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for agitprop purposes, it is perhaps better that this guy is so all over the place. there isn't much actual ideology to point at so we can make the propaganda of the deed into something more useful.

Maybe. I'm just putting this up here as I hadn't seen it here yet.

Maybe he's good, maybe he's not. I don't actually think it matters. What matters is what he did and that people think that's cool and good. The rest is white noise in my opinion, people really won't care.

It's probably better that there's no solid indication he's a raging liberal OR a raging chud. It means neither of the two halves of the working class will disown him on basis of being the "other team", which is always the biggest risk.

fuckin obliterated lmao

If Vonnegut can help to push more Americans towards socialism, I think that's a fantastic and worthy legacy for my favorite author.

I think his writing has all the socialist frameworks and values throughout the text, and there's no way he didn't push people towards socialism.

For instance, this is my favourite Vonnegut quote, from Breakfast of Champions. (For context, Karabekian is an abstract painter and Keedsler is a novelist. Both are wealthy, bougie and are minor characters.)

"You know what truth is?" said Karabekian. "It's some crazy thing my neighbour believes. If I want to make friends with him I ask him what he believes. He tells me and I say 'Yeah yeah - ain't that the truth?' "

I had no respect whatsoever for the creative works of the painter or the novelist. I thought Karabekian with his meaningless pictures had entered into a conspiracy with millionaires to make poor people feel stupid. I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, that it had a beginning, middle and end.

As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more engaged and mystified by the idiot decisions of my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: they were doing their best to live like people invented in storybooks. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: it was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.

Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales.

And so on.

Once I understood what was making Americans such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.

If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: it can be done.

Adapting to chaos there in the cocktail lounge, I had Bonnie McMahon, who was exactly as important as anybody else in the universe, bring more yeast extract to Beatrice Keedsler and Karabekian.

I don't think there's any way to not be a socialist if you start from the position that everyone is exactly as important as everyone else and you follow that thought to its natural conclusion.

Vonnegut is a crucial early step in my own pipeline.

I think it makes some of us uncomfortable that the Chuds we spend so much time seething about are, on an individual level, one crisis away from being a winnable comrade. Doesn’t mean we should handle them with kid gloves. It’s the same reason we critique each other and ourselves. Correct ideas are only arrived at through social practice. and it is incredibly frustrating that Americans are so empathetically stunted that it has to happen to them personally for them to understand, but still. We don’t get to get tired of making the case for socialism.

It’s also worth remembering that all of your formative opinions being posted publicly and preserved forever is a fairly recent development in history and i would wager it has done more to harm working class solidarity than help it.

I don’t agree with every position this kid has taken or probably still holds, but I don’t envy the hurt he went through to get where he is.

o7 for having the heart and sense to know who his real enemies are unlike so many other young men like him.

is definitely responsible for a good deal of "oh wait everything is pretty fucked up" that led to my radicalization.

When I was was a teen I absolutely loved Vonnegut, he definitely gave my young mind some things to think about that probably influenced my politics as I aged.

people have existed with far less material wealth than the poor in the US do, its the system that chokes the life from us which imposes poverty, that system which blames us and raises us from birth to blame ourselves for this condition so that they may continue to leave us poor so they may be rich

Yes I agree but in other cultures, such as here in europe, there is considerably more empathy because of the cultural history of folk supporting the poor. There's definitely something unique going on with the US and only having the settler history.

This makes a lot of sense. If I ever make something of myself I’d love to write about this and make it a counter-thesis to Hillbilly Elegy, I’m going to call it Redneck Requiem.

You nailed it on the last bit, while I know it’s not nearly to the same extent as the real thing. As far as I’m concerned, the boonies and the suburbs are just another form of ghettoization for a different section of the working class. I’d love to write how the modern suburb is now used as a “icky poor containment zone” now that the rich learned about walkable cities (and want them all to themselves.) Despite being mostly white and having some “privilege”, suburbs deny people growing up in them access to community and amenities and if all jobs are going to be nepotism hires from here on out, suburbs and rural communities also deny people access to connections that pull them out of poverty. Oh, and if you’re queer then it’s fucking over for you and even more isolating knowing you’re under the good ol’ boys watchful eye.

Sorry for the rant, that last part really struck a nerve in a good way.

WHAT?!!

How does it not?