"There is no human being within 500 miles to whom I can communicate anything -- much less the fear and loathing that is on me after today's murder....No matter what, today is the end of an era. No more fair play. From now on it is dirty pool and judo in the clinches. The savage nuts have shattered the great myth of American decency."
Hunter Thompson wrote that the day Jack Kennedy was shot. It's the first time he used the phrase "fear and loathing", which resonates with me more these days than ever before. The business about the savage nuts resonates, too—we're up to our ears in em, aren't we?
Thompson also said that the right have always considered democracy to be a tribal myth. I think this is probably true—they've been biding their time, sharpening their knives, for a long while—since the days of Hamilton, I expect—waiting for the day when the veneer could be peeled away, and the niceties seen for what they are. The ideas of Madison and Jefferson were and are just so much hoakum to them—balm for the dummy masses, eliciting the behaviors they needed to transact business; because the American experiment was always and only a business opportunity, and the sooner they get down to their business—to the nub of it, without distraction—the better. For business, you know?
We are living in dangerous times—the gloves have been off for awhile now, and the stakes plain to see. They do not fear examination or discovery. Karl Rove figured that one out—if you throw enough shit at em, with sufficient relentlessness and without any hint of shame, people will lose the ability to distinguish it from shinola or rose petals or crude oil. Rove used the religious right to force the last 10 years down our throats. Next, they're gonna use the paranoid fear generated by the most savage of the current nut class—the fear of, and hatred toward, undocumented brown people. I read that 49% of voters currently support the repeal of the 14th amendment; even if that number is inflated, it will soon be true. I feel it in my bones, the fear and loathing gone viral among us. Someone will be singled out, and the fix is in, so the Liars and the Thieves and the entire blood-sucking class will skate. As they usually do.
Obama thought he could reason with them. Hell, he invited them into his cabinet, for God's sake. And not like Lincoln did, in spite of all the bullshit we read at the beginning—Lincoln knew Goddamn well who his enemies were, and I don't think Obama does. Hell, I'm sure not Obama's enemy, but the White House seems to blame progressives for a lot these days, though mainly I think maybe they're pissed off cause they know we were right. Harry Truman, like Lincoln, always trusted the common sense of the American people. I remember he said that farmers were the most thoughtful people in the world—all that time behind a plow, with nothing to do but think—and that all you had to do was give em the facts. Tell the truth, he said, and they'll come round. In 1937, on the floor of the senate, Truman said:
"It makes no difference if the billionaire rode to wealth on the sweat of children and the blood of unpaid labor. No one ever considers the Carnegie libraries steeped in the blood of the Homestead steel workers, but they are. We do not remember that the Rockerfellar Foundation is founded on the dead miners of the Colorado Fuel Corporation, and a dozen other performances...People can only stand so much, and one of these days there will be a settlement. We shall have one receivership too many, one unnecessary depression out of which we will not come with the power in the same old hands."
Of course, these days you'd be hard-pressed to find voters who know what a receivership is—and good luck explaining, even if you can tear them away from their video game or internet porn long enough to hear you out; what they really wanta know is, what's all this stuff about anchor babies?
Forty-nine-fucking per cent…Can’t you just feel the stupid in the air?
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