[Upd-discuss] U.S. writer Gore Vidal: "[The U.S.A. is] a dictatorship that has been totally militarised, everyone is spied on by the government itself."

[Zapopan Martin Muela-Meza]

The Independent: GORE VIDAL ON ITALY, IRAQ - AND WHY HE HATES GEORGE BUSH
Independent, The (London, England)
June 23, 2006
Author:  Peter Popham

Excerpts...

...
How is it, then, to live full-time in the United States?

"If you care about America it's dreadful," he said. "If you are making
money you don't care.

"Benjamin Franklin was shown the new American constitution, and he said,
'I don't like it, but I will vote for it because we need something right
now. But this constitution in time will fail, as all such efforts do. And
it will fail because of the corruption of the people, in a general sense.'
And that is what it has come to now, exactly as Franklin predicted."

We have arrived in short order at Vidal's core message. As he points out,
he has "lived for three-quarters of the 20th century and a third of the
history of the United States", and listening to him talk one feels in the
presence of history as with few Americans.

...

He remains the Bush administration's most pugnacious and learned and
contemptuous enemy. Nobody has put the case against the neocons with more
passion or precision.

Why is it so dreadful to live in America, I asked.

"We have been deprived of our franchise," he says. "The election was
stolen in both 2000 and 2004, because of electronic voting machinery which
can be easily fixed. We've had two illegitimate elections in a row ...

"Little Bush says we are at war, but we are not at war because to be at
war Congress has to vote for it. He says we are at war on terror, but that
is a metaphor, though I doubt if he knows what that means. It's like
having a war on dandruff, it's endless and pointless. We are in a
dictatorship that has been totally militarised, everyone is spied on by
the government itself. All three arms of the government are in the hands
of this junta.

"Whatever you are," he goes on, "they say you are the reverse. The men
behind the war in Iraq are cowards who did not fight in Vietnam - but they
spent millions of dollars proving that John Kerry, who was a genuine war
hero whatever you think of his politics, was a coward.

"This is what happens when you have control of the media, and I have never
known the media more vicious, stupid and corrupt than they are now."

...

'He says we are at war on terror, but that is a metaphor, though I doubt
if he knows what that means. Ifslike having a war on dandruff, it's
endless and pointless'

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