"Fernando Poo," the President of the United States told reporters even as Atlanta was calling for all-out war, "will not become another Laos, or another Costa Rica."
"When are we going to get out troops out of Laos?" a reporter from the New York Times asked quickly; but a man from the Washington Post asked just as rapidly, "And when are we going to get our troops out of Costa Rica?"
"Our Present Plans for Withdrawal are going Forward according to an Orderly Schedule, the President began;
Illuminatus! page 70 of the omnibus paperback
I know there are critics of Illuminatus! who call it a product of its time, but it seems evergreen to me. The above passage scarcely seems like satire. I worry that the U.S. policy of endless war has become normalized.
U.S. to send 4,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
I Tweeted the above link, with the comment, "Some news for the libertarians who supported Trump." I got seven retweets and 16 likes, which made me feel I wasn't completely alone.
1 comment:
What has changed since Vietnam?
Just yesterday I was reading some issues of Avant Garde magazine from 1968 and 1970 noticing how it was contrasted with articles about the war in Vietnam and sexual themes, and filled with creative imagery. A four page article about the war is followed by two page ad for "The Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature", or an ad for The Julian Press publication "Oragenitalism"; followed with the landscape of the unconscious as in the paintings of Melle - "a new Dutch master mirror the mind's eternal conflict between reality and symbolism" or some nude photos of hippies in the 60's and 70's.
On page 1 of May, 1970 issue: "If you've always thought that Americans are a violent people, you've got another think coming. When it comes to deserting from the armed forces, we Americans have a perfectly WONDERFUL record. In fact, the rate of our desertions - from the Revolutionary War onwards - should be an unending source of national pride (or national shame, depending on how you look at it). And as the Vietnam war goes on, and on, ad infinitum and ad nauseum, our record gets better all the time."
Has anything changed since Vietnam? The US has increased number of wars?
Post a Comment