“In Vidal’s story the Founding Fathers were a brilliant but
mixed lot (George Washington the dullest of them all), who created a balance
between the big-money interests of the Federalists and the small-farm,
small-money, small-government civil-libertarian views of the Jeffersonians,”
wrote Fred Kaplan. “But Jacksonian America broke the precarious balance.
“Land and power became the predominant concerns: the Indians
east of the Mississippi were pushed westward or destroyed; slavery could not be
contained, let alone abolished.
“Lincoln, as much villain as hero, established a
nationalistic, monolithic Union, a huge, industrialized anti-Jeffersonian
monster.
“In the next 50 years, his successors, led by McKinley and Theodore
Roosevelt, transformed the United States from a republic into an aggressive
empire. The Monroe Doctrine had established the Caribbean and South America as
n American sphere of influence. Now the Pacific was going to be an American
lake.
“World War I, into which Woodrow Wilson elected to insert
America, made the United States the dominant economic power of the world.
Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal retooled American government and slightly
redistributed national wealth in order to make America safe for capitalism.
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| Author Gore Vidal |
“Immediately after World War II, Harry Truman celebrated the
absolute international dominance of the United States by creating for the first
time a national-security state whose underlying premise was that the Soviet
Union was so great a menace that Americans must give up some of their freedoms
to guard themselves permanently against the enemy.
“The temporary wartime OSS was converted into the permanent
peacetime CIA. Its ongoing task was to balk the Soviet Union, whose strength
was exaggerated by those for whom the Cold War was an economic and ideological
boon.
“For the first time, a huge peacetime Army was put in place.
The defense budget became sacred. The garrison state became permanent. Those
who controlled and had always controlled wealth and political power in America kept
themselves rich and powerful. Inevitably, the Korean and Vietnam wars followed.
As with ancient Rome, America had moved from republic to empire.”
“No one knew the American history better than Gore Vidal. It
was in his blood,” wrote Bob Carr. “He learnt it from a grandfather who served
in the Senate, and from his personal association with the great American
political families of his time.
“From his home atop a Ravello cliff face he spun wonderful stories
out of American history, buttressed by a flawless memory and a talent for
mimicry.
“His historical novels chart the emergence of America as a continental
power with centralized government, and what he saw as a descent into
imperialism.
“He embodied an anti-imperial tradition that goes back to
Mark Twain – representing an isolationist viewpoint that once ran deep in
America. Gore Vidal believed no foreign war justified a single American life
and this view was his fundamental political commitment.”
By the way, Vidal’s solution to America’s Mideast migraines
was to end all U.S. military aid to Middle Eastern countries. “The Middle
Easterners would then be obliged to make peace, or blow one another up, or
whatever,” Vidal said. “In any case, we would be well out of it.”
Sources: Thoughtlines with Bob Carr; “Gore Vidal: A Biography” by Fred Kaplan
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