No More Fear And Loathing

 "What are we going to do today Brain?"

"The same thing we do every day: Try to take over the world." 

The lines are being drawn pretty clearly now. The addition of a woman of color at the top of the Democratic Presidential ticket makes the whole election experience quite the contrast from deciding which old white guy to choose. The late great Hunter S. Thompson would probably have plenty to say about fear and loathing on the campaign trail in 2024. We do, however, have the gift of his gonzo perspective to fuel us through the next four months. To wit: “Those who fail to learn from the brutal stompings visited on them in the past are doomed to be brutally stomped in the future.”

There was a time when progressives had an object for their hatred in Richard Nixon. After four years of what was, at the time, the crookedest gang of thieves to slither in and out of the White House, Democrats put forth their best shot at hope and change: George McGovern. It would be difficult to say  whether or not Nixon would have achieved the landslide win without the dirty tricks implemented by CREEP, but it was the machine that eventually broke down and caused the first and only resignation of a sitting President of the United States. If our folk tales are to be believed, it was the efforts of two crusading journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who followed the clues and unraveled the conspiracy that was Watergate. 

But if anyone had been heeding the words of Doctor Thompson, maybe the catastrophe what was the second Nixon administration never would have come to pass. "This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about “new politics” and “honesty in government,” is one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for. Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?”

Here we are, more than fifty years later, on the brink of a choice for the future of our country. Donald Trump is the product of half a century of Karl Rove-inspired experiments in the creation of a new strain of political predator. More fierce, more defiant, and more amazingly out of touch with the people whom he pretends to care about. For all those folks who insisted that they needed a change, you have one. You have a chance to make something change about America and its leadership. In 2016, we missed our chance. 

Now it's time to make good on all the talk. 

Let's do this thing.