy in the face? Just doesn’t happen that often.
Monologue | Aired Wednesday night on CBS: You know, this Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner? He gave testimony on Capitol Hill today, but it drew lukewarm response. So, Timothy, welcome to the club!
I hate to be critical this early into the new administration, but I don’t know if this Timothy Geithner is the guy for the job. He may not be up to it. Turns out, he thought the Treasury Secretary was in charge of buried treasure.
How about this? It’s a good example of how strange things are and how time flies. On this date in 2006, then-Vice President Dick Cheney shot his buddy in the face. Tell me again why he’s not in jail? How did that work?
How about this? A celebrity birthday. Today is Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s birthday. I’m not saying how old is, but from her house, she can see 50.
Sarah Palin is actually 45 years old today, and just to tell you a little something about me - Sarah Palin, I think, is the first vice presidential candidate that I have pictured naked. Well, since Lloyd Bentsen.
But Sarah Palin had a big birthday celebration up there in Alaska. She celebrated by shooting wolf cubs from a helicopter. Later, she shot the cake.
Monologue | Aired Tuesday night on CBS: How about President Barack Obama’s first primetime press conference last night? He was cogent, eloquent, and in complete command of the issues. I’m thinking to myself, what the hell am I supposed to do with that?
Obama said he still believes in bipartisanship and he pledges to work with the Republicans to reduce the size of Jessica Simpson.
Monologue | Aired Monday night on CBS: Last night, right here on CBS, they aired the annual Grammy Awards, and no surprise here, the Grammy for Best Duo went to Aretha Franklin and her hat.
Anybody here in New York for the Westminster Kennel Club dog show? Some unfortunate news. A Jack Russell Terrier had to drop out because of tax problems.
Monologue | Aired Thursday night on CBS: I don’t want to just ruin everybody’s day, but there is discouraging news everywhere. Unemployment is high. Foreclosure rate is high. Michael Phelps is high.
Hey, how about that Rod Blagojevich? You know who I am talking about? The former governor of Illinois was on the program Tuesday. He looks like the guy who would sell you retractable awnings.
Blagojevich looks like a guy who runs out of bullets and then throws his gun at Superman.
Man, here’s something chilling. Former Vice President Dick Cheney is now warning that there will be another terrorist attack. He got that information by waterboarding himself.
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February 5, 2009, 12:43 pm
‘Still Chomping at the Bit’
Monologue | Aired Wednesday night on CBS: Either today or yesterday, Barack Obama said Americans are “sick and tired” of people “being rewarded for failure.” Is he talking about me?
I’m sorry you folks weren’t here last night, because you missed a big show. Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was here. You know, it’s funny. The audience really liked him, but they impeached me.
But it was fun to have Rod Blagojevich on the program, because for one night, I was not the creepiest guy on the show. Read more…
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February 4, 2009, 11:01 am
‘Some Tax Problems’
Monologue | Aired Tuesday night on CBS: Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is on the show tonight, ladies and gentlemen. I hope that thing on his head doesn’t bite me.
I like Blagojevich. He looks like your neighbor who never returns the tools.
Blagojevich looks like a guy at K-Mart who says, “The best we can do is store credit.”
Aren’t you tired of bad economic news, ladies and gentlemen? Well, here is some good economic news. President Obama has a great new economic plan. Here’s what he’s going to do. He’s going to make all the cabinet members that he has selected pay their back taxes.
Tom Daschle has withdrawn his cabinet nomination because he had some tax problems. Forgot about $150,000. Remember the old days, when politicians got in trouble for having sex with pages. Those days seem pretty sweet now, don’t they?
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February 3, 2009, 10:13 am
‘Stuff Always Goes Haywire in Alaska’
Monologue | Aired Monday night on CBS: Right after Sunday’s Super Bowl, President Barack Obama placed a congratulatory phone call to the Steelers from his BlackBerry. Meanwhile, John McCain called the Cardinals from his ham radio.
You’ve got to love a guy like John McCain, but stuff is not going his way. He had a huge Super Bowl party, but people started clapping. And every time they did, the lights would go on and off.
Today is Groundhog Day, and I don’t know why this stuff always goes haywire in Alaska. Here is what happened. A little bit of trouble. Groundhog comes out of its hole. Sarah Palin shoots it.
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January 30, 2009, 1:11 pm
‘One Headache After Another’
Monologue | Aired Thursday night on CBS: Cold everywhere. Listen how cold it is. It is so cold out in Illinois, the state of Illinois impeached Al Roker.
