Chapter 14 Summary and Analysis

Vonnegut has dealt recently with the Neo-Cons' views in Hocus Pocus, whose special preface he quotes here. Many Vonnegut books, including this one, do not have individual human beings as main characters. Hocus Pocus features imperialism, the capture of other societies' lands, people and treasure by arms. Columbus is followed by heavily armed Europeans who steal the hemisphere from its millions of human inhabitants, and the conquerors' heirs, who must administer the stolen lands and disaffected people. Foreigners, mostly cash-heavy Japanese, are now buying up the U.S., about which they care no more than those who earlier conquer Rhodesia, the Congo and Mozambique. Vonnegut breaks off the preface to say what he wishes he had written: the U.S. will be left a Dr. Seuss-type Third-World nation composed of clashing tribes. Colonialism will bust up all cultures and create a...