Cannabis and the Politician

 

 

'If I followed my better instincts right now, I would put this typewriter in the Volvo and drive to the home of the nearest politician - any politician - and hurl the goddamn machine through his front window...flush the bugger out with an act of lunatic violence. then soak him down with Mace and run him naked down Main Street in Aspen with a bell around his neck and black lumps all over his body from the jolts of a high-powered "Bull-Buster" cattle prod.'

 

 - Hunter S Thompson

 

 

'Presidential politics is a vicious business, even for rich white men, and anybody who gets into it should be prepared to grapple with the meanest of the mean. The White House has never been seized by timid warriors. There are no rules, and the roadside is littered with wreckage. That is why they call it the passing lane. Just ask any candidate who ever ran against George Bush - Al Gore, Ann Richards, John McCain - all of them ambushed and vanquished by lies and dirty tricks. And all of them still whining about it.

That is why George W. Bush is president of the United States, and Al Gore is not. Bush simply wanted it more, and he was willing to demolish anything that got in his way, including the U.S. Supreme Court. It is not by accident that the Bush White House (read: Dick Cheney & Halliburton Inc.) controls all three branches of our federal government today. They are powerful thugs who would far rather die than lose the election in November.
...

Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the military-industrial complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous "trickle-down" theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow "trickle-down" to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote.'

- The Fun-Hogs in the Passing Lane, November 11, 2004, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

 

 'Nowadays when the state has a preposterously fat belly, we find within every field of enquiry and department of action, besides those who do the actual work, 'spokesmen'. E.g. in addition to scholars, there are journalists; in addition to the suffering classes, there are the pretentious, pratting ne'er-do-wells who 'speak' for them, not to mention the self-satisfied professional politicians whose windbaggery in parliament gives 'voice' to their 'plight'. Modern life is extremely expensive owing to all these middlemen; whereas in the ancient city, and its distant echo afterwards still found in many a Spanish or Italian city, the man himself comes forwards and had nothing to do with such modern spokesmen or intermediaries - except perhaps to give them a swift kick!' 

 

- Friedrich Nietzsche

'Although Nixon declared the war on drugs on June 17, 1971, the U.S. already had lots of practice imposing drug prohibitions that had racially skewed impacts. The arrival of Chinese migrants in the 1800s saw the rise of criminalizing opium that migrants brought with them. Cannabis went from being called “reefer” to “marijuana,” as a way to associate the plant with Mexican migrants arriving in the U.S. in the 1930s.

By the time Nixon sought reelection amid the anti-Vietnam War and Black power movements, criminalizing heroin was a way to target activists and hippies. One of Nixon’s domestic policy aides, John Ehrlichman, admitted as much about the war on drugs in a 22-year-old interview published by Harper’s Magazine in 2016.

Experts say Nixon’s successors, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, leveraged drug war policies in the following decades to their own political advantage, cementing the drug war’s legacy. The explosion of the U.S. incarceration rate, the expansion of public and private prison systems and the militarization of local police forces are all outgrowths of the drug war.'

 

 - AP News

 

 

'The major problem - one of the major problems, for there are several - one of the many major problems with governing people is that of who you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.

To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
 

And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they very rarely notice that they're not.'

- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams

The human race is on track to be one of the shortest-lived species in the history of life on planet earth. Having been around for about 120,000 years, and numbering about 8 billion today, we appear to be on course to drastically reduce our numbers within the next 20-30 years. The species that appeared two minutes to midnight on the timescale of life on earth, looks set to vanish before the next day, like a passing dream in the mind of god. Maybe we would have been better off if we had stayed put on the trees. We owe a large part of our current situation to our leaders, who have led us down this path. The exponential acceleration of human intelligence - most likely brought about by the use of psychedelic and psychotropic flora and fungi - led humans on an entirely different path from all other living species. We used our intelligence to gain knowledge about our external world and our internal world. Unfortunately, the knowledge that we gained we have used to harness the external world for one primary purpose - to get rich at all costs. From the moment that we chose persons with wealth, and who valued wealth, to be our leaders - instead of the wise humans who knew the significance of human existence - we were doomed. Instead of directly doing the things we needed to do, we appointed these rich who used their guile to get themselves appointed as middlemen - kings, priests and politicians - to mediate for us. The kings mediated on our behalf in worldly matters, and the priests mediated for us with regard to religious matters. They interpreted the values that were important for the human race, giving the accumulation of material wealth and power paramount importance over universal human values such as equality, truth, love, peace, liberty and justice. All the universal human values were linked to the gods that we created, thus taking it to another realm beyond our reach, leaving us all free to pursue material wealth and power. Money, which is just a means to reach our ends, soon became an end in itself, with us losing sight of what were our real needs. As Nietzsche says, in The Will to Power, 'Mankind has made the same mistake over and over again: out of what was originally means to life, it has made a standard by which life itself is judged; instead of judging things by what leads to the greatest enhancement of life itself, taking full account of the causes of growth and stagnation, mankind has used the means of a particular form of life to exclude all the others, in short, to criticize and to cull; i.e. man has ultimately become enamoured of the means for their own sake, and forgets that they are mere means; so that now he becomes conscious of them as ends, as standards by which his ends are judged...'

Over time we gradually replaced our kings, theoretically at least, with elected leaders. The elected leaders were, however, just the kings wearing the guise of the common man. So today we have autocracies, theocracies and democracies that are essentially ruled by none other than our old middlemen - the kings and priests. The universal human values of truth, equality, love, peace, justice, freedom, unity and liberty we have neatly enshrined in documents that we call constitutions of nations, but our leaders pay hardly any heed to them as they seek to maximize their personal wealth in the limited time that they have holding the reins of humanity. We, as the people, have also rejected the universal human values for the pursuit of wealth, which we consider the most important value. As Herman Hesse says in 1919 in his book If The War Goes On, "The 'practical' man, who is always right in committee meetings, is invariably wrong outside his committees. Ideals and faith in the future are always right. They are the one source from which the world draws strength. And anyone who disposes of humanitarian ideas as idle talk and fuzzy thinking or of strivings for the future as literature is still a gorilla and has a long way to go before becoming a man."

We owe all this to what Nietzsche called the decadence of the human race over the last 2000 years or so. While noble ideals are spoken about, they are rarely followed, and society realized that the persons who spoke one thing and did another were highly successful, and reached exalted positions of great wealth and power, immune to all that was said about the fruits of evil. Thus society made these charlatans its role models, and nearly every single human chooses to emulate these charlatans. We became a society of the rich and the wanna-be-rich. By devising a system of electing one among us as a leader - based on this shaky foundation of hypocrisy and greed - we ensured that the most ruthless, greedy, hypocritical and self-centered among us would emerge as our leader. Once the leader got elected with the support of the rich and the wanna-be-rich, he (and occasionally she) completely disregarded the wanna-be-rich and dedicated the years of power in the service of the rich, so as to become as rich as possible in the limited time that he held power.

The earth has been laid to waste, and humanity is on the verge of catastrophe, dragging along with it numerous other living species due to no fault of their own. We have already sent many species to extinction, and we are only rapidly adding to that number each day. We have devised intelligence in machines - artificial intelligence as we call it - that uses human intelligence as a foundation to learn. Given that human intelligence is focused on one and only one thing  - getting rich - we are manipulating these machines as well to help us achieve this more efficiently for us.

The over riding value that requires the most urgent focus for the human race today - even greater than the noble ideals of truth, love, peace, justice, equality and liberty - is the value of sustainability of the human race. This finds no mention anywhere in our approach to life. The accumulation of wealth is such a form of insanity that we are cutting away from the very nature that sustains us, viewing nature as an adversary or a servant to be exploited. We have become so insane that we do not even know what to do with the wealth that we accumulate, other than to destroy ourselves and others around us faster. As Friedrich Nietzsche said - "Our 'rich' - they are the poorest of all! The real purpose of all wealth is forgotten!" We have replaced the universal values essential for human existence with values created by the middle man - greed, religion, patriotism, hypocrisy, morality and deceit.

