Gore Vidal on
Bush's Inaugural Address:
"The Most Un-American Speech I've Ever Heard"
We take a look at President Bush's inaugural address with Gore Vidal,
one of America's most respected writers and thinkers and the author of
more than 20 novels and 5 plays. Vidal says, "If the United States does
go abroad to slay dragons in the name of freedom, liberty and so on,
she could become dictatress of the world, but in the process she would
lose her soul." [includes rush transcript]
As we continue our
discussion of President Bush's inaugural address. Let's hear a portion of
that speech.
- President Bush,
inaugural address January 20, 2005.
We are joined now by
Gore Vidal. He is one of America's most respected writers and thinkers. He
is the author of more than 20 novels and 5 plays. He is author, most
recently, of the national bestsellers "Dreaming War" and "Perpetual War
for Perpetual Peace." His latest book is called "Imperial America:
Reflections on the United States of Amnesia."
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN:
As we continue our discussion of President
Bush's inaugural address, let's hear a section of that speech.
PRESIDENT
BUSH: America will not impose
our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal, instead, is to
help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their
own way. The great objective of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of
generations. The difficulty of the task is no excuse for avoiding it.
America's influence is not unlimited; but fortunately for the oppressed,
America's influence is considerable, and we will use it confidently in
freedom's cause.
AMY GOODMAN:
President Bush, his second inaugural
address. Today we're joined by Gore Vidal, one of America's most respected
writers and thinkers. Author of more than twenty novels, five plays.
Author most recently of, Dreaming War and Perpetual War for
Perpetual Peace. His latest book is, Imperial America: Reflections
on the United States of Amnesia. Yesterday we caught up with Gore
Vidal and I asked him his reaction to the inaugural address.
GORE VIDAL:
Well, I hardly know where to end, much
less begin. There's not a word of truth in anything that he said. Our
founding fathers did not set us on a course to liberate all the world from
tyranny. Jefferson just said, “all men are created equal, and should be,”
etc, but it was not the task of the United States to “go abroad to slay
dragons,” as John Quincy Adams so wisely put it; because if the United
States does go abroad to slay dragons in the name of freedom, liberty, and
so on, she could become “dictatress of the world,” but in the process “she
would lose her soul.” That is what we -- the lesson we should be learning
now, instead of this declaration of war against the entire globe. He
doesn't define what tyranny is. I’d say what we have now in the United
States is working up a nice tyrannical persona for itself and for us. As
we lose liberties he’s, I guess, handing them out to other countries which
have not asked for them, particularly; and what he says -- The reaction in
Europe-–and I know we mustn’t mention them because they're immoral and
they have all those different kinds of cheese–but, simultaneously, they're
much better educated than we are, and they're richer. Get that out there:
The Europeans per capita are richer than the Americans, per capita. And by
the time this administration is finished, there won't be any money left of
any kind, starting with poor social security, which will be privatized, so
that is the last gold rush for (as they say) men with an eye for
opportunity.
No, I would have to parse this thing
line by line and have it in front of me. It goes in one ear and out the
other as lies often do, particularly rhetorical lies that have been
thought up by second-rate advertising men, which are the authors of this
speech. It is the most un-American speech I’ve ever heard a chief
executive give to the United States; and thanks at least to television, we
were given every inaugural from Franklin Roosevelt on (and it's quite
interesting to see who said what), and only one was as gruesome and as
off-key as this, and that guy is Harry S. Truman, who’s being made into a
hero because he fits into the imperial mode. He starts out his inaugural
-- we're on top of the world we’re the richest country, the most powerful
militarily, and what does he do? Within three lines Harry Truman is
starting the Cold War, which the Russians were not starting. They thought
they could live in peace because of their agreement at Yalta with his
predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt, whose unfortunate death gave us Harry
Truman and gave us the Cold War, which is now metastasized into a general
war against any nation that this president of ours, if he is -- was
elected, wants to commit us to, and we -- preemptive wars. That’s just
never existed in our history, that a president – “Well, I think I'm going
to take on Costa Rica. There may be some terrorists down there one day.
Oh, they aren't there yet, but they're planning for it. And they’ve got
bicarbonate of soda. Once you have that, you know, you can build all sorts
of biochemical weapons.” This is just blather. Blather.
And that an American audience would sit
there beside the capitol or reverently in front of their TV screens and
watch this and not see the absurdity of what was being said -- absolute
proof of a couple of things that I have felt, and most of us who are at
all thoughtful feel: We’ve got the worst educational system of any first
world country. We are shameful when we go abroad, because we know nothing.
Just to watch the destruction of the archaeologists’ work at Babylon.
Babylon
is a center of our culture. Nobody knows that. Nobody knows what it is,
except it's a wicked city that the lord destroyed. Well, it was the center
of our civilization, the center of mathematics, of writing, of everything.
And apparently our troops were allowed to go in and smash everything to
bits. Why did they do it? Was it because they are mean bad boys and girls?
