Vonnegut on politics

“Nobody in this country is happy but the rich people. Something is wrong. I’ll tell you what’s wrong: We’re lonesome! We’re being kept apart from our neighbors. Why? Because the rich people can go on taking our money away if we don’t hang together. They can go on taking our power away. They want us to be lonesome; they want us huddled in our houses with just our wives and kids, watching television, because they can manipulate us then. They can make us buy anything, they can make us vote the way they want. How did Americans beat the Great Depression? We banded together. In those days, members of unions called each other “brother” and “sister,” and they meant it. We’re going to bring that spirit back! Brother and sister!... We are going to band together with our neighbors to clean up our neighborhoods, to get the crooks out of the unions, to get the prices down in the meat markets. Here’s a war cry for the American people: “Lonesome no more!”’ That’s the kind of demagoguery I approve of.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., “Playboy Interview”, in Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons, Dell Publishing Co., N.Y., 1974, p. 274.