you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
Listen:
Trout and Hoover were citizens of the United States of America, a country which was called America for short. This was their national anthem, which was pure balderdash, like so much they were expected to take seriously:
O, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thru the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
There were one quadrillion nations in the Universe, but the nation Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout belonged to was the only one with a national anthem which was gibberish sprinkled with question marks.
Here is what their flag looked like:
(drawing)
It was the law of their nation, a law no other nation on the planet had about its flag, which said this: "The flag shall not be dipped to any person or thing."
Flag-dipping was a form of friendly and respectful salute, which consisted of bringing the flag on a stick closer to the ground, then raising it up again.
The motto of Dwayne Hoover's and Kilgore Trout's nation was this, which meant in a language nobody spoke anymore, Out of Many, One: "E pluribus unum."
The undippable flag was a beauty, and the anthem and the vacant motto might not have mattered much, if it weren't for this: a lot of citizens were so ignored and cheated and insulted that they thought they might be in the wrong country, or even on the wrong planet, that some terrible mistake had been made. It might have comforted them some if their anthem and their motto had mentioned fairness or brotherhood or hope or happiness, had somehow welcomed them to the society and its real estate.
It they studied their paper money for clues as to what their country was all about, they found, among a lot of other baroque trash, a picture of a truncated pyramid with a radiant eye on top of it, like this:
(drawing)
Not even the President of the United States knew what that was all about. It was as though the country were saying to its citizens, "In nonsense is strength."
A lot of the nonsense was the innocent result of playfulness on the part of the founding fathers of the nation of Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout. The founders were aristocrats, and they wished to show off their useless education, which consisted of the study of hocus-pocus from ancient times. They were bum poets as well.
But some of the nonsense was evil, since it concealed great crimes. For example, teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy:
1492
The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were alread living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them...
Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions
---
ETA: For FUCK'S SAKE! Sismac was asking about an English translation for Sigur Rós' Viðrar vel til loftárása, and I told her that during the Kosovo 'conflict' (for lack of a better word), a weatherman on Icelandic TV said, kinda ironically, "í dag viðrar vel til loftárása" ("Today is good weather for an airstrike") and Sigur Rós named the song after that. AND. She replies, "Kosobo?" And I say, "KOSOVO." Sismac: "What's that?"
So I proceed to explain to her the situation with Slobodan Milosevic, and the (continued) collapse of the Balkan states, and she's looking at me like she's never heard of anything I'm saying. She's almost fifteen.
. . .
I swear, I can't even put into WORDS how furious I am with my country's practice of bullshit curriculum when it comes to World History, or really, current events. I mean, hell, the ONLY reason I know a moderate amount about this 'conflict' is because at the time, I was writing a huge report on Bosnia & Herzegovina. My schools didn't teach me anything about it! Nor Mogadishu (all I know comes from Black Hawk Down, which is...sad), nor the Rwandan genocide...and you know what? I STILL barely know anything about the Cold War. Or the Bay of Pigs.
Every time I studied World History, it was, yay, let's learn about the the cradle of civilization, memorize the social classes of feudal England, and study the different times a new sect of Christianity split off, because y'know, there aren't ANY other religions in the world! And then we'd map the path of each conquistador, hit the Industrial Revolution, skim a bit, and then here's WWI and trench warfare. Each year I would study U.S. History, it would start with myths about the early American settlers, and end somewhere around the 1950s. Which leaves, oh, the last 50 YEARS of international relations and world politics. I think that's a little more important than how Padre Junipero Serra founded a bunch of missions down the California coast.
It wasn't until I studied capoeira (a few summers ago) that I really learned anything about South American colonialism, it wasn't until I read The Poisonwood Bible that I began to grasp the first sliver of African politics (Lumumba, Mubutu, etc.), and all I know about the Chinese invasion of Tibet comes from Scorsese's Kundun.
So, Happy 4th of July, USA. Here's to more years of educating your children with blinders.
