This might explain why Obama gave billions to Wall Street crooks, and dragged the Iraq and Afghan wars on and on._x000D_ _x000D_ Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing... We have ceased to be a nation under law but instead a homeland where the withered Bill of Rights, like a dead trumpet vine, clings to our pseudo-Roman columns.
Interpretation
The quote critiques American society's forgetfulness and disregard for legal and moral principles.
Gore Vidal expresses a deep disillusionment with the American political landscape, suggesting that citizens are unable to learn from past mistakes due to their collective amnesia. He laments the erosion of the rule of law and the Bill of Rights, comparing the current state of the nation to a decayed structure that fails to uphold its values, reflecting a cynical view of governance and societal responsibility.
In practice
Use this quote in a lecture about the importance of historical awareness in civic duties.
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
Nay, do not think I flatter. For what advancement may I hope from thee, That no revenue hast but thy good spirits To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered?
If a star or studio chief or any other great movie personages find themselves sitting among a lot of nobodies, they get frightened - as if somebody was trying to demote them.
...It would be more consistent that we call [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
We must therefore rediscover, after the natural world, the social world, not as an object or sum of objects, but as a permanent field or dimension of existence.
There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.
The western mindset erroneously equates a political system of multi-party democracy with high-quality institutions... the two are not synonymous.
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