On this date in 2002, President Bush, do you remember this, the axis of evil speech? Do you remember his axis of evil? Do you remember what the axis of evil was? Iran, Iraq, Dick Cheney. That was the axis of evil right there.
Blagojevich was impeached today back there in Springfield. And he spoke in his defense at the impeachment proceedings, spoke for 47 minutes. And it really took its toll on the guy, because afterwards, they had to rush him to the emergency room at Supercuts. Read more…
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January 29, 2009, 12:40 pm
‘He’s a Crook’
Monologue | Aired Wednesday night on CBS: You folks know about this Rod Blagojevich, the governor from Illinois? Well, they’re trying to get him out of there because he’s a crook. And he was having an impeachment trial, and he said, “You know what, you kids go and have your little impeachment trial. I’m going to New York City, and I’m going to be on every TV show.” Did you see the guy on TV? He was everywhere. I mean, this guy, he looks like the guy that tells you need new brake pads, you know?
Blagojevich looks like an insurance salesman that keeps calling you “Captain.” “Hey, Captain.”
Blagojevich looks like a guy who backs you up with his aftershave. Whoah!
Blagojevich looks like a guy who disappears with your deposit after he takes your contracting contract.
Blagojevich looks like the guy who tries to set you up with his wife.
And President Bush, after eight years, is also in retirement. How can you tell?
President Bush, of course, has a place just outside of Crawford, Texas — Rancho Inepto.
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E-mail This
Share
January 28, 2009, 11:21 am
‘Just One Complaint’
Monologue | Aired Tuesday night on CBS: Cold outside right now. And I’m not a weatherman, but they say this frigid weather is coming off a cold front between New York Gov. David Paterson and Caroline Kennedy. That’s causing a frost.
Out in the Midwest, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was so cold he was trying to sell a Senate seat warmer.
Scary moment for Gov. Blagojevich earlier today. Several geese were sucked into his hair.
Happy birthday to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. There was an awkward moment at the big party they had in Roberts’ office today when he screwed up the words to “Happy Birthday.” Read more…
Monologue | Aired Monday night on CBS: Cold outside. Lousy cold. Here is how cold it was. It was so cold today that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts screwed up while ordering chowder.
It was so cold, that thing on Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s head went into hibernation.
By the way, today, Governor Blagojevich is being impeached. Of course, the state of Illinois is already searching for a new crooked politician to take his place.
Did you know this? We have a brand-new Miss America, Katie Stam, from Indiana. They choose Miss America based on personality, how the young woman looks in a swimsuit, and how she looks in evening gowns. That is the competition. It’s the same way that John McCain chooses a running mate. Read more…
IN THE TANK WITH OBAMA
The following op-ed, “Morning-after pride,” was written by Professor Laurence Tribe '66. It appeared in the November 5, 2008, edition of Forbes Magazine.
I am watching the sun rise over Lake Michigan in the land of Lincoln on this new day in America. This is the morning after a great divide in the biography of the United States. As a nation, we have come of age.
I flew to Chicago on Tuesday afternoon to witness history as the United States of America went to the polls on Election Day, 2008. Hours later, as President-Elect Barack Obama spoke in Grant Park to claim his victory before a great throng of supporters and an eagerly listening world--almost exactly 40 years after the chaos of 1968--I felt myself in the flow of time, a minor participant in a great saga punctuated by events that shaped my life, as it shaped the lives of so many others.
The year 1968 was, for me and most of my friends, a year of tragedy and disillusion. Through the years that followed, years punctuated by Watergate and Vietnam and by decades of political polarization and paralysis, politics was the game that disappointed. Yesterday it was the game that delivered. The work of governing lies ahead, but the sun is rising and the challenges we face--in reconstructing a broken economy, restoring a threatened constitution, ending a misguided war and waging a necessary one, starting to heal a wounded planet--look from here like opportunities to be seized, not obstacles to be feared.
How different this feels from the crazy election of 2000, brought to an abrupt and puzzling end by the Supreme Court's ill-starred decision to stop counting the ballots, when another new president was installed to preside over a nearly dysfunctional country. Having served as counsel before the court to the losing candidate during that sad chapter in our democratic trajectory, I returned to ordinary life but wondered when, if ever, I could fully believe in the process again.
As the decade progressed, the most impressive student I had ever taught was quietly pursuing his own political trajectory. In 1989, I had met Barack Obama and hired him as my research assistant while he was still just a first-year Harvard law student. His stunning combination of analytical brilliance and personal charisma, openness and maturity, vision and pragmatism, was unmistakable from my very first encounter with the future president.