No. They're totally uneducated. And their officers are sometimes mean and
bad, and allow them to have a romp, as they also had in the pr isons, none
of which we heard about in the last election. We were too busy with
homosexual marriage and abortion, two really riveting subjects. War and
peace, of course, are not worth talking about. And civilization, God
forbid that we ever commit ourselves to that.
AMY GOODMAN:
We're talking to Gore Vidal. He --
President Bush said in his speech: “Across the generations, we’ve
proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one's fit to be a
master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the
mission that created our nation. It's the honorable achievement of our
fathers. Now it's the urgent requirement of our national security, and the
calling of our time.”
GORE VIDAL:
Well, proof of his bad education -- he
seems not to know that the principle founders of the United States, from
George Washington to Thomas Jefferson to Madison, were all slave holders.
So, we started a country with half of the country quite prosperous because
of black slaves, African slaves, who were not in the least happy about
being slaves, but they had been captured, brought over here and sold back
and forth around the country. So, I don't see how the founding fathers
could have committed us to the principle that ‘no man should be a slave,
and every man should be a master,’ or whatever the silly-Billy said. Well,
this is a country based on slavery, is also based upon the dispossession
of what we miscall the Indians. They were the native Americans, at least
before -- long before our arrival. So, we were not dedicated to any of
these principles. We were dedicated to making as much money and stealing
as much land as we could and building up a republic, not a democracy. The
word democracy was hated by the founding fathers. It does not appear at
any point in the constitution, nor does it appear in any pleasant sense in
the Federalist Papers. So, we are not a democracy, and here we are
exporting it as though it were just something -- well, we just happened to
make, a lot of democracy, and cotton and tin and stuff like that. So,
let’s --let's do some exports of democracy. We don't have it, and most
countries don't have it, and not many countries want it. Democracy was
tried only once, and that was in the Fifth Century B.C., at Athens, and
finally, they were overcome by an oligarchy from Sparta, and nobody ever
tried again to establish a democracy in any country on earth. And if any
history had been taught to the cheerleader from Andover -- I'm ashamed
that I even went to the brother school Exeter nearby, where at least we
were taught enough history not to make gaffs like that in public.
AMY GOODMAN:
Gore Vidal, President Bush also said, “All
who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not
ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors when you stand for your
liberty, we will stand with you. Democratic reformers facing repression,
prison or exile can know America sees you for who you are-- the future
leaders of your few [free] country. The rulers of outlaw regimes can know
that we still believe, as Abraham Lincoln did, ‘Those who deny freedom to
others deserve it not for themselves and under the rule of a just God,
cannot long retain it.’”
GORE VIDAL:
Oh, what bull. I notice all the help that
we gave Mandela before he himself extricated his people from the white
rule of the Boers and the English in South Africa. We went to great
lengths to see that he was silenced, that he was not helped at any time.
And we were -- Is that how we stood up for other countries trying to
liberate themselves? We’ve never done that. We went into the first two
world wars for self-aggrandizement. We did very well out of it. We’ve gone
into Latin America, and every time that there's been a democratically
elected government, from Arbenz in Guatemala in 1953 to Allende in Chile,
we have played a vicious game. Sometimes we assassinate the president,
sometimes we overthrow him. Sometimes -- all the time, eventually, we
establish a military dictatorship. We’ve been doing that for 200 years.
But, for a people that knows no history, does not want to know history,
with a corrupt media that will not tell you the truth about anything g
oing on in the world, what else could we have, but a dumb, cheerleader
president?
AMY GOODMAN:
But if it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt
who said, “democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can
know, America sees you for who you are, the future leaders of your free
country,” would you object?
FRANKLIN
DELANO ROOSEVELT:
I can only tell you that I feel your pain, and I know that you will be
rulers one day. But meanwhile, I'm staying here in Washington, and you
must look to your own future, and your own freedom.
AMY GOODMAN:
Yes.
GORE VIDAL:
That's Franklin
Delano
Roosevelt. The fact he said that
meant that he was on the side of that; but we never did anything about it.
Roosevelt never made a move, even
when it came to the time of great tyranny, when his state department–I
must say he didn't like it–but his state department turned away the
infamous ship in which the Jews trying to escape Europe and Hitler were
sent back. That's how we helped out.
AMY GOODMAN:
What is your hope for the future, as
President Bush inaugurated his second term with this speech?
GORE VIDAL:
I don't see much future for the United
States, and I put it on economic grounds. Forget moral grounds. We're far
beyond any known morality, and we are embarked upon a kind of war against
the rest of the world. I think that the thing that will save us, and it
will probably come pretty fast, when they start monkeying around with
Social Security, that will cause unrest. Meanwhile, the costs of the wars
the cost of rebuilding the cities immediately after we knock them down, if
we didn't knock them down, we wouldn't have to put them back up again, but
that would mean that there was no work for Bechtel and for Halliburton. We
are going to go broke. The dollar loses value every day. I live part of
the year in Europe, which is always held against me. What a vicious thing
to do, to have a house in Italy; but I also have one in Southern
California. We are a declining power economically in the world, and the
future now clearly belongs to China, Japan, and India. Th ey have the
population, they have the educational systems. They have the will. And
they will win. And we will -- we only survive now by borrowing money from
them in the form of treasury bonds which very soon we won't have enough
revenue to redeem, much less service. So, I put it down to economic
collapse may save the United States from its rulers.
