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3168458
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Many years ago, there used to be something called 'conflict of interest.' No longer, I'm afraid. Today, we all bathe in the same river.
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conflict-of-interest
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Gore Vidal |
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081192e
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Foreigners are mystified by the whole business while thoughtful Americans - there are several of us - are equally mystified that the ruling establishment of the country has proved to be so mindlessly vindictive that it is willing, to be blunt, to overthrow the lawful government of the United States - that is, a president elected in 1992 and reelected in 1995 by We the People, that sole source of all political legitimacy, which takes precede..
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politics
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Gore Vidal |
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936f7a8
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A nation not of men but of laws, intoned John Adams as he, among other lawyers, launched what has easily become the most demented society ever consciously devised by intelligent men. We are now enslaves by laws. We are governed by lawyers. We create little but litigate much. Our monuments are the ever-expanding prisons, where millions languish for having committed victimless crimes or for simply not playing the game of plausible deniability..
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usurpation-of-the-constitution
impeachment-of-bill-clinton
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Gore Vidal |
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3ca93da
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I said it. I like to quote myself. I am not modest.
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Gore Vidal |
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bc81492
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the Russian governors are terrified of ideas. If only they knew what our governors know--that in a massive egalitarian society no idea which runs counter to the prevailing superstitions can successfully penetrate the official carapace.
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Gore Vidal |
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6cc87f5
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Do not regulate the private lives of people because, if you do, they will become angry and antisocial, and they will get what they want from criminals who work in perfect freedom because they know how to pay off the police.
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Gore Vidal |
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629c84e
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Apathy is just a lack of energy, which to me, is just the literal definition of decadence. So the energy gives out in a society - that is decadence.
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Gore Vidal |
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67b225f
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is not all philosophy but preparation for a serene dying?
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mortality
death
philosophy
libanius
philosophy-of-death
aging
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Gore Vidal |
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cba4b13
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Long before the dread monotheists got their hands on history's neck, we had been taught how to handle feuds by none other than the god Apollo as dramatized by Aeschylus in Eumenides (a polite Greek term for the Furies who keep us daily company on CNN). Orestes, for the sin of matricide, cannot rid himself of the Furies who hound him wherever he goes. He appeals to the god Apollo who tells him to go to the UN--also known as the citizens' ass..
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Gore Vidal |
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7f19155
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When Kennedy got his highest rating after the debacle of the Bay of Pigs, he observed, characteristically, "It would seem that the worse you fuck up in this job the more popular you get."
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Gore Vidal |
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365bf35
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AFTER HAMILTON'S DEATH, I remained at Richmond Hill for ten days. I confess that I was not prepared for the response to our interview. Apparently no one had ever fought a duel in the whole history of the United States until Aaron Burr invented this diabolic game in order to murder the greatest American that ever lived (after George Washington, of course). Over night the arrogant, mob-detesting Hamilton was metamorphosed into a Christ-like f..
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Gore Vidal |
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733866a
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Contrary to accepted legend, the Philadelphians did not at all mind the presence of the British army in their city; in fact, many of them hoped that Washington would soon be caught and hanged, putting an end to those disruptions and discomforts which had been set in motion by the ambitions of a number of greedy and vain lawyers shrewdly able to use as cover for their private designs Jefferson's high-minded platitudes and cloudy political th..
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Gore Vidal |
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52fb84e
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Democritus is studying philosophy here at Athens. This means that he delights in quarrels.
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Gore Vidal |
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bdeb95b
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I would not be surprised if elephants are more intelligent than human beings. After all, their heads are larger than ours, and the fact that they do not speak might well be an indication of superiority.
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Gore Vidal |
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fb8217b
|
Journalism and popular fiction have merged, and the graphic and the plausible have become an end in themselves. The contemporary public plainly prefers mirrors to windows.
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popular-fiction
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Gore Vidal |
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63dd62c
|
Forget the Bush family, they are the most negligible family in the country. They are unintelligent, they are reasonably decorative, they are obedient to the great economic powers. Nixon said something interesting to Murray Kempton about Bush senior when he became President. Murray and Nixon used to have lunch, and when Murray said, "Well, what is this Bush like?" Nixon said, "Oh, nothing, nothing there, just a lightweight. He's the sort of ..
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Gore Vidal |
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a52f00d
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helped the boy-governor eat the remains of the fruit, they discussed how it was that newspapers sometimes knew all sorts of secrets that they ought not to have known--and certainly ought not to publish, when the rest of the time they had no interest in facts at all. "Whatever sounds as if it might suit the prejudices of the reader, that is what will be published," said Chase."
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Gore Vidal |
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9668dbe
|
In passing, I continually marvel at how different today's lawyers and politicians are from us of the first generation. We did not possess a single orator to compare with the present crop. Jefferson and Madison were inaudible. Monroe was dull. Hamilton rambled and I was far too dry (and brief) for the popular taste. Fisher Ames was the nearest thing we had to an orator (I never heard Patrick Henry). Today, however, practically every public m..
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Gore Vidal |
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fb00449
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It is my task always to know, particularly when I don't.
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Gore Vidal |
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1afc4c3
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They say that to know oneself is to know all there is that is human. But of course no one can ever know himself. Nothing human is fully calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.
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self-knowledge
knowledge-of-self
know-thyself
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Gore Vidal |
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aade5ad
|
In Broadway, I suddenly found myself face to face with William de la Touche Clancey. "Well!" A long drawn-out syllable, in which fear and condescension were unpleasantly mingled. "What is the young Old Patroon about to turn his hand to next?" "The Vauxhall Gardens, I should think." My dislike of Clancey is almost physical. Yet I stare at him with fascination; note that his protuberant eyes are yellowish; that he scratches himself compulsive..
