Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta

One of the latest books to be added to Il Principe’s library is the 2002 book, Dreaming War, by Gore Vidal.

Like most Americans, Il Principe was not familiar with Gore Vidal due to the wide-ranging media blackout that Vidal has faced in America. Although Mr. Vidal has written over 20 novels, in addition to several plays and essays including his much acclaimed first novel Williwaw, Vidal has been widely blacklisted and shunned by the American main stream press.

The blacklisting of Gore Vidal by the American main stream media is very similar to the way Beppe Grillo is blacklisted in Italy. Understanding how the control of the media in Italy by Silvio Berlusconi has helped the mafia tainted media mogul remain the leader of that country for most of the past 15 years, the blacklisting of Noam Chomsky, and Gore Vidal in America helps to explain why the United States is still in a perpetual war in Afghanistan and Iraq nearly 10 years after terrorist attacks in September 2001.

Starting as far back as 1948 when he suffered the consequences of bringing a gay novel before a wide audience, the blacklisting has largely continued over the last few decades due to Vidal’s talent and aptitude to deconstruct the lies that power tells us.

Similar to other notable intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky who are fiercely critical of American foreign policy and the actions of the US government, Gore Vidal has been largely confined to foreign outlets such as TheTimes Literary Supplement. In stark contrast to dishonest flag waving patriots most Americans are familiar with like Glenn Beck, a former rodeo clown and an individual who never finished college, Gore Vidal has been largely shunned by media outlets who profess to be fair and balanced. When the rare exception does occur and Vidal appears on CNN or some other US media infotainment media outlet, Vidal is often introduced as “a dissenting patriot”, or “a nostalgist of the lost republic”.  

In the chapter Meandering towards Armageddon , Vidal offers a tongue in cheek rebuttal to these critics and in particular ,the  usually even-handed  New Yorker magazine author Louis Menand ,who wrote a October 2002 article entitled “Faith, Hope and Clarity: September 11th and the American Soul,”. Using the normally even handed Menand as the focal point in the essay, Vidal disproves many of the popular misperceptions used by corporate America and national security state surrogates who try  to portray Noam Chomsky and other critics of the Afghanistan War and the subsequent war in Iraq as being "anti-American" or an America hater.

Using the analogy of Nazis in Germany imprisoning anyone why spoke out against Adolf Hitler as being a Germany hater, Vidal writes:

“Professor Menand’s problem is that although he is no doubt some sort of scholar, he is not used to reading anything that might contradict what he thinks he already knows. What Chomsky and I have in common is an interest in public matters and a fascination with the lies that power tells us, lies we deconstruct, lies which also fascinate and affect- a number of our countrymen who do read seriously. There’s nothing more to it than that”.

 

The collection of essays in Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta may be too controversial for some readers. However, for readers who are suspicious of the corporate main stream press and the perpetual war the political elites have forced upon the American people, the collection of provocative and thoughtful essays by one of America’s great literary dissenters will be a refreshing bit of truth and clarity.