I thought about that encounter as he and his wife Michelle each gave me a hug in one of the off-stage tents in Grant Park last night. I recalled it as I found myself unable to express in words my sense of gratitude and of possibility. The president-elect and the first lady-designate both thanked me for the part I had played in Barack Obama's education and his rise to power, but it was I, of course, who owed thanks to them, thanks for the journey on which they had embarked to reclaim America for all who dare to hope.
AND PIGS CAN FLY.
I am watching the sun rise over Lake Michigan in the land of Lincoln on this new day in America. This is the morning after a great divide in the biography of the United States. As a nation, we have come of age.
I flew to Chicago on Tuesday afternoon to witness history as the United States of America went to the polls on Election Day, 2008. Hours later, as President-Elect Barack Obama spoke in Grant Park to claim his victory before a great throng of supporters and an eagerly listening world--almost exactly 40 years after the chaos of 1968--I felt myself in the flow of time, a minor participant in a great saga punctuated by events that shaped my life, as it shaped the lives of so many others.
The year 1968 was, for me and most of my friends, a year of tragedy and disillusion. Through the years that followed, years punctuated by Watergate and Vietnam and by decades of political polarization and paralysis, politics was the game that disappointed. Yesterday it was the game that delivered. The work of governing lies ahead, but the sun is rising and the challenges we face--in reconstructing a broken economy, restoring a threatened constitution, ending a misguided war and waging a necessary one, starting to heal a wounded planet--look from here like opportunities to be seized, not obstacles to be feared.
How different this feels from the crazy election of 2000, brought to an abrupt and puzzling end by the Supreme Court's ill-starred decision to stop counting the ballots, when another new president was installed to preside over a nearly dysfunctional country. Having served as counsel before the court to the losing candidate during that sad chapter in our democratic trajectory, I returned to ordinary life but wondered when, if ever, I could fully believe in the process again.
As the decade progressed, the most impressive student I had ever taught was quietly pursuing his own political trajectory. In 1989, I had met Barack Obama and hired him as my research assistant while he was still just a first-year Harvard law student. His stunning combination of analytical brilliance and personal charisma, openness and maturity, vision and pragmatism, was unmistakable from my very first encounter with the future president.
I thought about that encounter as he and his wife Michelle each gave me a hug in one of the off-stage tents in Grant Park last night. I recalled it as I found myself unable to express in words my sense of gratitude and of possibility. The president-elect and the first lady-designate both thanked me for the part I had played in Barack Obama's education and his rise to power, but it was I, of course, who owed thanks to them, thanks for the journey on which they had embarked to reclaim America for all who dare to hope.
AND PIGS CAN FLY.
THE NINE BILLION NAMES OF GOD
THE NINE BILLION NAMES OF GOD By Arthur CClarke
"Look," whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
"This is a slightly unusual request," said Dr. Wagner, with what he hoped was commendable restraint. "As far as I know, it’s the first time anyone’s been asked to supply a Tibetan monastery with an automatic sequence computer. I don’t wish to be inquisitive, but I should hardly thought that your --ah-- establishment had much use for such a machine. Could you explain just what you intend to do with it?"
"Gladly," replied the lama, readjusting his silk robe and carefully putting away the slide rule he had been using for currency conversions. "Your Mark V computer can carry out any routine mathematical operation involving up to ten digits. However, for our work we are interested in letters, not numbers. As we wish you to modify the output circuits, the machine will be printing words, not columns of figures."
"I don’t understand . . ."
"This is a project on which we have been working for the last three centuries -- since the lamasery was founded, in fact. It is somewhat alien to your way of thought, so I hope you will listen with an open mind while I explain it."
"Naturally."
"It is really quite simple. We have been compiling a list which shall contain all the possible names of God."
"I beg your pardon?"
"We have reason to believe," continued the lama imperturbably, "that all such names can be written with not more than nine letters in an alphabet we have devised."
"And you have been doing this for three centuries?"
"Yes. We expected it would take us about fifteen thousand years to complete the task."
"Oh." Dr. Wagner looked a little dazed. "Now I see why you wanted to hire one of our machines. But exactly what is the purpose of this project?"
The lama hesitated for a fraction of a second, and Wagner wondered if he had offended him. If so, there was no trace of annoyance in the reply.