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Gore Vidal |
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d955afe
|
You know what Mr. Bates called me?" Seward shook his head with wonder. "An unprincipled liar. And here I am one of the most heavily principled men in politics." Lincoln chuckled. In every way, making allowances for regional differences, Seward's humor was not unlike his own. "And since you're a smart man, Governor, you never actually lie. Smart men never have to."
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Gore Vidal |
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3f59c56
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You can't break eggs without making an omelet," said Butler sententiously."
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Gore Vidal |
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aff69f6
|
In 1989 the former drug czar and TV talk-show fool, William Bennett, suggested de jure as well as de facto abolition of habeas corpus in "drug" cases as well as (I am not inventing this) public beheadings of drug dealers."
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Gore Vidal |
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e79d78a
|
As I now move, graciously, I hope, towards the door marked Exit, it occurs to me that the only thing I ever really liked to do was go to the movies.
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Gore Vidal |
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8ed8a34
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So here they are, trying to get us into the army again to get us to fight in Europe, but the country is isolationist. One of the reasons why the world has been demonized is because they had to do it. The average American is an isolationist.
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Gore Vidal |
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a737b81
|
At times, she felt that she was involved in an elaborate peasant dance, which had not been entirely explained to her. Now the hand is held; now the heel is stamped; now the head turns; and then the kiss.
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Gore Vidal |
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a32b3a2
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weaving his verbal wreaths, in prose and verse, of marvellous poison ivy.
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Gore Vidal |
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88bb3ad
|
The next week both small pox and the bloody flux began to go through the camp. General Washington maintained that the flux came from drinking new cider. But the cider-drinking continued, and so for that matter did the flux, which is a terrible death, the bowels emptying out one's life in bloody spasms. I
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Gore Vidal |
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346ccbd
|
It is ironic-rouse the limpest adjective-that a government as spontaneously tyrannous and callous as ours should, over the years, have come yo care so much about our health as it endlessly tests and retests commercial drugs available in other lands while arresting those who take "hard" drugs on the potential ground that they are bad for the user's health. One is touched by their concern- touched and dubious. After all, these same compassion..
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politics
health
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Gore Vidal |
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78a58e1
|
After politics, journalism has always been the preferred career of the ambitious but lazy second-rater.
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Gore Vidal |
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edd662b
|
The American passion for categorizing has now managed to create two non-existent categories--gay and straight.
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Gore Vidal |
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d75c965
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FBI slaughter of the innocents at Waco was a model Jacobin enterprise.
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Gore Vidal |
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7d33e3a
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Since the reading skills of the American people are the lowest in the First World, the general public is always easy prey to manipulation by television.
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Gore Vidal |
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ed6dcfc
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I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess. Clad only in garter belt and one dress shield, I held off the entire elite of the Trobriand Islanders, a race who possess no words for "why" or "because." Wielding a stone axe, I broke the arms, the limbs, the balls of their finest warriors, my beauty blinding them, as it does all men, unmanning them in the way that King Kong was reduced to mere simian whimper by beauteous Fay Wray whom ..
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Gore Vidal |
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a777fe8
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I enjoy comedic invention, both high and low, there is almost nothing quite so satisfying as making an audience laugh while removing its insides.
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Gore Vidal |
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af164cd
|
The American people are as devoted to the idea of sin and its punishment as they are to making money--and fighting drugs is nearly as big a business as pushing them. Since the combination of sin and money is irresistible (particularly to the professional politician), the situation will only grow worse." I suppose, if nothing else, I was"
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Gore Vidal |
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c539904
|
A year later, Ayatollah Bennett declared, "I find no merit in the [drug] legalizers' case. The simple fact is that drug use is wrong. And the moral argument, in the end, is the most compelling argument." Of course, what this dangerous comedian thinks is moral James Madison and the Virginia statesman and Rights-man George Mason would have thought dangerous nonsense, particularly when his "morality" abolishes their gift to all of us, the Bill..
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Gore Vidal |
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40bcf2e
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We are in danger of government by professional office-holders ...
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Gore Vidal |
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0cce600
|
President Roosevelt provoked the Japanese to attack us at Pearl Harbor.
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Gore Vidal |
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89690b5
|
Since I am a loyal American, I am not supposed to tell you why this has taken place, but then it is not usual for us to examine why anything happens; we simply accuse others of motiveless malignity. "We are good," G.W. proclaims, "They are evil," which wraps that one up in a neat package. Later, Bush himself put, as it were, the bow on the package in an address to a joint session of Congress where he shared with them--as well as with the re..
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Gore Vidal |
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9bdaacf
|
Post Tuesday, SWAT teams can now be used to go after suspect Arab Americans or, indeed, anyone who might be guilty of terrorism, a word without legal definition (how can you fight terrorism by suspending habeas corpus since those who want their corpuses released from prison are already locked up?). But in the post-Oklahoma City trauma, Clinton said that those who did not support his draconian legislation were terrorist coconspirators who wa..
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Gore Vidal |
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3a6de62
|
Incidentally, those who were shocked by Bush the Younger's shout that we are now "at war" with Osama should have quickly put on their collective thinking caps. Since a nation can only be at war with another nation-state, why did our smoldering if not yet burning bush come up with such a war cry? Think hard. This will count against your final grade. Give up? Well, most insurance companies have a rider that they need not pay for damage done b..
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Gore Vidal |
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af6c7d4
|
But then we are old and have been to the wars and value our fast-diminishing freedoms unlike those jingoes now beating their tom-toms in Times Square in favor of all-out war for other Americans to fight.
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Gore Vidal |