Arts
Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Tony Kushner, the keynote speaker at yesterday's Arts at Dartmouth Awards Ceremony, painted a dismal picture of the current American political scene and envisioned an even worse situation in ten years.
"I want so badly to scare you," Kushner said in a speech titled "Arts in the Current Political Climate." "You must know what a terrible world this is."
Kushner went on to rail against the policies of the "scariest Congress this country has ever elected," which helped account for his negative predictions for the future.
"The present ravaged America will in 10 years seem like a paradise," he said, apparently laying much of the blame on the "mendacious neo-barbarians in Congress."
Kushner predicted a society with no legal guarantees for minorities, no health care, easy access to guns and no federal funding for the arts and humanities.
Kushner, an outspoken gay activist, often incorporates his liberal views in his dramatic works.