Quotable: Carl Sagan on irony

2 Responses to Quotable: Carl Sagan on irony

1. toma says:

   September 3, 2012 at 9:29 PM

   Reminds me of something I recently saw in a Jon Voight interview. He’s now horrified at the way he opposed Vietnam:

   “And I didn’t even realize it at the time that this was communist-based stuff, you know, that the communists were behind organizing all of these rallies and things. And I was swept up in that hysteria. And then, and I’m ashamed to say it, you know, I was in that group. And then I saw the end of the war. I saw us pull out, and then I saw the communists move in and slaughter 2 1/2 million people in South Vietnam and Cambodia. And I saw the left that had precipitated this turn away, just walk away from it.”

   Jon doesn’t seem to recall Nixon’s illegal bombing of Cambodia in 1969 which caused the destabilization of the country, leading to the Khmer Rouge’s subsequent takeover. He also doesn’t seem to recall the 2 million killed during the war. They count too.
   • Sabina Becker says:

     September 3, 2012 at 9:47 PM

     Yep. And he also doesn’t realize that communist and evil are two different things. You CAN be a communist and pro-freedom, pro-democracy, pro-peace, and pro-all kinds of other good stuff. You do not have to become a mustache-twirling bad guy. In Republican Spain, communists were on the democratic side, and many card-carrying party members from Canada and the US fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War. Communists were also instrumental not only in the peace movements over here, but in the civil rights movement and the formation of the ACLU, so to demonize them wholesale based on Pol Pot (a CIA asset, if I’m not mistaken) is more than a bit disingenuous.

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