THE BOOK OF DAMN
YANKEES
OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE BOOK OF MANIFEST DESTINY
Kennedy goes to Dallas
Chapter 152
As it happened, the civil rights thing kind of stirred up a lot of controversy,
2And not just about black people,
3Because a lot of the young people who wanted the blacks to get their civil rights had noticed some other things about the Most Chosen Nation on Earth,
4Such as the way they kept stockpiling more and more nuclear weapons,
5Until they could have destroyed the Soviet Union a hundred times over,
6Which just wasn’t necessary,
7And might not be very responsible either,
8aUnless you weren’t as kind and nice a nation as you told everybody you were,
9bWhich how could you be anyway if absolutely everybody in the whole world hates the Yanks, including all their friends and allies?
10cBesides, what was this little business in Vietnam all about,
11dWith a bunch of Yank advisers egging the South Vietnamese on to renew some ancient war with their relatives in the north,
12eAnd were the Yanks going to start throwing their weight around in some underprivileged country that couldn’t fight back?
13And now that we’re on the subject, how can it be right that America is so rich and prosperous,
14When practically everyone else is dirt-poor,
15fEspecially if the Yanks are as nice and just as they say they are?
16And even though not many people were talking this way,
17gThere were enough conversations here and there that a musician named Bob Dylan started writing thoughtful songs about it,
18hAnd a poet named Allen Ginsberg started writing thoughtful poems about it,
19iAnd a writer named Norman Mailer started writing thoughtful essays about it,
20jAnd a novelist named Kurt Vonnegut started writing thoughtful novels about it,
21kAnd students on certain college campuses started listening to the thoughtful song lyrics and reading the thoughtful poems and essays and novels,
22lAnd then started to wonder,
23mIf just maybe there was something terribly terribly wrong with the United States of America,
24nSomething that would have to be seen to,
25oIn the not too distant future.
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Chapter 152 / 154