"Call it ritual, if you like, but it’s a fundamental part of our belief. All the many names of the Supreme Being -- God, Jehovah, Allah, and so on -- they are only man-made labels. There is a philosophical problem of some difficulty here, which I do not propose to discuss, but somewhere among all the possible combinations of letters, which can occur, are what one may call the real names of God. By systematic permutation of letters, we have been trying to list them all."
"I see. You’ve been starting at AAAAAAAAA . . . and working up to ZZZZZZZZZ . . ."
"Exactly -- though we use a special alphabet of our own. Modifying the electromatic typewriters to deal with this is, of course, trivial. A rather more interesting problem is that of devising suitable circuits to eliminate ridiculous combinations. For example, no letter must occur more than three times in succession."
"Three? Surely you mean two."
"Three is correct. I am afraid it would take too long to explain why, even if you understood our language."
"I’m sure it would," said Wagner hastily. "Go on."
"Luckily it will be a simple matter to adapt your automatic sequence computer for this work, since once it has been programmed properly it will permute each letter in turn and print the result. What would have taken us fifteen thousand years it will be able to do in a thousand days."
Dr. Wagner was scarcely conscious of the faint sounds from the Manhattan streets far below. He was in a different world, a world of natural, not man-made, mountains. High up in their remote aeries these monks had been patiently at work, generation after generation, compiling their lists of meaningless words. Was there any limit to the follies of mankind? Still, he must give no hint of his inner thoughts. The customer was always right . . .
"There’s no doubt," replied the doctor, "that we can modify the Mark V to print lists of this nature. I’m much more worried about the problem of installation and maintenance. Getting out to Tibet, in these days, is not going to be easy."
"We can arrange that. The components are small enough to travel by air -- that is one reason why we chose your machine. If you can get them to India, we will provide transport from there."
"And you want to hire two of our engineers?"
"Yes, for the three months which the project should occupy."
"I’ve no doubt that Personnel can manage that." Dr. Wagner scribbled a note on his desk pad. "There are just two other points--"
Before he could finish the sentence, the lama had produced a small slip of paper.
"This is my certified credit balance at the Asiatic Bank."
"Thank you. It appears to be--ah--adequate. The second matter is so trivial that I hesitate to mention it -- but it’s surprising how often the obvious gets overlooked. What source of electrical energy have you?"
"A diesel generator providing 50 kilowatts at 110 volts. It was installed about five years ago and is quite reliable. It’s made life at the lamasery much more comfortable, but of course it was really installed to provide power for the motors driving the prayer wheels."
"Of course," echoed Dr. Wagner. "I should have thought of that."
The view from the parapet was vertiginous, but in time one gets used to anything. After three months George Hanley was not impressed by the two-thousand-foot swoop into the abyss or the remote checkerboard of fields in the valley below. He was leaning against the wind-smoothed stones and staring morosely at the distant mountains whose names he had never bothered to discover.
This, thought George, was the craziest thing that had ever happened to him. "Project Shangri-La," some wit at the labs had christened it. For weeks now, Mark V had been churning out acres of sheets covered with gibberish. Patiently, inexorably, the computer had been rearranging letters in all their possible combinations, exhausting each class before going on to the next. As the sheets had emerged from the electromatic typewriters, the monks had carefully cut them up and pasted them into enormous books. In another week, heaven be praised, they would have finished. Just what obscure calculations had convinced the monks that they needn’t bother to go on to words of ten, twenty, or a hundred letters, George didn’t know. One of his recurring nightmares was that there would be some change of plan and that the High Lama (whom they’d naturally called Sam Jaffe, though he didn’t look a bit like him) would suddenly announce that the project would be extended to approximately 2060 A.D. They were quite capable of it.
George heard the heavy wooden door slam in the wind as Chuck came out onto the parapet beside him. As usual, Chuck was smoking one of the cigars that made him so popular with the monks -- who, it seemed, were quite willing to embrace all the minor and most of the major pleasures of life. That was one thing in their favor: they might be crazy, but they weren’t bluenoses. Those frequent trips they took down to the village, for instance . . ." "Listen, George," said Chuck urgently. "I’ve learned something that means trouble."
"What’s wrong? Isn’t the machine behaving?" That was the worst contingency George could imagine. It might delay his return, than which nothing could be more horrible. The way he felt now, even the sight of a TV commercial would seem like manna from heaven. At least it would be some link from home.
"No -- it’s nothing like that." Chuck settled himself on the parapet, which was unusual, because normally he was scared of the drop.