AMY GOODMAN:
President Bush in this inaugural address,
and in his second term, can you make comparisons to Richard Nixon, and won
by a landslide, much more than Bush, in terms of how he beat his opponent,
and yet ultimately is forced to resign?
GORE VIDAL:
Well, let us hope history repeats itself,
and there's a possibility that the American people will get fed up with
endless war, and endless deaths coming out -- American deaths. That's all
we care about. We don't care about foreigners dying. But that is getting
on people's nerves. I think that he thinks, and many of the American
people appear to think, that we're in a movie. Lousy movie, but it's just
a movie. And, once the final credits run, all those dead people, who were
just extras anyway, will stand up and come home, or go back to the old
actors’ home. It isn't a movie we're in. It's real life. And these are
real dead people. And there are more and more of them, and the world won't
tolerate it. So, he might very well end up like Mr. Nixon. Nixon at least
when he ran again, curiously enough, was rated among the most liberal and
progressive of our presidents in the 20th century. Not that he really was;
it's just that he felt domestic affairs were best left alone. Let labor
unions and capital worry about that while the president prosecuted foreign
wars. He loved foreign affairs because it was fun. You got to make a lot
of trips and see people in fancy uniforms and hear “Hail to the Chief” in
various tunes. That was Nixon's take. And then, of course, once he got in
-- into war, he couldn't get out. Didn't try very hard to get out. He
wanted to be victorious. Well, he wasn't victorious. Then he lied and
cheated. This one lies and cheats, too. So far he’s not had his Watergate.
Let us hope that there is one looming.
AMY GOODMAN:
Do you take heart from the opposition,
from the resistance on the ground, from the grassroots protests?
GORE VIDAL:
Well, you know, I spent three years in the
second world war in the Pacific, and I was born at West Point, and I have
some affinity for the army; and what I am hearing, the tom-toms that are
coming not only from those who have returned to the United States,
particularly reservists, but what I also hear from overseas, is that
there’s great distress and dislike of this government, and certainly of
this war, which is idly done. And everybody is at risk with insufficient
armature -- arms, and no motivation at all except the vanity of a -- of
the lowest grade of politicians that we’ve ever had in the White House.
They are disturbed, and I can see that there may be suddenly something
coming from them once they get back home, if they can get back home. They
may turn things around.
AMY GOODMAN:
And, in general, young people in this
country protesting the inauguration, for example. More than 10,000 people
out in the streets, almost -- although there was almost no coverage except
for Pacifica and independent media of those voices. People -- hosts on CNN
saying they didn't want to ‘over-exaggerate’ the images that would be so
easy to go to, so they just didn't.
GORE VIDAL:
Or be honest about them. The famous
February, a year ago, when everybody demonstrated. I spoke to 100,000
people in Hollywood Boulevard. And the L.A. Times, which is better
than most of the establishment papers, said there's just hardly anybody
there. However, they were undone by the photograph taken of -- when I was
up on the platform at very end of Hollywood Boulevard with La Brea in back
of me and way up ahead Vine Street, you saw 100,000 people. You saw what
they looked like, unlike New York where they got everybody into side
streets so you couldn't see them at all in a photograph, because they just
didn't show up. So, out here, a makeup man at the Times helped the
cause.
AMY GOODMAN:
As the Democratic Party chooses a new
leader, do you have words of advice for the direction?
GORE VIDAL:
Remember that the United States -- the
people of the country have always been isolationists, a word which has
been demonized, thrown out, an isolationist is somebody who believes in a
flat earth and is racist and so forth and so on. Well, none of that is
true. Isolationists -- Most of the left in the second world war, from
Norman Thomas on to Burton K. Wheeler, were progressive Americans, the
very best liberal Americans were anti-war. We have never been for imperial
foreign wars. We have to be dragged screaming into them, as we were after
Pearl Harbor and there was a lot of machinations going on to make sure
that that happened. And it goes on all the time. Events are made so
horrible people like Saddam and so on are demonized, and we all have to
immediately begin by saying how awful he is for 25 minutes before we can
get down to the fact that he was no threat to the United States, no threat
at all. He was not involved with al Qaeda. He was not involved w ith 9/11.
He was not. He was not. You can say it a million times, but there you have
a president with the help of the most corrupt media in my lifetime bouying
his words across the land and telling lies about the – ‘We're 45 minutes
away from being blown up by the weapons of mass destruction that this
master of evil has in his hands.’ To which the answer is: Why? Why would
he do that? There must be some motivation. You see, they are now beyond
motivation, and that is insanity. So, an insane government is not one that
you can look to with any confidence.
AMY GOODMAN:
Gore Vidal, speaking to us from
California. His latest book, Imperial America: Reflections on the
United States of Amnesia.
January 25, 2005
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