Trout and Hoover were citizens of the United States of America, a country which was called America for short. This was their national anthem, which was pure balderdash, like so much they were expected to take seriously:
O, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thru the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
There were one quadrillion nations in the Universe, but the nation Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout belonged to was the only one with a national anthem which was gibberish sprinkled with question marks.
Here is what their flag looked like:
(drawing)
It was the law of their nation, a law no other nation on the planet had about its flag, which said this: "The flag shall not be dipped to any person or thing."
Flag-dipping was a form of friendly and respectful salute, which consisted of bringing the flag on a stick closer to the ground, then raising it up again.
The motto of Dwayne Hoover's and Kilgore Trout's nation was this, which meant in a language nobody spoke anymore, Out of Many, One: "E pluribus unum."
The undippable flag was a beauty, and the anthem and the vacant motto might not have mattered much, if it weren't for this: a lot of citizens were so ignored and cheated and insulted that they thought they might be in the wrong country, or even on the wrong planet, that some terrible mistake had been made. It might have comforted them some if their anthem and their motto had mentioned fairness or brotherhood or hope or happiness, had somehow welcomed them to the society and its real estate.
It they studied their paper money for clues as to what their country was all about, they found, among a lot of other baroque trash, a picture of a truncated pyramid with a radiant eye on top of it, like this:
(drawing)
Not even the President of the United States knew what that was all about. It was as though the country were saying to its citizens, "In nonsense is strength."
A lot of the nonsense was the innocent result of playfulness on the part of the founding fathers of the nation of Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout. The founders were aristocrats, and they wished to show off their useless education, which consisted of the study of hocus-pocus from ancient times. They were bum poets as well.
But some of the nonsense was evil, since it concealed great crimes. For example, teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy:
1492
The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were alread living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them...
Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions
---
ETA: For FUCK'S SAKE! Sismac was asking about an English translation for Sigur Rós' Viðrar vel til loftárása, and I told her that during the Kosovo 'conflict' (for lack of a better word), a weatherman on Icelandic TV said, kinda ironically, "í dag viðrar vel til loftárása" ("Today is good weather for an airstrike") and Sigur Rós named the song after that. AND. She replies, "Kosobo?" And I say, "KOSOVO." Sismac: "What's that?"
So I proceed to explain to her the situation with Slobodan Milosevic, and the (continued) collapse of the Balkan states, and she's looking at me like she's never heard of anything I'm saying. She's almost fifteen.
. . .
I swear, I can't even put into WORDS how furious I am with my country's practice of bullshit curriculum when it comes to World History, or really, current events. I mean, hell, the ONLY reason I know a moderate amount about this 'conflict' is because at the time, I was writing a huge report on Bosnia & Herzegovina. My schools didn't teach me anything about it! Nor Mogadishu (all I know comes from Black Hawk Down, which is...sad), nor the Rwandan genocide...and you know what? I STILL barely know anything about the Cold War. Or the Bay of Pigs.
Every time I studied World History, it was, yay, let's learn about the the cradle of civilization, memorize the social classes of feudal England, and study the different times a new sect of Christianity split off, because y'know, there aren't ANY other religions in the world! And then we'd map the path of each conquistador, hit the Industrial Revolution, skim a bit, and then here's WWI and trench warfare. Each year I would study U.S. History, it would start with myths about the early American settlers, and end somewhere around the 1950s. Which leaves, oh, the last 50 YEARS of international relations and world politics. I think that's a little more important than how Padre Junipero Serra founded a bunch of missions down the California coast.
It wasn't until I studied capoeira (a few summers ago) that I really learned anything about South American colonialism, it wasn't until I read The Poisonwood Bible that I began to grasp the first sliver of African politics (Lumumba, Mubutu, etc.), and all I know about the Chinese invasion of Tibet comes from Scorsese's Kundun.
So, Happy 4th of July, USA. Here's to more years of educating your children with blinders.