The danger and risk of applying something, such as total equality, is an idea that Vonnegut presents as a perfect proposition that is not worth the effort to be prosecuted. Peter Reed, author of The Short Fiction of Kurt Vonnegut, argues that the time Vonnegut was writing to Harrison Bergeron was the era of the Cold War, "when Sino-Soviet communist (and, for that matter, democratic socialist) demands European) egalitarianism were opposed to Western ideals of capitalism and individualism. And on the other hand, this was before the dawn of the Age of Aquarius, a time when competitiveness and superiority were looked down upon, and incidents occurred such as forcing a former beauty queen to wear glasses from grandmother, to cutting her hair, and dressing informally before she can be accepted into a commune (The Short Fiction of Kurt Vonnegut, 81-82). It presents the government's persistence in wanting its society to achieve total equality. Vonnegut uses irony to poke fun at the behaviors and attitudes that people tend to have when they become accustomed to oppression and fail to rebel against it and find their own voice. satirically, there is truth in