"I’ve just found out what all this is about."
"What d’ya mean -- I thought we knew."
"Sure -- we know what the monks are trying to do. But we didn’t know why. It’s the craziest thing --"
"Tell me something new," growled George.
" . . . but old Sam’s just come clean with me. You know the way he drops in every afternoon to watch the sheets roll out. Well, this time he seemed rather excited, or at least as near as he’ll ever get to it. When I told him we were on the last cycle he asked me, in that cute English accent of his, if I’d ever wondered what they were trying to do. I said, ‘Sure’ -- and he told me."
"Go on, I’ll buy it."
"Well, they believe that when they have listed all His names -- and they reckon that there are about nine billion of them -- God’s purpose will have been achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do, and there won’t be any point in carrying on. Indeed, the very idea is something like blasphemy."
"Then what do they expect us to do? Commit suicide?"
"There’s no need for that. When the list’s completed, God steps in and simply winds things up . . . bingo!"
"Oh, I get it. When we finish our job, it will be the end of the world."
Chuck gave a nervous little laugh.
"That’s just what I said to Sam. And do you know what happened? He looked at me in a very queer way, like I’d been stupid in class, and said, ‘It’s nothing as trivial as that’."
George thought this over for a moment.
"That’s what I call taking the Wide View," he said presently.
"But what d’ya suppose we should do about it? I don’t see that it makes the slightest difference to us. After all, we already knew that they were crazy."
"Yes -- but don’t you see what may happen? When the list’s complete and the Last Trump doesn’t blow -- or whatever it is that they expect -- we may get the blame. It’s our machine they’ve been using. I don’t like the situation one little bit."
"I see," said George slowly. "You’ve got a point there. But this sort of thing’s happened here before, you know. When I was a kid down in Louisiana we had a crackpot preacher who said the world was going to end next Sunday. Hundreds of people believed him-- even sold their homes. Yet nothing happened; they didn’t turn nasty, as you’d expect. They just decided that he’d made a mistake in his calculations and went right on believing. I guess some of them still do."
"Well, this isn’t Louisiana, in case you hadn’t noticed. There are just two of us and hundreds of these monks. I like them, and I’ll be sorry for old Sam when his lifework backfires on him. But all the same, I wish I was somewhere else."
"I’ve been wishing that for weeks. But there’s nothing we can do until the contract’s finished and the transport arrives to fly us out."
"Of course," said Chuck thoughtfully, "we could always try a bit of sabotage."
"Like hell we could! That would make things worse."
"Not the way I meant. Look at it like this. The machine will finish its run four days from now, on the present twenty-hours-a-day basis. The transport calls in a week. O.K., then all we need to do is to find something that wants replacing during one of the overhaul periods -- something that will hold up the works for a couple of days. We’ll fix it, of course, but not too quickly. If we time matters properly, we can be down at the airfield when the last name pops out of the register. They won’t be able to catch us then."
"I don’t like it," said George. "It will be the first time I ever walked out on a job. Besides, it would make them suspicious. No, I’ll sit tight and take what comes."
"I still don’t like it," he said seven days later, as the tough little mountain ponies carried them down the winding road. "And don’t you think I’m running away because I’m afraid. I’m just sorry for those poor old guys up there, and I don’t want to be around when they find what suckers they’ve been. Wonder how Sam will take
it?"
"It’s funny," replied Chuck, "but when I said goodbye I got the idea he knew we were walking out on him -- and that he didn’t care because he knew the machine was running smoothly and that the job would soon be finished. After that -- well, of course, for him there just isn’t any After That . . ."
George turned in his saddle and stared back up the mountain road. This was the last place from which one could get a clear view of the lamasery. The squat, angular buildings were silhouetted against the afterglow of the sunset; here and there lights gleamed like portholes in the sides of an ocean liner. Electric lights, of course, sharing the same circuit as the Mark V. How much longer would they share it? wondered George. Would the monks smash up the computer in their rage and disappointment? Or would they just sit down quietly and begin their calculations all over again?
He knew exactly what was happening up on the mountain at this very moment. The High Lama and his assistants would be sitting in their silk robes, inspecting the sheets as the junior monks carried them away from the typewriters and pasted them into the great volumes. No one would be saying anything. The only sound would be the incessant patter, the never-ending rainstorm, of the keys hitting the paper, for the Mark V itself was utterly silent as it flashed through its thousands of calculations a second. Three months of this, thought George, was enough to start anyone climbing up the wall.
