Being called a “bad citizen” is a compliment to a novelist, at least to my mind. That’s exactly what we ought to do. We ought to be bad citizens. We ought to, in the sense that we’re writing against what power represents, and often what government represents, and what the corporation dictates, and what consumer consciousness has come to mean. In that sense, if we’re bad citizens, we’re doing our job.
-- Don DeLillo
.______________________
A lot of what I read (from dated philosophy and poetics) sure sounded good back in the day. And it still sounds good, in the context of thinking people. But boy has it provided aid and comfort to what I perceive as the wrong crowd in today's world. I'd like to see what these minds would have to say about how their wit and wisdom is being used by today's knuckle-dragging champions of civil war and anti-government sentiment.
Would they be finding a sympathetic ear in 1937 and thinking "Yeah, finally, someone is listening to me!"
Would they be heartened by today's opposition to a "deep state"? Or would they simply say their positions are immutable truths, irrespective of contemporary usage?