Our politicians - irrespective of the parties that they represent - all work for one class, and that is the rich. While for the people it appears that each party and each leader represents certain ideals that determine the choice of the voter, the fact of the matter is that all political parties and all leaders work for one, and only one master, the rich. This is the same everywhere in the world. The rich today comprise of the world's leading industries - fossil fuels including petrochemicals (and its allied industries such as plastics, synthetic fibers, etc), synthetic pharmaceuticals, construction, arms, medical, technological, banking, alcohol, tobacco, media, etc. Many of us, in turn, work directly for these industries, being employed by them. We have become so fatigued by our pursuit of money that we hardly have the energy to think of anything else besides. Our employers - the rich of the world - ensure that we are chained to the wheel, constantly working to make them richer, dangling occasional carrots and using occasional sticks to spur us on. In this situation, to do nothing is far better than to keep on doing what we do. But we view doing nothing as precious time lost, time that we could have spent getting richer. We thus relinquish all the important things in the world to the charlatans and middlemen who go about on their merry ways without a care in the world.

While 5% of the world's population comprise of the rich, 90% of the world comprises of the wanna-be-rich, and the remaining 5% comprise of people happy as they are. This last 5% are largely the remote indigenous communities that have somehow managed to stay in close contact with nature, away from the greed of the masses. So when the majority of the world votes, i.e. the wanna-be-rich, they are not voting for persons who will uphold the universal human ideals that we all like to talk about, but for persons who will help the wanna-be-rich get rich faster. In Carl Jung's psychoanalysis of the "normal" person, he says "You would be ashamed to be a normal person! Schopenhauer maintains that his egotism is so great that he would even strike dead his own brother in order to grease his boots with the latter's fat. Thus, the normal person is firstly very selfish and obstinate, and secondly primitive. It is a fact that the ancient cave men are still among us, you will meet them on the tram! Likewise Neolithic men and pile dwellers. Today, we might call them imbeciles, and so on. It takes very little, and out comes the barbarian in us again. At least 70, if not 80 percent of the population still belong to the Middle Ages, so that in fact very few people are truly adjusted to the year 1934. And of these few, most have forgotten what lies behind them: that is, they have forgotten their shadow, which they carry through life behind these well-adjusted personae or roles. So the highest point of the curve lies in I [ego-centricity]. Normal man lives there with his body, which is an animal. We can also assume that Right II, that is, subjectivism, assumes a high position, for the average person is extremely subjective. In Right III, personalism, we find submission or obedience to an authority, perhaps to the Fuhrer. Here the curve falls off somewhat, but in recent times an intensifying seems to have occurred.'

The nature of politicians and the values that they espouse

Let us examine the nature of politicians and the values that they espouse - unity among thieves, hypocrisy, greed - in place of the universal human values.

General nature

Hitler did not become what he did in isolation. He was just one of a breed of authoritarian politicians who existed at that time, and who believed themselves to be greater than the nation that they were elected to serve. They were each elected by nations that felt that they were the greatest, the upper classes of the world, fueled by the false pride that comes with looting the possession of others and subjugating hundreds of millions to slavery. They were elected by people who were as full of themselves as the leaders that they elected and whom they mirrored. The parties of each of these authoritarian leaders, like Hitler, were funded by rich businessmen who sought the party's assistance to plunder and loot the earth's resources world wide and to further their businesses at any cost...The situation is not much different from what it is today..and if anyone is to blame for the outcome it is each one of us lulled into complacency by the leader's charismatic hypnotizing speeches about a great future, the promise of shared loot among the hordes, and our individual belief about our own superiority over our fellow man and nature...To understand the nature of politicians, let us look at the political class in general.