"There she is!" called Chuck, pointing down into the valley. "Ain’t she beautiful!"
She certainly was, thought George. The battered old DC-3 lay at the end of the runway like a tiny silver cross. In two hours she would be bearing them away to freedom and sanity. It was a thought worth savoring like a fine liqueur. George let it roll around in his mind as the pony trudged patiently down the slope.
The swift night of the high Himalayas was now almost upon them. Fortunately the road was very good, as roads went in this region, and they were both carrying torches. There was not the slightest danger, only a certain discomfort from the bitter cold. The sky overhead was perfectly clear and ablaze with the familiar, friendly stars. At least there would be no risk, thought George, of the pilot being unable to take off because of weather conditions. That had been his only remaining worry.
He began to sing but gave it up after a while. This vast arena of mountains, gleaming like whitely hooded ghosts on every side, did not encourage such ebullience. Presently George glanced at his watch.
"Should be there in an hour," he called back over his shoulder to Chuck. Then he added, in an afterthought, "Wonder if the computer’s finished its run? It was due about now."
Chuck didn’t reply, so George swung round in his saddle. He could just see Chuck’s face, a white oval turned toward the sky.
"Look," whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
"Look," whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
"This is a slightly unusual request," said Dr. Wagner, with what he hoped was commendable restraint. "As far as I know, it’s the first time anyone’s been asked to supply a Tibetan monastery with an automatic sequence computer. I don’t wish to be inquisitive, but I should hardly thought that your --ah-- establishment had much use for such a machine. Could you explain just what you intend to do with it?"
"Gladly," replied the lama, readjusting his silk robe and carefully putting away the slide rule he had been using for currency conversions. "Your Mark V computer can carry out any routine mathematical operation involving up to ten digits. However, for our work we are interested in letters, not numbers. As we wish you to modify the output circuits, the machine will be printing words, not columns of figures."
"I don’t understand . . ."
"This is a project on which we have been working for the last three centuries -- since the lamasery was founded, in fact. It is somewhat alien to your way of thought, so I hope you will listen with an open mind while I explain it."
"Naturally."
"It is really quite simple. We have been compiling a list which shall contain all the possible names of God."
"I beg your pardon?"
"We have reason to believe," continued the lama imperturbably, "that all such names can be written with not more than nine letters in an alphabet we have devised."
"And you have been doing this for three centuries?"
"Yes. We expected it would take us about fifteen thousand years to complete the task."
"Oh." Dr. Wagner looked a little dazed. "Now I see why you wanted to hire one of our machines. But exactly what is the purpose of this project?"
The lama hesitated for a fraction of a second, and Wagner wondered if he had offended him. If so, there was no trace of annoyance in the reply.
"Call it ritual, if you like, but it’s a fundamental part of our belief. All the many names of the Supreme Being -- God, Jehovah, Allah, and so on -- they are only man-made labels. There is a philosophical problem of some difficulty here, which I do not propose to discuss, but somewhere among all the possible combinations of letters, which can occur, are what one may call the real names of God. By systematic permutation of letters, we have been trying to list them all."
"I see. You’ve been starting at AAAAAAAAA . . . and working up to ZZZZZZZZZ . . ."
"Exactly -- though we use a special alphabet of our own. Modifying the electromatic typewriters to deal with this is, of course, trivial. A rather more interesting problem is that of devising suitable circuits to eliminate ridiculous combinations. For example, no letter must occur more than three times in succession."
"Three? Surely you mean two."
"Three is correct. I am afraid it would take too long to explain why, even if you understood our language."
"I’m sure it would," said Wagner hastily. "Go on."
"Luckily it will be a simple matter to adapt your automatic sequence computer for this work, since once it has been programmed properly it will permute each letter in turn and print the result. What would have taken us fifteen thousand years it will be able to do in a thousand days."
Dr. Wagner was scarcely conscious of the faint sounds from the Manhattan streets far below. He was in a different world, a world of natural, not man-made, mountains. High up in their remote aeries these monks had been patiently at work, generation after generation, compiling their lists of meaningless words. Was there any limit to the follies of mankind? Still, he must give no hint of his inner thoughts. The customer was always right . . .
"There’s no doubt," replied the doctor, "that we can modify the Mark V to print lists of this nature. I’m much more worried about the problem of installation and maintenance. Getting out to Tibet, in these days, is not going to be easy."
"We can arrange that. The components are small enough to travel by air -- that is one reason why we chose your machine. If you can get them to India, we will provide transport from there."
