Kurt Vonnegut: Cold Turkey (In These Times)

I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.

But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.

And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.

When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those. Cold turkey.

Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is it?

Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/cold_turkey

Vonnegut has always been, and will always be, the man.

i didn't think he'd be able to fit that many kabobs on a single skewer ... great article ...

"They (the US soldiers) are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas."


Well, amend that to read: Christmas and Hanukkah.

Vonnegut has said it all quite nicely.

I think he is one of the few people who truly exemplify what being a human is all about.

I knew there was a reason that I'd read everything he'd ever written. ;-)

It didn't take me long to decide what image to use for my avatar when I joined DU (although Kurt wasn't in the default selections, so I had to upload his pic myself!). He's one of my major heroes. I actually got to see him speak in person one time; what a thrill.

This piece is insightful, kind, at times funny, at other times sad; and it deftly skewers those who need skewering most. In other words, classic Vonnegut. Thanks for posting the link.

"Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers,
if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was
reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid
enormously for commiting crimes against which no laws had been
passed."
--God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Gore would have been addressing it, unlike these pricks who stole the country and killed our future.

follow the link to the Doomsday Report.....

Rock on, Vonnegut.

Vonnegut is a national treasure.

Wonderfully written, I had not read it either.