The Sticking Place Theatre and Film productions

“These latest charts, Ladies and Gentlemen of the press,” says the Minister of Defense, “prove conclusively that the forces of progress can no longer be stopped. During the week of March 15th, we have successfully destroyed 78 villages, located in widely dispersed areas of the country.” He stops closer to the enormous charts that fill one wall of the room, manipulating the wooden pointer with his right hand, holding the uncertain candle in the left. The chart, against a criss-crossing network of black lines, shows a large number of irregular purplish dots, each in turn touched by the pointer.

“We have successfully undermined tribalism and provincialism by eliminating 867 families through napalm bombing, assassinations, terminal interrogations, unavoidable executions, accidents of war, pestilence and gaspoisoning. It is impossible, in the course of a brief press conference – which keeps me from possibly more urgent duties of liberty – to  prove these statements by anything more than a few random episodes, but if you will peruse these photographs with me, you will readily agree that if I have been at fault, it has been by softpedaling rather than overstating our achievements.”

A graph, offering a statistical breakdown of the number of families liquidated by napalm bombing, assassinations, terminal interrogations, unavoidable executions, accidents of war, pestilence, gaspoisoning.

The pointer moves rapidly over huge color photographs, showing tortured women, close-ups of torn intestines, bloated corpses floating face down in muddy rivers. The face of a child stares straight into the camera in a grimace of experiences and not yet ended horror; a part of this face has been torn off, but what remains, faces the viewer in a grotesque gesture of supplication or, possibly, misplaced forgiveness (or full understanding).

The pointer moves. “We have deprived our enemies of the use of their land in 689,000 square miles of territory during the last two weeks alone, by means of saturation poison gas raids, napalm strafing, tactical nuclear explosions, deep radioactive contamination.” A graph with an ascending curve. “This is an increase of 11.7% from the weekly average over the past six months.” A photograph of a desert. “This is what the country looks like today.” Ruins. “Not a single stone is left unturned in the 3 civilian centers of the nation, not a single city has remained standing. This compares favorably with our record in other countries and previous wars. We have levelled the cities to the ground, we have eradicated the sickness of subversion and false ideology which permeated their very stones. We have turned up the soil and poisoned it and exploded it and carried it away to a depth of four feet and buried it in stainless steel containers on the bottom of classified oceanic substrate, just as we eradicate a cancer by its root, to get rid of the pestilential, horrifying illness that caused it.”

The Minister pauses, exhausted. A pitcher of water on the desk before him is accidentally overturned. “Tabula rasa”, he continues hoarsely. “A clean slate, Ladies and Gentlemen.” He pauses for emphasis. “Nothing is left in this country except our victory.” He points to a chart which is entirely blank. “We had to destroy this country in order to save it. Nothing is left except our determination to start anew, to transform the dream of our Great Society into a reality on the testing grounds of Asia. It is in this ancient furnace of history, with its tradition of life’s insignificance and man’s passive acceptance when confronted with Gods such as ourselves, that the Almighty has given us the opportunity, indeed, the duty, to experiment, to test alternatives to Atheism without having to sacrifice too many of our own kind, by letting us pit against each other nameless hordes of Asiatics and a rather high percentage of American blacks fighting in our armies of liberation; that He has given us the opportunity to check and improve upon our weapon systems, to insure their obsolescence by their use, to pump-prime the national economy by their incessant reproduction, to liquidate all above-ground works of man in this area as unnecessary impediments to our speedy utilization of the country’s rich mineral resources, to eradicate the syphilitic infections of flowering American youth abroad by eradicating its source, Asiatic womanhood, to cleanse ourselves – by the regrettably but necessary killing of civilians and , especially, children – of our unfortunate national sentimentality, created by insidious television shows and Hollywood movies made by perverts and Zionists, in order to provide the Statue of Liberty, and Arlington Cemetery, and, yes, our Flag, Our Flag, with the blood, the nourishment of blood, the fresh and hot Blood and Iron it requires for the renewal of its flagging spirit, so that the nation will be shocked out of its slumber and Awaken to National Spirit and its Immortal mission, to the Spirit of l933.”

In the ensuing silence, the voice of Dr. Ferenczy, clear and sharp. “All of you will, I think, agree that today’s demonstration was a rather unusual one. This subject, provided he is given appropriate charts and photos, has treated us to similar and lengthy tirades over the past few months. The clinical aspects of the case are entirely ordinary; the topicality of its particular configurations, however, makes it of more than routine interest. Since the patient is quite incurable, we are toying with the idea of lending him to local SANE chapters for fund-raising purposes. However…”

Breathing heavily, his long pointer trembling erect between his legs, the Minister of Defense motions with his head toward several men unobtrusively stationed throughout the room. “Please remove this man from the premises,” he says hoarsely. “He is obviously insane.”

© Amos Vogel, March 1968
All rights reserved by the original copyright holders