DAVID BRANCACCIO: But just short of that, there must be things that you think the current administration has done wrong that has so upset you.
KURT VONNEGUT: Well, yes, it doesn't know anything about military science. Doesn't know anything about science. You know, global warming, they just don't believe it. And my lord, to send 143,000 soldiers, or whatever it is to occupy a country of what? Several million? Is I-- what, it's seven million, you think? It's preposterous. I knew better than that. Although the highest rank I ever held was corporal. And so these people don't know anything about anything. They're incompetent. And, so, yes, they are getting a lot of our guys killed. But, also, they've emptied our treasuries. You know, we can't fix our roads. We can't fix the schools. It's my dream of America with great public schools. I thought we should be the envy of the world with our public schools.
_________
KURT VONNEGUT: Look, I'll tell you. It's one thing that no cabinet had ever had, is a Secretary Of The Future. And there are no plans at all for my grandchildren and my great grandchildren.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: That's a great idea. In other words a Cabinet post--
KURT VONNEGUT: Well, it's too late! Look, the game is over! The game is over. We've killed the planet, the life support system. And, and it's so damaged that there's no recovery from that. And we're very soon going to run out of petroleum which powered everything that's modern. Razzmatazz about America. And, and it was very shallow people who imagined that we could keep this up indefinitely. But when I tell others, they say; Well, look there's-- you said hydrogen fuel. Nobody's working on it.
__________
DAVID BRANCACCIO: Why has the president angered you so?
KURT VONNEGUT: Well, because he shouldn't be president. Is-- we ought to have a stronger person. And he's obviously an actor in a made for TV movie. And other people are, in fact, telling him what to say. Of course, we have only a one party government. It's the winners. And then everybody else is the losers. And, the winners divided into two parties. The Republicans and the Democrats.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: Well, you write in the book you say that the last election, the two leading candidates were two C students from Yale, as you put it.
KURT VONNEGUT: Two members of Skull and Bones at Yale, for God's sake. If I mean, that's what a charade the combat between the Republicans and the Democrats is. It's rich kids. Winners on both sides. So the winners can't lose. And, of course, the losers have no representation in Congress or whatever. But look, yeah. We had to choose between two members of Skull and Bones? What about if we had to choose between two members of Sigma Chi at Purdue? Wouldn't somebody have said what a minute. What the hell happened here?
DAVID BRANCACCIO: But you're saying you don't see senior political figures really, anybody representing the interests of people who are struggling?
KURT VONNEGUT: No, are not representing the American people. And, so there are people who made a hell of a lot of money one way or another. Making it during the war, incidentally. As you know, maybe the war is a bad idea. But some people are making a ton of money off of it. And they want to hang on to whatever they've got. And so they bank roll political campaigns for both Republicans and Democrats. Look, we're awful animals. We can start with that. You know, it's a whole human experiment, if that's what we are.
_________
DAVID BRANCACCIO: There's a little sweet moment, I've got to say, in a very intense book-- your latest-- in which you're heading out the door and your wife says what are you doing? I think you say-- I'm getting-- I'm going to buy an envelope.
KURT VONNEGUT: Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around.
And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.
PBS NOW Transcript, October 7, 2005
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcriptNOW140_full.html
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