Ralph Waldo Emerson says in his book, Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage - 'Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature. They must do what they can. Like one class of forest animals, they have nothing but a prehensile tail; climb they must or crawl. If a man found himself so rich-natured that he could enter into strict relations with the best persons and make life serene around him by the dignity and sweetness of his behavior, could he afford to circumvent the favor of the caucus and the press, and covet relations so hollow and pompous as those of a politician? Surely nobody would be a charlatan who could afford to be sincere.' Leo Tolstoy says in his book, The Kingdom of God and other Peace Essays - 'The worst elements of society are attracted by and obtain power. Power moulds them, making them better and softening them, and returns them to the community.' Henry David Thoreau says in his essay, Civil Disobedience - 'After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority [governments] are permitted, and for a long period continue, is not because they are most likely to be in the right nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.' Hunter S Thompson writes in his book, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone - 'The White House is the most powerful office in the world, and a lot of people will tell you nothing is over the line when it finally comes down to winning or losing it. Nobody is safe and Nothing is sacred when the stakes get that high. It is the ultimate Fast Lane, and the people still on their feet in September are usually the Meanest of the Mean. The last train out of any station will not be full of Nice guys. Look at Bush. He has worked overtime to give Politics a bad name. He is a mean-spirited wimp and a career bureaucrat who has arguably committed more high crimes and misdemeanors in and around the Oval Office than Nixon would have been Impeached for if he hadn't resigned...Nixon was genetically Dishonest, and so is Bush. They both represent what Bobby Kennedy called "the darkest impulses of the American Spirit..."' Hunter Thompson further writes regarding the ruthlessness of politicians, saying 'The slaves who emerge victorious from these drastic public decisions go crazy with joy and plunge each other into deep tubs of chilled Cristal champagne with naked strangers who want to be close to a winner. That is how it works in the victory business. You see it every time. The Weak will suck up to the Strong, for fear of losing their jobs and their money and all the fickle power they wielded only twenty-four hours ago. It is like suddenly losing your wife and your home in a vagrant poker game, then having to go on the road with whoremongers and beg for your dinner in public. Nobody wants to hire a loser. Right? They stink of doom and defeat. That is the nature of high-risk politics. Veni Vidi Vice, especially among Republicans. It's like the ancient Bedouin saying, As the camel falls to its knees, more knives are drawn.'

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is the signature trait of the politician. To say one thing - which is what the people want to hear so as to ensure getting elected to power and retaining power - and then doing just the opposite  - so as to better serve the politician's masters among the wealthy classes, thus ensuring that the politician get rich in the process - is the true nature of the politician. We will hear all kinds of invocations made, drawing on religions and the words of great thinkers, trumpeting the importance of universal human ideals, while the politician will go about negating every single word said through his actions. The absolute impunity with which the politician practices this can only happen when the people are total imbeciles, hypnotized by the words and blind to the actions. The hypocrite will modify his speech according to what the audience wants to hear. So speaking before his rabid supporters within the party, he will speak about his ability to take the party to power and retain it. Speaking to the nation whose votes he wishes to capture he will say something else, mostly invoking patriotism for the nation, tribe and religion. Speaking to an international community, he will espouse the universal human values that he has scant regard for. In hypocrisy, the politician has an able ally in the priest, who claims to be speaking for god, endorsing the politician as god's chosen one, and the actions of the politician as the will of god. The hypocrisy practiced by the leader becomes the template for the common man, and very soon the entire nation has descended into a nation of hypocrites who have absolutely no qualms about what they say, and how it contradicts with what they do. Speaking about hypocrisy, Leo Tolstoy writes in the Kingdom of God and other Peace Essays - 'Divide up what you possess with others, do not gather riches, do not exalt yourself, do not steal, do not cause suffering, do not kill anyone, do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself, was said not only nineteen hundred years ago but five thousand years ago. And there can be no doubt of the truth of this law, and but for hypocrisy it would be impossible for men - even if they themselves did not conform to it - to fail to recognize at least its necessity, and that he who does not do these things is doing wrong.' He says 'Hypocrisy in our time is supported by two things - pseudo-religion and pseudo-science - and has reached such colossal dimensions that were we not living in the midst of it, it would be impossible to believe, that men could reach such a degree of self-deception. They have now reached such a strange condition and their hearts are so hardened that though they have eyes they see not, and having ears they hear not, neither do they understand. Men have long been living in antagonism with their conscience. If it were not for hypocrisy they could not continue to do so. Their present arrangement of life in opposition to their conscience only exists because it is masked by hypocrisy.' Regarding the hypocrisy of priests, he says - 'In general, hypocrisy having entered into the flesh and blood of all classes in our time has reached such proportions that nothing of that kind any longer arouses indignation. Not for nothing was "hypocrisy" derived from "acting". And anyone can act, that is, play a part. Such facts as that the representatives of Christ, at divine service, bless ranks of murderers holding loaded rifles in readiness to shoot their fellow men, that ministers of all the Christian sects take part in executions as inevitably as the executioners, by their presence acknowledging murder to be compatible with Christianity (a clergyman officiated in America at the first experiment of murder by electricity), no longer occasion surprise to anyone.'

