BuzzFlash Interviews Gore Vidal on Election Eve

BuzzFlash: I sometimes joke that this election is a referendum on whether the republic as we know it will endure. I believe that our nation is actually at a crossroads between the fantasists versus the realists –- that there’s a struggle between faith and reason. What do you think, if any, is the symbolic significance of the election?

Gore Vidal: I think it’s more bedrock than that, such as who gets to appoint judges. If [under Bush], the litmus test for a judge is Roe v. Wade and they ought to be anti-black -- you see the NAACP has been under questioning from the Department of Justice, wondering about contributions to it and so on -- I mean, look, we’re up against despotism. And whatever rhetoric they want to use and say, oh, we’re not despots, we’re good Americans -- well, everybody says that. But they’re not. They are the enemy. And they have targeted the American people. They don’t like them. They don’t care anything about them. They’re interested in corporate America. They’re interested in Halliburton and their companies. They’re interested in making money. And they hate the people who stand for the old republic. They just don’t like them. And that’s the division here. And I think that’s why Bush will fall in the long run, but how long a run it’s going to be, I do not predict.

BuzzFlash: The best example of the Republican "target" on America is their own admission that the Republicans want to suppress the vote, especially among African Americans in certain states and districts.

Gore Vidal: Oh, they’re not just suppressing African American voters. The old Jewish ladies in Miami, Florida, have been made to stand for four hours in the sun, having a heatstroke, while they’re being given their ballots or their registration papers, or whatever it is. No, no –- this is a war on all the people, all the time. I mean, if we had a responsible media, we’d know something about it, but we don’t.

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