"And you want to hire two of our engineers?"
"Yes, for the three months which the project should occupy."
"I’ve no doubt that Personnel can manage that." Dr. Wagner scribbled a note on his desk pad. "There are just two other points--"
Before he could finish the sentence, the lama had produced a small slip of paper.
"This is my certified credit balance at the Asiatic Bank."
"Thank you. It appears to be--ah--adequate. The second matter is so trivial that I hesitate to mention it -- but it’s surprising how often the obvious gets overlooked. What source of electrical energy have you?"
"A diesel generator providing 50 kilowatts at 110 volts. It was installed about five years ago and is quite reliable. It’s made life at the lamasery much more comfortable, but of course it was really installed to provide power for the motors driving the prayer wheels."
"Of course," echoed Dr. Wagner. "I should have thought of that."
The view from the parapet was vertiginous, but in time one gets used to anything. After three months George Hanley was not impressed by the two-thousand-foot swoop into the abyss or the remote checkerboard of fields in the valley below. He was leaning against the wind-smoothed stones and staring morosely at the distant mountains whose names he had never bothered to discover.
This, thought George, was the craziest thing that had ever happened to him. "Project Shangri-La," some wit at the labs had christened it. For weeks now, Mark V had been churning out acres of sheets covered with gibberish. Patiently, inexorably, the computer had been rearranging letters in all their possible combinations, exhausting each class before going on to the next. As the sheets had emerged from the electromatic typewriters, the monks had carefully cut them up and pasted them into enormous books. In another week, heaven be praised, they would have finished. Just what obscure calculations had convinced the monks that they needn’t bother to go on to words of ten, twenty, or a hundred letters, George didn’t know. One of his recurring nightmares was that there would be some change of plan and that the High Lama (whom they’d naturally called Sam Jaffe, though he didn’t look a bit like him) would suddenly announce that the project would be extended to approximately 2060 A.D. They were quite capable of it.
George heard the heavy wooden door slam in the wind as Chuck came out onto the parapet beside him. As usual, Chuck was smoking one of the cigars that made him so popular with the monks -- who, it seemed, were quite willing to embrace all the minor and most of the major pleasures of life. That was one thing in their favor: they might be crazy, but they weren’t bluenoses. Those frequent trips they took down to the village, for instance . . ." "Listen, George," said Chuck urgently. "I’ve learned something that means trouble."
"What’s wrong? Isn’t the machine behaving?" That was the worst contingency George could imagine. It might delay his return, than which nothing could be more horrible. The way he felt now, even the sight of a TV commercial would seem like manna from heaven. At least it would be some link from home.
"No -- it’s nothing like that." Chuck settled himself on the parapet, which was unusual, because normally he was scared of the drop.
"I’ve just found out what all this is about."
"What d’ya mean -- I thought we knew."
"Sure -- we know what the monks are trying to do. But we didn’t know why. It’s the craziest thing --"
"Tell me something new," growled George.
" . . . but old Sam’s just come clean with me. You know the way he drops in every afternoon to watch the sheets roll out. Well, this time he seemed rather excited, or at least as near as he’ll ever get to it. When I told him we were on the last cycle he asked me, in that cute English accent of his, if I’d ever wondered what they were trying to do. I said, ‘Sure’ -- and he told me."
"Go on, I’ll buy it."
"Well, they believe that when they have listed all His names -- and they reckon that there are about nine billion of them -- God’s purpose will have been achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do, and there won’t be any point in carrying on. Indeed, the very idea is something like blasphemy."
"Then what do they expect us to do? Commit suicide?"
"There’s no need for that. When the list’s completed, God steps in and simply winds things up . . . bingo!"
"Oh, I get it. When we finish our job, it will be the end of the world."
Chuck gave a nervous little laugh.
"That’s just what I said to Sam. And do you know what happened? He looked at me in a very queer way, like I’d been stupid in class, and said, ‘It’s nothing as trivial as that’."
George thought this over for a moment.
"That’s what I call taking the Wide View," he said presently.
"But what d’ya suppose we should do about it? I don’t see that it makes the slightest difference to us. After all, we already knew that they were crazy."
"Yes -- but don’t you see what may happen? When the list’s complete and the Last Trump doesn’t blow -- or whatever it is that they expect -- we may get the blame. It’s our machine they’ve been using. I don’t like the situation one little bit."
