I don't recall reading any Vonnegut novels (though I'm sure I must have read some short stories in anthologies) - have to remedy that.
Not sure whether my word has any weight for you, but I read most of what he wrote, and have enjoyed it tremendously. His writing was one of the few things that my very conservative Dad and I agreed on.
Vonnegut skewers left, right, center and dimensions that even Libertarians don't measure. He seems to enjoy piercing pride more than just about anything else.
Another gem from Vonnegut's piece:
Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics,
where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can
only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal
or a conservative.About 2/3 of the way through, he writes "But I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there." Given that,it's no wonder that we're confused by the way the world works and why we screw it up so much. Of course, I have no idea if this is what he intended, but he's talking about the psychological concept of "thrownness," and he describes it better than many articles that purport to be /about/ thrownness. I've always described it as being rather like the game "Myst" (if you recall that), only in this one, there are lots of other people, many of whom are trying to screw you and each other (using any definition of that word that you like), nobody actually knows what the whole point of the game is, there's stuff here that can /kill/ you (and sometimes laughs about it) and there's no easy way to quit.
Dave
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