Happy 4th of July, Goddamn It!

Thanks to Henry from Chunklet for passing this on. And thanks to Keith Olbermann for having the boldness to get out there and say it. A salute to you, sir! Enjoy the 4th. America is still a good idea.

"When the United Sates of America, which was meant to be a Utopia for all, was less than a century old, ...a few men... demonstrated the folly of the Founding Fathers in one respect: those sadly recent ancestors had not made it the law of the Utopia that the wealth of each citizen should be limited. This oversight was engendered by a weak-kneed sympathy for those who loved expensive things, and by the feeling that the continent was so vast and valuable, and the population so thin and enterprising, that no thief, no matter how fast he stole, could more than mildly inconvenience anyone."

"Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun."
-Kurt Vonnegut (God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965)

God Bless America. Whatever those words mean.