From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Like many other conveyors of conventional liberal thought, Thompson felt compelled to denounce Ralph Nader last year: "I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, but I won't make that mistake again. The joke is over for Nader. He was funny once, but now he belongs to the dead." I'll not comment on the unintended irony.
You may be right on all points in that critique, but I think Dr. Thompson deserves a better sendoff than that.
I'm sure HT felt as out of touch with the times he found himself in as had F. Scott Fitzgerald, another lost romantic who lived beyond his era. I believe Fitzgerald once said that what he missed most in the post-1920s world was the feeling that something exciting was about to happen. In their heydays Fitzgerald and Thompson, fueled by bootleg booze and Wild Turkey as they may have been, summed up the spirit of times that -- however self-indulgent, delusive and silly -- were a lot more fun than the times that followed. Today's permawar, locked-down, economically stagnant USA is a land of dreck and dreariness. I miss the era when HT, the gonzo-ist writer of them all, seemed to be channeling the energy from a freer, more vibrant tomorrow.
As HT wrote: "History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of 'history' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time -- and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened."
Carl
