Vonnegut and the Olympic Torch

Dresden and the torchlight parade

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Sociology/torchlight.htm
04/7/08

If you’re going to go looking for hope in a hopeless world, Kurt Vonnegut is usually not the first writer who comes to mind. He’s a funny choice, both because the term “mordant humor” fitted him like a glove, and because he wasn’t exactly noted for a hopeful tone.

None the less, I managed to find that in a brilliant piece in Salon that my friend Jim passed along. The writer, Steve Almond, prefaces a quote by Vonnegut relating to the vicious brutality of Americans toward the German people, and cites it as an example of the “prophetic role” Vonnegut played, and asks us to substitute Iraq for Germany in the following passage of Vonnegut’s, in an essay called “Wailing Shall Be in All Streets.” from his posthumous work, “Armageddon in Retrospect”:

“But the ‘Get Tough America’ policy, the spirit of revenge, the approbation of all destruction and killing, has earned us a name for obscene brutality, and cost the World the possibility of Germany becoming a peaceful and intellectually fruitful nation in anything but the most remote future.”

Western Germany was peaceful and intellectually fruitful by 1960. East Germany had to fall and be subsumed back into a whole Germany before Vonnegut’s prophecy was betrayed, but that has happened.

Well, there’s a ray of hope for Iraq. If the Americans leave, or at least stop occupying the country, Iraq might be a fruitful and peaceful nation again some day. I wonder what Vonnegut would have thought of that? He probably would have smiled a sad little smile and said, “Imagine that.”

Just as Dresden changed him, the war changed Germany. They learned not to take a foolish pride in military glory, knowing full well what terrible price is always exacted. The war has been over for almost 63 years, and the Germans are furiously debating the merits of the first German movie since the war to celebrate a German war hero. It’s not even a hero from that war (Germany may never find heroes to celebrate from that war) but from the one that came 25 years earlier. “The Red Baron” was famed throughout the west, even became a sort-of character in the “Peanuts” comic strip, but was hardly known in Germany.

Personally, I plan to go see the movie when it comes out. I hope that the Germans don’t fall back into the habit of glorifying war and holding the military above the citizens of the state. Those are two terrible errors in judgement that America has made, and that mass folly is exacting the terrible and inevitable wages of war. Imagine that.

Four thousand and twenty five American dead, but that’s trivial. Over one hundred thousand Iraqis are dead, and it’s probably closer to a million. We can’t even begin to guess at the injured, the maimed, and those whose lives have been destroyed as a side effect of the war. If George W. ever did have a reason for starting that war and ensuing occupation, I hope it was a good one, but I kind of doubt that it was. It was probably the sort of empty-headed bullshit that someone who has seen too many war movies and not read enough Vonnegut might use in place of thinking or caring.

Vonnegut was on my mind earlier today, sparked by a entire separate and much more trivial incident. The Olympic torch, being marathoned from Greece to Beijing via a circuitous route, passed through demonstrations in London yesterday that threatened to extinguish it, and demonstrations in Paris today that DID extinguish it.

Vonnegut once wrote of the pathos and servility of someone who believes in sympathetic magic. Indeed, he may have written of it more than once since like any intelligent man in lunatic times, he had little use for such superstitions.

The torch went out. Oh, the horror. Magic juju is gone, bad things happen! If you ask what bad things, and how they might happen, the question would, of course, be met with sublimely blank stares. Juju lost! Without juju, athletics not go well.

I’m the sort who watches baseball players fastidiously avoid stepping on the foul line on the way up to the plate, or twist their caps into a “lucky” position, and think that there goes a man who could probably benefit from having a third digit tacked on to his IQ.

The torch went out. Well, have you got any matches? Good! Just relight the sumbitch!

The French, a pragmatic and intelligent race, did just that, but the twittering has continued. Flame was lit by magic rays from sun. Matches not good juju!

Well, kee-rist, buddy. Didn’t you ever fry ants on a sidewalk? Go get a magnifying glass if it matters that much to you, and I’m sure the French will be happy to let you restore good juju by using the magnifying glass. If you happen to burn a hole in yourself whilst doing that, the French will just consider that lagniappe, which is a French word that means “the silly son of a bitch had it coming”*. In fact, people who are dumb enough to think that the magnifying glass would matter should only be allowed to use it at night, when they would be less likely to hurt themselves. Sure, guy, take all the time you need. We’ve got all night.

I wish Vonnegut was alive to take all this in. He would have sympathized with the Tibetans, and deplored the Chinese for their brutality. He would have admired the Olympic spirit (in his heart, at least) while maintaining a supreme indifference to the games themselves. He would have considered the entire situation a cause to wryly celebrate the human existence. I’ve often wondered if the French liked Vonnegut as much as I did.

Still, in the shadow of one of the greatest horrors in human history, Vonnegut was wrong about the Germans. They did learn from the horrors of world war two, and they did become peaceful and learned to celebrate the human intellect once again. Hopefully it will be many generations, if ever, before the lesson slips away. And they didn’t need centuries to restore that exaltation of the human spirit. Two generations did it. Imagine that.

I finally figured out the link. The Olympic torch represents high ideals that have fallen to the anger, fear, and hate left in the wake of a vicious and brutal regime. Germany represents high ideals that have risen from the anger, fear, and hate left in the wake of a vicious and brutal regime.

Vonnegut would have smiled gently, smothered his despair in gentle humor, and scratched down a few notes for his next novel.

Imagine that.

*OK, I lied. Lagniappe is actually a petty purchasing bonus, the 13th doughnut in a baker’s dozen.