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Thank you, Rohn! This is a good piece.<br>
<br>
I *love* the "if Western Civilization were a person, we would be
directing it to..." bit. And "I swear, man, just lay
enough bread on me for twenty multiple re-entry vehicles and a fleet
of B-1
bombers, and I'll never bother you again."<br>
<br>
It seems like our modern innovation is to carry out continually our
*own* small wars. In Cold War times, we could keep the addiction
fed by having proxies fight for us.<br>
<br>
My only reservation is (when talking about children growing up...)
that it takes the warmaking decision as a personal one - as if
stopping war just depended on putting into power (a few?) better
individual people. Do we believe that? <br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 9/19/12 8:29 AM, Rohn Koester wrote:<br>
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Hey Peace. I read Vonnegut's "The Worst Addiction of Them All" on
AWARE on the Air yesterday -- thought you might be interested (via
<i>The Nation</i>, December 31, 1983).
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<div>(Vonnegut's perspective still has a lot of traction, in my
opinion, although everywhere you read "Soviet," try substituting
"The Terrorists." Also, K.V.'s notion that war preparers don't
really want to go to war has turned out to seem awfully
optimistic.)</div>
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<div>rk</div>
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<div>
<h1>The Worst Addiction of Them All</h1>
<p class="MsoNormal">Kurt Vonnegut</p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">What has been America's most
nurturing contribution to the culture of this planet so far?
Many would say
Jazz. I, who love jazz, will say this instead: Alcoholics
Anonymous.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">I am not an alcoholic. If I
was,
I would go before the nearest A.A. meeting and say, "My name
is Kurt
Vonnegut. I am an alcoholic." God willing, that might be my
first step
down the long, hard road back to sobriety.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">The A.A. scheme, which
requires a
confession like that, is the first to have any measurable
success in dealing
with the tendency of some human beings, perhaps 10 percent
of any population
sample anyone might care to choose, to become addicted to
substances that give
them brief spasms of pleasure but in the long term transmute
their lives and
the lives of those around them into ultimate ghastliness.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">The A.A. scheme, which, again,
can work only if the addicts regularly admit that this or
that chemical is
poisonous to them, is now proving its effectiveness with
compulsive gamblers,
who are not dependent on chemicals from a distillery or a
pharmaceutical
laboratory. This is no paradox. Gamblers, in effect,
manufacture their own
dangerous substances. God help them, they produce chemicals
that elate them
whenever they place a bet on simply anything.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">If I was a compulsive gambler,
which I am not, I would be well advised to stand up before
the nearest meeting
of Gamblers Anonymous and declare, "My name is Kurt
Vonnegut. I am a
compulsive gambler."</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">Whether I was standing before
a
meeting of Gamblers Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous, I
would be encouraged to
testify as to how the chemicals I had generated within
myself or swallowed had
alienated my friends and relatives, cost me jobs and houses
and deprived me of
my last shred of self-respect.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">Not every member of A.A. or
G.A.
has sunk quite that low, of course--but plenty have. Many,
if not most, have
done what they call "hitting bottom" before admitting what
it is that
has been ruining their lives.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">I now wish to call attention
to
another form of addiction, which has not been previously
identified. It is more
like gambling than drinking, since the people afflicted are
ravenous for
situations that will cause their bodies to release exciting
chemicals into
their bloodstreams. I am persuaded that there are among us
people who are
tragically hooked on preparations for war.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">Tell people with that disease
that war is coming and we have to get ready for it, and for
a few minutes
there, they will be as happy as a drunk with his martini
breakfast or a
compulsive gambler with his paycheck bet on the Super Bowl.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">Let us recognize how sick such
people are. From now on, when a national leader, or even
just a neighbor,
starts talking about some new weapons system which is going
to cost us a mere $29
billion, we should speak up. We should say something on the
order of,
"Honest to God, I couldn't be sorrier for you if I'd seen
you wash down a
fistful of black beauties with a pint of Southern Comfort."</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">I mean it. I am not joking.
Compulsive preparers for World War III, in this country or
any other, are as
tragically and, yes, as repulsively addicted as any
stockbroker passed out with
his head in a toilet in the Port Authority bus terminal.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">For an alcoholic to experience
a
little joy, he needs maybe three ounces of grain alcohol.
