Finally one hundred years after his death, the uncensored version of Mark Twain's autobiography is being published. In it he was brutally open and honest.
AMERICAN MILITARY: He described America's soldiers as assassins in uniform. His description of our military shelling the poverty stricken, uneducated native peasants from a distance where they could keep their uniforms clean and dream of all the glory they were going to receive could just as easily be used to describe the pilots of bombers and the long-distance remote pilots of our drones which kill so many people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some of the dead probably were bad people, but many have been completely innocent civilians. Women and children. The key is that none have been tried in a court of law, and none have been found to be guilty of a crime so bad that they should receive the death penalty. “Assassins In Uniform” has a modern ring to it even though it is now more than 100 years old.
CHRISTIANITY: In a PBS interview of the editor of this latest uncensored version, Harriet Elinor Smith, Mark Twain is quoted as talking about Christianity. “There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing, and predatory. The invention of hell measured by our Christianity of today, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the deity nor his son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled." An excellent description which would apply 100 years later just as accurately, except now we can add a bit about all the pedophilia committed by predatory priests.
Mark Twain has the same accurate and up-to-date descriptions of Wall Street tycoons. Their greed, tax evasion, and how their attitude was transforming America into an avaricious culture.
What an amazing and remarkable man!
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