After 9/11, George Bush began firing fear-loaded spitballs at Congress and the media, which reacted by being frightened. Five years and three months later, Gore Vidal in Havana countered W’s discords of panic with chimes of truth.
On December 12, at the University of Havana, Vidal dismissed “our little President” (“presidentcito,” said the interpreter) and mocked him into proper perspective – the worst and most dangerous president in US history: “I’m a wartime president.” The audience of students and professors laughed at Vidal’s imitation.
Three days before, on the evening of December 9, Culture Vice Minister Ismael Gonzalez and Book Institute President Iroel Sanchez greeted met Vidal at the Jose Marti International Airport. His entourage included former South Dakota Senator James Abourezk (D) and former President of the California Senate, John Burton (D) as well as San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, myself and a small group of Gore’s friends and admirers. The Cuban press quickly grabbed him.
“What brings you to Cuba?” a Prensa Latina reporter inquired.
“I came to Cuba with my broken knee to help break 40 years of embargo.” He had not accepted previous invitations because “I lost one of my knees the last time and I almost sent my knee to you, and it would have been more interesting than myself.”
A few reporters giggled. “But I have an artificial one,” Vidal became serious, “and could come here to see the beginning of the end of colonialism in the Western Hemisphere.”
He told the media that he “worried about the collapse of the Republic. We have lost habeas corpus and the Constitution that we inherited from England 700 years ago. Suddenly, we were robbed of it. The current regime has done it, and the legal bases of our Republic have gone with it, and as I am one of the historians of that Republic, I am not happy.”
"The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." — Henry Kissinger
Posts: 731 | Location: Upstate, NY | Registered: 10 September 2006
I'm thinking if the US attacks Iran I'll claim 9 exempt on a w-4 and not file the federal return next year and use the money to take a trip to Cuba. Do civil disobedience and have fun at the same time.
Immediately after 9/11, Vidal wrote his self-described pamphlet, an age old literary device used for political change and discussion, "Blood for Oil." There have been a tremendous number of insightful and useful words written since then; however, no one has so briefly and succinctly described the attack, the reaction of the administration, the curious alignment of factors that allowed the attack to proceed and the effect on the American people. Nor did anyone write so quickly. Vidal wrote when the nation first began to stand with its fingers in it ears, eyes scrunched shut, mumbling the terrorists are coming, the terrorists are coming. Vidal tried to point out that even if "they" were "coming", we needed to be the hard stock of America and not trade our freedom for false security, trade our history for histrionics, trade our future for false hope and succumb to prefabricated fear.
As an author, historian and citizen, Vidal is a tremendous gift to the nation and its life and history. Viva Vidal.
"They have rights who dare defend them." Roger Baldwin
Posts: 230 | Location: Michigan | Registered: 03 November 2004
Skypilot707: Well, on the bright side, the US population has become more sophisticated, even post-9-1-1, as yours and Vidal's assessments of the mood thereafter are correct, than it was in 1898 (which is referred to in the article), when all it took was a boiler explosion and iignition of the magazine of the U.S.S. Maine for a similar kind of hysteria to sweep the country. At least in the case of 9-1-1 we knew it was some kind of malignant attack, although we do not really know how it was pulled off.
So, here's the sequence of progress:
1898: accidental explosion; U.S. war hysteria follows. General public culpable. 1964: alleged second attack (there was some action in the first instance, which was defensive on the part of N. Viet); U.S. war hysteria taken up by president and Congress. 2001: actual attack (not known how it was pulled off); U.S. war hysteria allows an attack on an unrelated party. General public mostly hysterical.
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