Unity among thieves

Politicians - irrespective of the party that they belong to - and their rich masters will ensure that the political class remains secure and intact. In the existence of the political class lies the future and security of the politician. Even though the politician will do whatever it takes, including employing the most dirty tactics to sideline a rival, he will at the end of the day ensure that the image of the political class, as a whole, is not tarnished to such an extent that the people question the role, and need, for a politician. The people think that they are voting for this or that politician, or this or that ideology, but in fact they are always voting for the same kind of person wearing a different disguise. Politicians will enter into agreements with their successors to ensure that they are not brought to justice for the crimes that they perpetrated during their days in office. Hunter S Thompson writes about Nixon escaping jail in his book Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone saying 'Ford sprung his decision with no advance warning at 10:40 on a peaceful Sunday morning in Washington, after emerging from a church service with such a powerful desire to dispense mercy that he rushed back to the White House - a short hump across Lafayette Park - and summoned a weary Sunday-morning skeleton crew of correspondents and cameramen to inform them, speaking in curiously zombielike tones, that he could no longer tolerate the idea of ex-president Nixon suffering his grief-crazed solitude out there on the beach in San Clemente, and that his conscience now compelled him to end both the suffering of Nixon and the national angst it was causing by means of a presidential edict of such king-sized breadth and scope as to scourge the poison of "Watergate" from our national consciousness forever.' Politicians, across parties, will enter into agreements on power sharing so that it benefits the political class, even as it provides an external appearance of respecting the will of the people. This is a common feature of all elected governments worldwide, especially evident among the US Republican and Democratic parties. As Hunter Thompson writes - "Yeah," I said, pausing to twist the top off one of the ale bottles I'd been pulling out of the bag. "But the thing you want to understand is that Nixon has such a fine understanding of the way politicians think that he knew people like Daley and Meany and Ted Kennedy would go along with him - because it's in their interest now to have Nixon get his second term, in exchange for a guaranteed Democratic victory in 1976." "Goddamn," he said. "That's beautiful! They're gonna trade him four years now for eight years later, right? Give Nixon his last trip in '72, then Kennedy moves in for eight years in '76...Jesus, that's so rotten I really have to admire it." He chuckled. "Boy, I thought I was cynical!" "That's not cynical," I said. "That's pure, nut-cutting politics...And I advise you to stay out of it; you're too sensitive."' Politicians will tear down persons within their own parties if they appear to be threats to their common purpose of getting rich and working for their rich masters. Hunter Thompson writes that 'The "ABM Movement" (Anybody but McGovern) was a coalition of desperate losers, thrown together at the last moment by Big Labor chief George Meany and his axe-man, Al Barkan. Hubert Humphrey was pressed into service as the front man of ABM, and he quickly signed up the others: Big Ed, Scoop Jackson, Terry Sanford, Shirley Chisholm - all the heavies. The ABM movement came together, officially, sometime in the middle of the week just before the convention, when it finally became apparent that massive fraud, treachery, or violence was the only way to prevent McGovern from getting the nomination...and what followed, once this fact was accepted by all parties involved, will hopefully go down in history as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the Democratic process. It was like a scene from the final hours of the Roman Empire: everywhere you looked, some prominent politician was degrading himself in public.' In all this behavior, nearly all politicians and political parties are alike. There is a uniformity about the political class that is the norm across all political parties in the world. It is only the people, who are fooled every single time when they fall for the tricks of the politician, thinking that the he has their best interests in mind, when all he has is his own selfish interest and the interest of his masters. Hunter Thompson writes about this - "I've covered a lot of Democratic campaigns," he continued, "but I've never felt out of place before - never personally uncomfortable with the people." "I know what you mean," I said. 'Sure," he said. "It's obvious - and I've finally figured out why." He chuckled and glanced at the Muskie people again. "You know what it is?" he said. "It's because these people [Democrats] act like goddamn Republicans! That's the problem. It took me a while, but I finally figured it out."'