Alcoholics, when they
are close to hitting bottom, customarily can't hold much
alcohol.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">If we know a compulsive
gambler
who is dead broke, we can probably make him happy with a
dollar to bet on who
can spit farther than someone else. For us to give a
compulsive war-preparer a
fleeting moment of happiness, we may have to buy him three
Trident submarines
and a hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles mounted on
choo-choo trains.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">If Western Civilization were a
person--</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">If Western Civilization, which
blankets the world now, as far as I can tell, were a
person--</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">If Western Civilizations,
which
surely now includes the Soviet Union and China and India and
Pakistan and on
and on, were a person--</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">If Western Civilization were a
person, we would be directing it to the nearest meeting of
War-Preparers
Anonymous. We would be telling it to stand up before the
meeting and say,
"My name is Western Civilization. I am a compulsive war-
preparer. I have
lost everything I ever cared about. I should have come here
long ago. I first
hit bottom in World War I." Western Civilization cannot be
represented by
a single person, of course, but a single explanation for the
catastrophic
course it has followed during this bloody century is
possible. We the people,
because of our ignorance of the disease, have again and
again entrusted power
to people we did not know were sickies.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">And let us not mock them now,
any
more than we would mock someone with syphilis or smallpox or
leprosy or yaws or
typhoid fever or any of the other diseases to which the
flesh is heir. All we
have to do is separate them from the levers of power, I
think.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">And then what? Western
Civilization's long, hard trip back to sobriety might begin.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">A word about appeasement,
something World War II, supposedly, taught us not to
practice: I say to you
that the world has been ruined by appeasement. Appeasement
of whom? Of the
Communists? Of the neo-Nazis? No! Appeasement of the
compulsive war-preparers.
I can scarcely name a nation that has not lost most of its
freedom and wealth
in attempts to appease its own addicts to preparations for
war.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">And there is no appeasing an
addict for very long.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">"I swear, man, just lay
enough bread on me for twenty multiple re-entry vehicles and
a fleet of B-1
bombers, and I'11 never bother you again."</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">Most addictions start
innocently
enough in childhood, under agreeable, reputable auspices-a
sip of champagne at
a wedding, a game of poker for matchsticks on a rainy
afternoon. Compulsive
war-preparers may have been encouraged as infants to clap
their hands with glee
at a campfire or a Fourth of July parade.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">Not every child gets hooked.
Not
every child so tempted grows up to be a drunk or a gambler
or a babbler about
knocking down the incoming missiles of the Evil Empire with
laser beams. When I
identify the war-preparers as addicts, I am not calling for
the exclusion of
children from all martial celebrations. I doubt that more
than one child in a
hundred, having seen fireworks, for example, will become an
adult who wants us
to stop squandering our substance on education and health
and social justice
and the arts and food and shelter and clothing for the
needy, and so on--who
wants us to blow it all on ammunition instead.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">And please understand that the
addiction I have identified is to<span
class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>preparations</i><span
class="apple-converted-space"> </span>for war. I repeat:
to<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>preparations</i><span
class="apple-converted-space"> </span>for war, addiction
to the thrills of
de-mothballing battleships and inventing weapons systems
against which there
cannot possibly be a defense, supposedly, and urging the
citizenry to hate this
part of humanity or that one, and knocking over little
governments that might
aid and abet an enemy someday, and so on. I am not talking
about an addiction
to war itself, which is a very different matter. A
compulsive preparer for war
wants to go to big-time war no more than an alcoholic
stockbroker wants to pass
out with his head in a toilet in the Port Authority bus
terminal.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">Should addicts of any sort
hold
high office in this or any other country? Absolutely not,
for their first
priority will always be to satisfy their addiction, no
matter how terrible the
consequences may be--even to themselves.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">Suppose we had an alcoholic
President who still had not hit bottom and whose chief
companions were drunks
like himself. And suppose it were a fact, made absolutely
clear to him, that if
he took just one more drink, the whole planet would blow up.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">So he has all the liquor
thrown
out of the White House, including his Aqua-Velva shaving
lotion. So late at
night he is terribly restless, crazy for a drink but proud
of not drinking. So
he opens the White House refrigerator, looking for a Tab or
a Diet Pepsi, he
tells himself. And there, half-hidden by a family-size jar
of French's mustard,
is an unopened can of Coors beer.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:13.5pt">What do you think he'll do?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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