"I see," said George slowly. "You’ve got a point there. But this sort of thing’s happened here before, you know. When I was a kid down in Louisiana we had a crackpot preacher who said the world was going to end next Sunday. Hundreds of people believed him-- even sold their homes. Yet nothing happened; they didn’t turn nasty, as you’d expect. They just decided that he’d made a mistake in his calculations and went right on believing. I guess some of them still do."
"Well, this isn’t Louisiana, in case you hadn’t noticed. There are just two of us and hundreds of these monks. I like them, and I’ll be sorry for old Sam when his lifework backfires on him. But all the same, I wish I was somewhere else."
"I’ve been wishing that for weeks. But there’s nothing we can do until the contract’s finished and the transport arrives to fly us out."
"Of course," said Chuck thoughtfully, "we could always try a bit of sabotage."
"Like hell we could! That would make things worse."
"Not the way I meant. Look at it like this. The machine will finish its run four days from now, on the present twenty-hours-a-day basis. The transport calls in a week. O.K., then all we need to do is to find something that wants replacing during one of the overhaul periods -- something that will hold up the works for a couple of days. We’ll fix it, of course, but not too quickly. If we time matters properly, we can be down at the airfield when the last name pops out of the register. They won’t be able to catch us then."
"I don’t like it," said George. "It will be the first time I ever walked out on a job. Besides, it would make them suspicious. No, I’ll sit tight and take what comes."
"I still don’t like it," he said seven days later, as the tough little mountain ponies carried them down the winding road. "And don’t you think I’m running away because I’m afraid. I’m just sorry for those poor old guys up there, and I don’t want to be around when they find what suckers they’ve been. Wonder how Sam will take
it?"
"It’s funny," replied Chuck, "but when I said goodbye I got the idea he knew we were walking out on him -- and that he didn’t care because he knew the machine was running smoothly and that the job would soon be finished. After that -- well, of course, for him there just isn’t any After That . . ."
George turned in his saddle and stared back up the mountain road. This was the last place from which one could get a clear view of the lamasery. The squat, angular buildings were silhouetted against the afterglow of the sunset; here and there lights gleamed like portholes in the sides of an ocean liner. Electric lights, of course, sharing the same circuit as the Mark V. How much longer would they share it? wondered George. Would the monks smash up the computer in their rage and disappointment? Or would they just sit down quietly and begin their calculations all over again?
He knew exactly what was happening up on the mountain at this very moment. The High Lama and his assistants would be sitting in their silk robes, inspecting the sheets as the junior monks carried them away from the typewriters and pasted them into the great volumes. No one would be saying anything. The only sound would be the incessant patter, the never-ending rainstorm, of the keys hitting the paper, for the Mark V itself was utterly silent as it flashed through its thousands of calculations a second. Three months of this, thought George, was enough to start anyone climbing up the wall.
"There she is!" called Chuck, pointing down into the valley. "Ain’t she beautiful!"
She certainly was, thought George. The battered old DC-3 lay at the end of the runway like a tiny silver cross. In two hours she would be bearing them away to freedom and sanity. It was a thought worth savoring like a fine liqueur. George let it roll around in his mind as the pony trudged patiently down the slope.
The swift night of the high Himalayas was now almost upon them. Fortunately the road was very good, as roads went in this region, and they were both carrying torches. There was not the slightest danger, only a certain discomfort from the bitter cold. The sky overhead was perfectly clear and ablaze with the familiar, friendly stars. At least there would be no risk, thought George, of the pilot being unable to take off because of weather conditions. That had been his only remaining worry.
He began to sing but gave it up after a while. This vast arena of mountains, gleaming like whitely hooded ghosts on every side, did not encourage such ebullience. Presently George glanced at his watch.
"Should be there in an hour," he called back over his shoulder to Chuck. Then he added, in an afterthought, "Wonder if the computer’s finished its run? It was due about now."
Chuck didn’t reply, so George swung round in his saddle. He could just see Chuck’s face, a white oval turned toward the sky.
"Look," whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
WHAT THE...
ITS ALWAYS PILOT ERROR, AND THE CHECK IS IN THE MAIL. DUMBEST THIHG, LIKE LETTING WHAT'S HIS NAME OVER TO WORK FOR ME . BUSSHIT. CREEP.
WELL, NOTHING FOR IT BUT TO TRY TO BE SMARTER AND LESS GREEDY NEXT TIME. PIECE OF SHIT.
WELL, NOTHING FOR IT BUT TO TRY TO BE SMARTER AND LESS GREEDY NEXT TIME. PIECE OF SHIT.
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