Free download thanks to markoffquotes from the book, Sput:
"Freedom, is the most terrifying thing in the world. Fact. People will go to any length to convince themselves they're not free. If they can't convince themselves they're being watched by the cops, they'll worry about the neighbors. Put them in the wilderness, hundreds of miles from other people, and they'll regress to childhood and start worrying that the Old Man in the Sky is watching them. Anything, no matter how irrational, to avoid doing what they want to do. Just so they can think they're acting under compulsion and, hence, aren't really responsible for what they do. Why was Hitler obeyed? Easy: anybody can be obeyed. People stand around waiting for orders if the boss is out of the room."
"Here we have freedom," Sput said. "Any vice squad or narcotics cop who bucks the political machine and tries to pull a raid will never get past the voice print on the door—not until we have time to clean up and hide the evidence, anyway. So everybody here is free. And what are they doing? Same as any other party. Waiting for me to do something outrageous first, so they can then follow suit. It's depressing."
"When I started Pussycat," Sput announced suddenly, returning to his previous mood and topic, "I had only one thought in mind: increasing the total amount of freedom in the world. Of course," he added with a roguish grin, "it wasn't against my principle to get rich in the process. But freedom was paramount. And now, after twenty years, what do I see? What do I see? I'll tell you what I see. People are as shit-scared and cowardly as ever, and still waiting for orders. Nothing can change humanity. Jesus couldn't do it. Jefferson couldn't do it. Even I can't do it. People are hopeless."
"I could weep when I think of my fellow countrymen," Sput said, toking again on the hookah. "They started with the greatest i Constitution in the history of the world and have spent nearly two hundred years twisting it backwards to allow themselves the masochistic pleasure of being victimized by tyrants. Separation of church and state, the constitution says—and they've fastened on their own backs a priestly tyranny so archiac that any visiting Englishman or Frenchman thinks he's fallen through a time warp back into the Middle Ages. No laws restricting freedom of the press, the constitution says—and there isn't a single media from TV to deaf-and-dumb sign language that isn't policed, regulated, censored, bowdlerized, controlled, restricted, castrated. No wars without the consent of congress, the constitution says—and they let any dimwit in the White House invade any country from here to Fernando Poo, and don't have balls enough to start impeachment proceedings. They're even giving up their right to bear arms. And the fact that they're spied on every time they pick up a phone—the fact that they can't even take a crap in a public John without some creep from the vice squad watching them through a peep hole to make sure they don't do anything faggotty—the fact that they have less privacy than the Germans under Hitler—doesn't bother them a whit. They just sprawl there with the faces in the mud and their butts in the air, wiggling and saying 'Stick it into me again, just like you did before.' And the bureaucrats in Washington are glad to oblige. I tell you," he added morosely, "it's enough to make a grown man weep."
"Another thing that almost drives me to tears," said Sput philosophically, "is the custard-headed imbecility of the so-called opposition or counterculture in this perishing republic. Clowns who are trying to organize a mass rebellion, but insult the masses every time they open their mouths. Lame brains who oppose censorship here at home but find very elegant excuses to defend it anywhere else in the world. Idiots who cry out for liberty but are eager to accept any dictator who comes along. Epistemological illiterates who don't know the difference between an argument and an assertion. Clods with no more courtesy than the Jukes family, no more tolerance than the Ku Klux Klan, no more sophistication than Jeeter Lester, and no more humor than Cotten Mather. Why, if I pick one of them for an interview in my magazine, they spend half their space saying that I'm a pimp, a whoremonger, a slave owner, a pig and an imperialist—and when I show my own respect for freedom of the press by printing their incoherent gibberings, they sneer at me as an old-fashioned liberal. I could weep, I tell you, I could weep."
"Freedom, is the most terrifying thing in the world. Fact. People will go to any length to convince themselves they're not free. If they can't convince themselves they're being watched by the cops, they'll worry about the neighbors. Put them in the wilderness, hundreds of miles from other people, and they'll regress to childhood and start worrying that the Old Man in the Sky is watching them. Anything, no matter how irrational, to avoid doing what they want to do. Just so they can think they're acting under compulsion and, hence, aren't really responsible for what they do. Why was Hitler obeyed? Easy: anybody can be obeyed. People stand around waiting for orders if the boss is out of the room."
"Here we have freedom," Sput said. "Any vice squad or narcotics cop who bucks the political machine and tries to pull a raid will never get past the voice print on the door—not until we have time to clean up and hide the evidence, anyway. So everybody here is free. And what are they doing? Same as any other party. Waiting for me to do something outrageous first, so they can then follow suit. It's depressing."
"When I started Pussycat," Sput announced suddenly, returning to his previous mood and topic, "I had only one thought in mind: increasing the total amount of freedom in the world. Of course," he added with a roguish grin, "it wasn't against my principle to get rich in the process. But freedom was paramount. And now, after twenty years, what do I see? What do I see? I'll tell you what I see. People are as shit-scared and cowardly as ever, and still waiting for orders. Nothing can change humanity. Jesus couldn't do it. Jefferson couldn't do it. Even I can't do it. People are hopeless."
"I could weep when I think of my fellow countrymen," Sput said, toking again on the hookah. "They started with the greatest i Constitution in the history of the world and have spent nearly two hundred years twisting it backwards to allow themselves the masochistic pleasure of being victimized by tyrants. Separation of church and state, the constitution says—and they've fastened on their own backs a priestly tyranny so archiac that any visiting Englishman or Frenchman thinks he's fallen through a time warp back into the Middle Ages. No laws restricting freedom of the press, the constitution says—and there isn't a single media from TV to deaf-and-dumb sign language that isn't policed, regulated, censored, bowdlerized, controlled, restricted, castrated. No wars without the consent of congress, the constitution says—and they let any dimwit in the White House invade any country from here to Fernando Poo, and don't have balls enough to start impeachment proceedings. They're even giving up their right to bear arms. And the fact that they're spied on every time they pick up a phone—the fact that they can't even take a crap in a public John without some creep from the vice squad watching them through a peep hole to make sure they don't do anything faggotty—the fact that they have less privacy than the Germans under Hitler—doesn't bother them a whit. They just sprawl there with the faces in the mud and their butts in the air, wiggling and saying 'Stick it into me again, just like you did before.' And the bureaucrats in Washington are glad to oblige. I tell you," he added morosely, "it's enough to make a grown man weep."
"Another thing that almost drives me to tears," said Sput philosophically, "is the custard-headed imbecility of the so-called opposition or counterculture in this perishing republic. Clowns who are trying to organize a mass rebellion, but insult the masses every time they open their mouths. Lame brains who oppose censorship here at home but find very elegant excuses to defend it anywhere else in the world. Idiots who cry out for liberty but are eager to accept any dictator who comes along. Epistemological illiterates who don't know the difference between an argument and an assertion. Clods with no more courtesy than the Jukes family, no more tolerance than the Ku Klux Klan, no more sophistication than Jeeter Lester, and no more humor than Cotten Mather. Why, if I pick one of them for an interview in my magazine, they spend half their space saying that I'm a pimp, a whoremonger, a slave owner, a pig and an imperialist—and when I show my own respect for freedom of the press by printing their incoherent gibberings, they sneer at me as an old-fashioned liberal. I could weep, I tell you, I could weep."
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