The tools employed by politicians to gain and retain power

Let us look at some of the tools that politicians commonly employ - religion, patriotism, inequality, concentration of power, image doctoring, media, suppression of dissent, wars, distraction, drugs of power, surveillance of opponents, etc.

Inequality

The need to create inequality among the people is a key success factor for the politician. Only if there is inequality, can the politician leverage the support of those who think themselves to be the elite classes, a class to which the politician also thinks he belongs. Only when there is inequality can wealth and power be concentrated in the hands of the few, and used to control the many so that the aims of the ruling classes are met. There are various ways in which inequality can be created - social, economic, religious, intellectual, and political to name a few. Once the inequality is created, those who believe themselves to be superior to the others will do everything in their power to ensure that the inequality remains, and if possible, it increases. Leo Tolstoy writes in the Kingdom of God and other Peace Essays - 'But not only do all men involved in the State organization throw the responsibility for their acts on one another - the soldier on the nobleman or merchant who is his officer, and the officer on the nobleman who occupies the post of Governor, and the Governor on the gentleman or son of an official who holds the post of minister, and the minister on the member of the royal family who occupies the position of the Tsar, and the Tsar again on all those officials, nobles, merchants, and peasants - not only do people free themselves in this way from the sense of responsibility for their actions, but they also lose their moral consciousness of responsibility because, being involved in a State organization, they so unceasingly, strenuously, and persistently assure themselves and one another that they are not all equal, but different among themselves "as one star differeth from another", that they begin to really believe this. Thus some are persuaded that they are not simple people like other folk but are special beings who ought to be specially honoured. And it is instilled into others by all possible means that they are inferior creatures, and should therefore uncomplainingly submit to what those above them dictate. This inequality, this exaltation of some and degradation of others, is the chief cause of men's capacity to ignore the irrationality and cruelty and wickedness of the existing order, as well as the deception practised by some and suffered by others.'

