Vonnegut wrote a Foreword in You Back the Attack! We'll Bomb Who We Want!, a 2003 collection of "remixed war propaganda" posters by Micah Ian Wright targeting the George W. Bush administration and the Iraq War. It also features an introduction by Howard Zinn, with commentary to the posters provided by The Center For Constitutional Rights. The foreword was dated December 3, 2002 from New York City. Vonnegut also read this foreword as part of an interview with the NUVO Newsweekly, published January 1, 2003.[1]
Summary[]
Käthe Kollwitz, 1927
Vonnegut finds these works by Wright reminiscent of artists such as Käthe Kollwitz and George Grosz in Germany during 1920s. It was clear to them that the country's democracy was under threat by psychopathic personalities, or "PPs" as he calls them. Such people are defined as "smart, personable people who have no conscience", aware of the suffering their actions cause but unable to care. They have been discussed in medical texts, most notably in The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. A PP in a corporation could enrich himself at the expense of workers and investors without a qualm. One who gained power in a government could take the country into endless war, killing millions, simply to feel decisive. In short—America has its own Reichstag fire to do something about now.[2]
- ↑ "Vonnegut at 80: I'm mad about being old and I'm mad about being American", NUVO Newsweekly, January 1, 2003.
- ↑ "Foreword", You Back the Attack! We'll Bomb Who We Want!, Micah Ian Wright, pg. 9.