"I Am Embarrassed" is the title given to a speech delivered on May 6, 1979 amidst "rock and roll numbers at an antinuke rally in Washington, D.C."[1] It was republished in the collection Palm Sunday in March 1981.
Summary[]
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Rev. Jim Jones, 1977
Declaring himself and all the attendees embarrassed that Americans have "guided our destinies so clumsily" in front of the whole world that they must guard against their own government and industries, Vonnegut proposes perhaps this is yet another form of "family style" mass suicide, like the Reverend Jim Jones except by the millions. All this requires is silence while big business and the military destroy the world with poisonous chemicals. He calls such people dumb and vicious for lying to people about nuclear weapons and power plants. Even worse are those paid to teach such executives and institutions to lie effectively—lawyers, communicators, and public relations specialists. Their lies are "as cunningly handcrafted as the masterpieces of Benvenuto Cellini" and better built than the nuclear power plants themselves. Such liars will kill everything on the planet unless they are stopped.[2]