Image doctoring

The politician uses vast amounts of the taxpayer's money, and money donated by his rich masters, to exaggerate and project his image so that he appears as god, or god's chosen one, on earth. Teams of die-hard fanatics propagate the images across the nation so that no individual can ignore the doctored image. Leo Tolstoy writes regarding this as follows 'As it is, people are constantly hypnotized from childhood in one and the same direction by all possible means: school books, Church services, sermons, speeches, books, newspapers, poems, and monuments. Some thousands of people are brought together, forcibly or by bribery, and when they have been joined by the loafers who are always glad to see any spectacle, they begin to shout what is shouted before them to the accompaniment of cannon and bands and glitter and brilliance of all kinds, and we are told that this is the expression of the feelings of the whole nation. But in the first place these thousands or tens of thousands, who shout at such celebrations, form but a tiny ten-thousandth part of the whole population. And in the second place, of these tens of thousands of shouting and hand waving people, the greater part, if not assembled by force as is done among us in Russia, have been artfully lured there by some bait or other. Thirdly, among all those thousands there are scarcely a few dozen who know what it is all about: they would shout and wave their hats in just the same way if the very opposite of what is happening were taking place. And fourthly, the police are present who promptly silence and remove all who shout anything the government does not wish or demand.' Hunter Thompson describes this, during Richard Nixon's election campaign in the 1970s - 'Which turned out to be the "Ready Room," in a far corner of the hall, where a dozen people wearing red hats and looking like small-town football coaches were yelling into bullhorns and trying to whip this herd of screaming sheep into shape for the "spontaneous" demonstration, scheduled for 10:33 PM. It was a very disciplined scene. The red-hatted men with the bullhorns did all the talking. Huge green plastic "refuse" sacks full of helium balloons were distributed, along with handfuls of New Year's Eve party noisemakers and hundreds of bug cardboard signs that said things like "Nixon Now!"..."Four More Years!"..."No Compromise!" Most of the signs were freshly printed. They looked exactly like the "We Love Mayor Daley" signs that Daley distributed to his sewer-workers in Chicago in 1968: red and blue ink on a white background...' For a long time now, specialists have existed who have achieved mastery in this art of deceit, engaged in doctoring the image of the politician through various media. As Leo Tolstoy writes in the 19th century - 'The enthusiasm of the crowd is for the most part artificially prepared by those to whom it is necessary, and the degree of art of the organizers of that enthusiasm. That art is an old one and its specialists have consequently reached great virtuosity in preparing these ecstasies.' Today, in the 21st century, with all the advances that media has made, including artificial intelligence, this has only become more easier and far more sophisticated. Gullible sections of society, such as the youth and the outliers, are hired to perform the task of image doctoring for the politician. It is for all this that money is required, and it is precisely this ability that ensures that the richest crook ends up becoming the political leader of a country. Besides being good orators, politicians are also masters of disguise, wearing the attire that the occasion demands to achieve maximum impact with the audience. Image doctoring does not stop with election campaigns where the politician with the most money is successful. It becomes even more intensified and possible once the politician gets into power because now he has the state's resources and the taxpayers money to work with.  Hunter Thompson writes that 'Anybody who doubts it should go out and catch the president's act, the next time he swoops into the local airport. Watch the big silver-and-blue custom-built 707 come booming down the runway and roll up in front of the small but well-disciplined crowd of Nixon Youth cheerleaders singing the "Nixon Now" song, waving their freshly painted red-white-and-blue "Re-Elect the President" signs and then pausing, in perfect unison, before intimidating every TV crew on the runway with the stylish "Four More Years!" chant.' Images of the politician as savior of the downtrodden, as protector of nature, as ultimate warrior striking down enemies, as comforter of sorrow, as god's chosen one are carefully created and disseminated to the masses through the various media under the politicians control. For all this to happen, the politician must have a god-sized delusion of his own self-importance, and the people must be imbecile enough to be thoroughly hypnotized by the doctored image. As Leo Tolstoy writes, 'The ruling classes, having no longer any reasonable justification for the advantageous position they hold, are obliged, in order to keep these positions, to repress their higher rational capacities and their love for their fellow-men, and to hypnotize themselves into the belief that their exceptional positions are necessary. And the lower classes, crushed by toil and intentionally stupefied, live in a continual condition of hypnotization, deliberately and incessantly induced by people of the upper classes. Only in this way can one explain the amazing contradiction that fills our life.' For all the image doctoring, the persons who are finally involved constitute a very small fraction of the population, but the advent of social media and advanced technologies means that the effect can be magnified multi-fold by artificial means. Leo Tolstoy writes that 'Such manifestations as those that have lately taken place in Toulon and Paris, which take place in Germany at receptions of the Emperor or of Bismarck, at the manouevres in Lorraine, and that are constantly repeated in Russia on every ceremonial occasion, only prove that the means existing for exciting the crowd are so powerful that the government and the ruling classes which control them can always evoke at will whatever manifestation they please. On the other hand nothing so clearly proves the absence of patriotism in the people as these intense efforts now employed by the governments and the ruling classes to arouse it artificially, and the smallness of the results obtained despite all these efforts.' The image doctors ensure that no bad news, or anything that can dent the politician's carefully crafted image reaches the public. These days, with the media firmly under the control of the politician, this task has only become easier. Hunter Thompson writes regarding this, saying 'Total candor with the press - or anyone else, for that matter - is not one of the traits most presidential candidates find entirely desirable in their key staff people. Skilled professional liars are as much in demand in politics as they are in the advertising business...and the main function of any candidate's press secretary is to make sure that the press gets nothing but Upbeat news. There is no point, after all, in calling a press conference to announce that nobody on the staff will be paid this month because three or four of your largest financial backers just called to say they are pulling out and abandoning all hope of victory.'

