pk's Nixon Election Time:
Like Minds Choose Treason
Like Minds Choose Treason
My first political letter was sent to the Kennedy White House protesting US support of the south Vietnamese government which I understood to be corralling Buddhists into concentration camps. It was a letter about freedom of religion (and international responsibilty). I got back a pound or two of anti-Communitst propaganda. The White House made no attempt to smudge the irrelevance of its response.
Well, I already knew that my reps didn't know how to think, that bureaucrats (including university personell) didn't know how to read ... and that was the last political letter I wrote that said what I meant at all literally. I continued to write — for my and God's (and Satan's) amusement — ironies only. The White House, the UN, Mao's China continued to ignore my messages: until this one! which got back a gold embossed reply! The White House misread my insults as favorable!
| Dear President Nixon: I guess it was about last May that there was talk in the senate about having our troops out of Vietnam by December 1971 if our prisoners of war were released. And now you're saying that there's a possibility of having our troops out by election time if our prisoners of war are released. I think that's a great idea: it's important to set a date, especially if you want a chance of being reelected. Well, the other day, the New York Times had an editorial by the famous what's his name, you know, the historian, Dean Memminger, or Henry Comminer? No doubt your state department people have already thought of this for you, but just in case, I thought I'd write and suggest it. He said that maybe the four year term of office is too short for a president to do anything really good and important, like raise the oil depletion allowances, or increase federal aid to ailing industries. And that politicking for another term is all you really have time for in four years, and that that's got to tie your hands from doing anything you really believe in. He said that the presidency should be limited to one term, but that the one term should be lengthened to six years. I think it's a terrific idea and I think you should do it. Surely some way could be found around those who would object. (I myself remember what it was like to wait out Johnston's term.) Anyway, the way it is, you've got a chance for another four years, and you've got a chance for nothing, nada, the goose egg, to miss out altogether. The possibilities are four and zero, and that averages out to two more years, or the six that you'd get with Memminger's way. So why not take the sure thing? Then, without taking a risk, and without suffering the embarrassment that Johnston had to put up with, you could still set the date for withdrawal if your prisoners of war are released, still keep it for election year if your prisoners of war are released, but it would be 1974 instead of 1972. You could keep the war going another two years, really whoop it on the gooks, and still keep your promise. The idea should save you millions of dollars of electioneering money. On the chance that Kissingger hasn't already thought of it, I do think it would be only fair if you'd share some of the savings with me. If it's my idea, that is. Forever yours, Paul Knatz P.S. One thing that's always struck me as curious about the problem over our prisoners of war is why we don't release them whenever we want to. After all, they're our prisoners. We got the key. As for their prisoners of war, on the chance it's their prisoners people are talking about, I don't think you should release them until ours are. Unless it would save money. P.P.S. In the last case I mean, of course, release in the Tibetan Buddhist sense. As for those who have already been released in this holy way, I think you could remind them that it's a good thing for their karma balance. How many human souls are there to be reborn, anyway? |
This letter is from 1 Feb 1972. I choose it to lead the reposting of my joke letters because of the White House's gold-embossed reply under the Presidential Seal. I'm as proud of that as I would have been of a six- or seven-figure check.
Critical Timing:
I hope you notice that Nixon's new promise wasn't moving the date closer, but was in fact postponing it. My satiric tempo of indefinite postponements followed his lead.
Malfunctioning Joke:
I'm not sure my last joke of the letter, the one about "karma balance," worked: then or now. Jokes shouldn't have to be explained, even if no one in the (human) audience gets it. (If God doesn't get it either, than an author is really in trouble!) I say a further word here now anyway if only as an indictment pk's perfection as an artist. Some cosmologies imagine the universe as finite, some as infinite. Jesus saying that his father's house had many mansions refers literally to a finite heaven but symbolically with suggestions of endlessness: infinity. Contemporary cosmology is largely unexamined infinity in assumption: there's no limit to growth, to population, to resources. I was playing the idea of finite souls against the idea of infinite souls. In other words, in order to make room for new souls, we have to kill a few old bodies. Don't plant new cabbages in an uncleared cabbage field. In other words: the Vietnamese had no right to object to our killing them by the million! We were clearing the register for them. (Of course our logic would have changed had they been clearing our register.)
Censoring pk:
I "explained" the circumstances and the comedy of my letter more extensively than-ever-previously at my AgainstHierarchy.org [2006 10 11]. The fed arrested me [2006 10 13] and censored that domain [2007 Feb], cascading all my domains, including my business, into Limbo in a domino effect. I'll try to restore those files online, but recreating Knatz.com has been my first priority.
Classification, Background:
Knatz.com organized my "creative" writing as fiction, journal, satire, or letters. The above was a letter as well as a satire: Knatz.com classed it as satire. The White House classed it as "In Favor." That's as priceless a joke as any of mine in the letter!
I repeat Knatz.com's introduction:
I decided that from then on my letters would be illiterate. Pat Paulson regularly mispronounced the President's name; I routinely misspelled it. But my principle inspiration was Mark Twain (Swift already present in that American's efforts).
In Sum:
I proposed that Nixon disregard his oath of allegiance to the Constitution and commit an(other) act of tyranny. I proposed that he commit treason. He thanked me on the finest stationary for my "confidence, understanding, and support."
The New Yorker wrote me, Alas, we cannot print your correspondence with the White House, but we sure enjoyed passing it around the office.
There's nothing like a free press.
Dean Memminger, by the way was a long-legged rookie for the New York Knicks that year. I trusted at the time that even the White House might be stimulated by my confusions to think of persons such as Henry Steele Commager or Barry Comminer. I no longer recall which of those two penned the idea of a six year term. A perusal of the New York Times from around 1971 should find it.
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