November 1972: Vonnegut vs. the Republicans

By Scott Horton

In a Manner That Must Shame God Himself

by Kurt Vonnegut

Few writers have been as perfect an expression of the Zeitgeist as Kurt Vonnegut was of the United States in the seventies. In 1972, Harper's asked him to cover one of the decade's defining events—the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach. This led to his essay “In a Manner that Must Shame God Himself” which appeared in the November issue and was on the newsstands as Richard Nixon achieved his massive electoral victory over George McGovern.

For centuries writers have used the fiction of the distant outsider in order to suspend the rules of civility in discussing the politics and social conventions of the society in which they live. For Montesquieu, it was a Persian, for Oliver Goldsmith, a Chinese philosopher, for Beaumarchais, an Ottoman Turk. In a sense much of the science fiction ploy used by Vonnegut follows in this tradition, but in his peculiar ironic style he almost mocks it. “If I were a visitor from another planet,” he writes, as if he wished he were. His tone reminds one of the style of Mark Twain—a comparison that Vonnegut consciously cultivated, even in his personal appearance. But Vonnegut is a darker Twain. He sees elements of redemption and hope among his fellow Americans, but sees a very bleak landscape in the pageant at Miami Beach.

Vonnegut is on a search for the soul of the Republican Party, but what he finds is “Disney World under martial law.” He presents the reader with a parade of quickly-sketched portraits: conservative columnist William F. Buckley, Jr., Quaker theologian Elton Trueblood, Birmingham mayor George Seibels, Henry Kissinger, and Art Linkletter. But even more remarkable is who's missing: Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. While one theme looms over the entirety of the piece—the Vietnam War—it is remarkably bereft of discussion of conventional political issues. But looking at the piece from a distance of thirty-four years, a keen perspective is evident. Vonnegut's focus is on the culture of the Republican Party. He senses a shift in the making. This is not Eisenhower's Republican Party, nor is it Goldwater's. There is a tectonic shift in the making.

I heard a lot of famous Republicans and eminent theologians pray at a Worship Service on the Sunday before the convention began. That is another date I would like to see go into American history books: August 20, 1972. In a moment, I will explain why it belongs there.

I listened closely to all the preaching and praying. I wanted to learn, if I could, what the Republican God was shaped like. I came away with this impression: He was about the size of Mount Washington, and very slow to anger…

Dr. Trueblood's sermon surprised me at one point, because I thought I heard him say that the sovereignty exercised by American politicians came directly from God. Some other reporters there got the same impression…

I set this down so meticulously and without elisions because I think it proves my claim that on August 20, 1972, the Republican National Convention was opened with a sermon on the Divine Right of Presidents. Of water commissioners too.

Few political commentators at the moment saw what Vonnegut saw: the rise of the Religious Right within the Republican Party, the development of a Theocon Republicanism. It marked the severance of the Republican Party of Bush and Cheney from that of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower. Most scholars who have looked back and tried to trace this phenomenon see its roots in the second Nixon presidency, and indeed at the Miami Beach convention. But few were conscious of it at the time. Significantly, Vonnegut juxtaposes a different view of God—he takes it from a group of Native Americans visiting to draw attention to the plight of their people.

[The] Indians seemed to have turned to redwood. They did not talk. They did not swivel their heads around to see who was who. They had a coffee table all to themselves. On it were mimeographed copies of a message they had come great distances to deliver. They were from many tribes.

As I would later discover, the message was addressed as follows: “Att'n: Richard M. Nixon, President U.S.A.”

The message said this in part: “We come today in such a manner that must shame God himself. For a country which allows a complete body of people to exist in conditions which are at variance with the ideals of this country, conditions which daily commit injustices and inhumanity, must surely be filled with hate, greed, and unconcern.”

In addition to the Theocon justification, the other element that distresses him is the ascendant imperial presidency. The religious pretext is laid for presidential authority as a substitute for the Constitution. At length, this has emerged in George W. Bush, the war president, the commander-in-chief, wielding an unprecedented notion of executive supremacy—one which exceeded even the Nixonian vision of 1972. Vonnegut's portrait was derided as goofy, lacking in sobriety and earnestness. But it was actually more lasting and penetrating than that of the professional political commentators spouting the conventional wisdom from their newsroom armchairs.

Kurt Vonnegut is a difficult writer to assess because his product is highly uneven. Slaughterhouse Five certainly has a place in the American literary canon. It is one of the greatest portraits of the horrors of warfare in American literature. It contributes a device of true literary genius—the protagonist who comes unglued in time and space, tying today's humanity to past and future in a great and powerful continuum. But other Vonnegut products are personal, quirky, self-indulgent and harsh. Vonnegut is not a literary star of the magnitude of Mark Twain—there is no other—but for a generation of Americans he revealed unpleasant truths about American society, encouraged anger, but also a good bit of laughter. In the end he does indeed play the role for his generation that Mark Twain played for the Gilded Age.