Quote 13
Those were vile people in both those cities [Sodom and Gomorrah], as is well known. The world was better off without them.
And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. (1.21.3-4)
By comparing himself to Lot's wife, the narrator acknowledges, again, that Germany bore a lot of guilt for what was happening in the war. But that does not mean that it is not human and necessary to bear witness to the suffering of ordinary Germans, as witnessed by Vonnegut himself.
Quote 14
Billy Pilgrim got onto a chartered airplane in Ilium twenty-five years after [going to Slaughterhouse-Five]. He knew it was going to crash, but he didn't want to make a fool of himself by saying so. (7.1.1)
Billy claims to know his plane is going to crash, but he doesn't want to look like a fool by saying so. If he really did know, Billy could have saved a lot of lives, including his father-in-law's, by being willing to look like a fool. Billy survives the war by being lucky (and unselfconscious). When does he suddenly start to feel embarrassed or ashamed of himself?
Quote 15
[The stock tickers and telephones] were simply stimulants to make the Earthlings perform vividly for the crowds at the zoo—to make them jump up and down and cheer, or gloat, or sulk, or tear their hair, to be scared s***less or to feel contented as babies in their mothers' arms. (9.27.2)
This is a passing description of one of Kilgore Trout's novels, about a man and a woman in an alien zoo who are made to perform for the amusement of the aliens thanks to a bunch of fake stock information. When they think they have made money, they celebrate; when they think they have lost money, they get depressed. But there is no real money.
This seems comparable to the deluded dreams of Roland Weary, who firmly believes he is fighting a winning battle even as he is running around behind enemy lines just waiting to become a prisoner of war. The human ability to believe something against all evidence to the contrary seems pretty foolish to us.