Well, today we're in a peculiar limbo, and since 9/11 things that have never happened to us before have started to happen. Nine/eleven, whoever is behind it-I assume it's Osama bin Laden and some Muslim fanatics-but whoever's behind it is not important, as you can tell. We haven't tried to find him, for one thing. If he were important, we would. So it means our own government doesn't-doesn't much care. But 9/11 proved to be a pretext for getting rid of the old republic, which has not been in very good shape for a long, long time, starting with the national security state, which made us a totally militarized society-that's Harry Truman. And ever since, we just go further and further along the road toward total war for nearly everybody. Now we're in a strange, strange situation. There is nothing in our history to guide us; we've never been in this situation in which one gang basically has seized power. We've been very lucky: never-we've had dictators before. Lincoln was a dictator, but he was a dictator of the republic. The republic still stood when he was dictator, and we needed him. Franklin Roosevelt was a dictator, and we needed him. And they were-only briefly were they dictators. Now we have a dictatorial system, as best personified by the USA Patriot Act, which just removes us of our Bill of Rights. This is the most serious thing that has happened in the history of the United States, and how we get out of it's anyone's guess.
( Real Network )
[ Gore Vidal: History of The ]
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