CP: You've
observed many times in your writing that the United States has
elections but has no politics. Could you talk about what you mean by
that, and about how so many people have come to accept a purely
spectatorial relationship to politics, more like fans (or non-fans)
than citizens?
Gore Vidal: Well, you cannot
have a political party that is not based upon a class interest. It has
been part of the American propaganda machine that we have no class
system. Yes, there are rich people; some are richer than others. But
there is no class system. We're classless. You could be president
tomorrow. So could Michael Jackson, or this one or that one. This isn't
true. We have a very strong, very rigid class structure which goes back
to the beginning of the country. I will not go into the details of
that, but there it is. Whether it's good or bad is something else.
If we don't have class interests officially, then therefore we have no
political parties. What is the Republican Party? Well, it used to be
the party of the small-town businessman, generally in the Middle West,
generally sort of out of the mainstream. Very conservative. It now
represents nothing but the gas and oil business. They own it. And the
people who go to Congress are simply bought. They are lawyers who are
paid to represent Halliburton, big oil, big banking. So the very rich
corporate America has a party for itself, the Republican Party. The
Democrats don't have much of anything but a kind of wistful style. They
just want everyone to be happy, and politically correct at all times.
Do not hurt other people's feelings. They spend so much time on
political correctness that they haven't thought of what to do
politically about anything. Like say "no" to these preemptive wars,
which are against not only the whole world's take on war and peace, but
against United States history. [more]
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