VIDAL CONTINUED

Trying to figure out exactly why Gore Vidal has such a crush on Timothy McVeigh, I had a bit of a eureka moment with the following quote. Vidal has long been motivated in part by a slightly loopy romanticization of America as a republic, of America never really being involved in wars (Vidal is queasy about the Second World War, let alone Vietnam or Desert Storm), and maintaining her pre-imperial virginity. Along with McVeigh’s paranoid fantasies about American power at home, he is also, it turns out, an anti-interventionist abroad. “[W]hat occurred in Oklahoma City was no different than what Americans rain on the heads of others all the time,” McVeigh explained in the London Observer, “and subsequently, my mindset was and is one of clinical detachment. (The bombing of the Murrah building was not personal, no more than when Air Force, Army, Navy or Marine personnel bomb or launch cruise missiles against government installations and their personnel). I hope that this clarification amply addresses all questions.” It certainly addresses the question of why Vidal loves McVeigh so much.