Writers and Resistance

Whenever I become discouraged (which is on alternate Tuesdays, between three and four) I lift my spirits by remembering: the writers are on our side! I mean those poets, novelists, playwrights and songwriters who speak to the world in a way that is impervious to assault because they wage the battle for justice in a sphere which is unreachable by the dullness of ordinary political discourse.

Howard Zinn writes this in an article, "Rise Like Lions, Writers and Resistance," in Poets Against War's Fall 2006 Newsletter.

Speaking to the heart of what was surely on many minds as they went out to vote last week, Zinn continues:

The barrage of film and books glorifying World War II (The Greatest Generation, Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor, Flags of Our Fathers, and more) comes at a time when it is necessary for the Establishment to do what it must periodically do, try to wipe out of the public mind the ugly stain of the war in Vietnam, and now that the aura around the Gulf War has turned sour, to forget that too. A justification is needed for the enormous military budget, and so the good war, the best war, is trundled out to give war a good name.

Saying "At such a time, our polemical prose is not enough. We need the power of song, of poetry to remind us of truths deeper than the political slogans of the day," Zinn then quotes Bob Dylan's "Masters of War":

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul...

More quotes worth repetition here:

The great writers could see through the fog of what was called "“patriotism", what was considered "loyalty."


"I am an enemy of the existing order."” (George Bernard Shaw)

Zinn does not mention William Stafford, but he could. Stafford said:

I belong to a small fanatical sect...We believe that current ways of carrying on world affairs are malignant. We believe that armies, and the kind of international dealings based on armed might, will be self-­perpetuating to a certain point--—and that point may bring annihilation. Armies are a result of obsolete ways--—just as gibbets are, and as thumbscrews are, and leper windows. (from Every War Has Two Losers)