Concentration of power

Ever wondered how all the potential serious competition, within the party, for the supreme leader have very conveniently died or disappeared, leaving behind a bunch of slobbering idiots? Divine intervention? Politicians, once they gain power, will do all they can to ensure that the existing system is fully loaded in their favor by appointing persons of their choice to the key public institutions that ensure their power. This includes high political positions, the judiciary, law enforcement, heads of universities, and media offices. Leo Tolstoy writes that 'A judge, a policeman, a governor, or an officer, can keep his position just the same under Boulanger, Pugachev, Catherine, or a republic. But should the existing order which secures him his advantageous position collapse, he would certainly lose that position. And so these people are none of them alarmed as to who will be at the head of the organization of violence - they can adapt themselves to anyone. They only fear the abolition of the organization itself, and that is the reason - though sometimes an unconscious one - why they maintain it.'

Distraction

To ensure that the people do not focus on the problems at hand - caused largely through the corruption of the political class, and its acquiescence to the rich - the politician will periodically create distractions that draw the focus of the people, thus taking it away from the crimes of the politician. Some common distraction methods employed are: inciting communal hatred; drawing focus on achievements of specific communities - such as the scientific or sporting community - and claiming credit for it; raising concerns of national security threats from external or internal entities; exaggerating drug use in society as an ultimate evil that the state strives to stamp out; creating unprecedented crises that disrupt the entire way of life of the nation, and then appearing as the savior; glorifying certain individuals so as to gain leverage with particular voting segments; calling all critics of the State as anti-nationals and bringing public focus on them by harassing them; and possibly the ultimate distraction of all - war. As people wise up to distractions employed repeatedly, there is a need to come up with new and innovative distractions that can fool the maximum number of people. In recent times we saw one of the most innovative distractions ever, a distraction that completely fooled the entire world, giving massive power and wealth to the politician and the rich masters whom he serves. This was the Covid pandemic hoax, orchestrated at global levels, with everyone, including the naive public, playing their parts to enable the tricksters to achieve their goals with tremendous success.

Regarding the war on drugs as a distraction to take away focus from a political crisis, Hunter Thompson writes - 'Somewhere in the spastic interim between John Dean and "Bob" Haldeman, Congressman Staggers managed to collar some story-starved sportswriter from the New York Times long enough to announce that his committee - the House Subcommittee on Investigations - had stumbled on such a king-hell wasps' nest of evidence in the course of their probe into "the use of drugs by athletes" that the committee was prepared - or almost prepared, pending further evidence - to come to grips with their natural human duty and offer up a law, very soon, that would require individual urinalysis tests on all professional athletes and especially pro football players.' Regarding the accusing of all opposition as anti-national and threats to national security, Thompson writes 'But before we zoom off into whatever direction might come next, it would be unfair not to mention that the Times was the first paper to break the Pentagon Papers story, a command decision that forced Nixon and his would-be enforcers to come out in the open with fangs bared, snarling threats to have everybody connected with the publication of the Pentagon Papers either lashed into jail or subpoenaed into so many courtrooms that their minds would snap before they finally ended up in the poorhouse. As it turned out, however, the Times management strapped on its collective balls and announced that they were prepared to go to the mat with Nixon on that one - a surprisingly tough stance that was almost instantly backed by influential papers like the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch...And the appearance of that solid front, however shaky, caused serious turmoil in the White House. Spiro Agnew was pried loose from his kickback racket and sent out on the stump to stir up the Silent Majority against the "radiclibs" and "liberal elitists" of the "eastern media establishment" - the "nattering nabobs of negativism."' Religious posturing is always a sure-fire method of distraction since there is hardly anything that stirs the masses as much as a threat to their god (like as if he needs to be saved). The politician creates events and associations that show his role as protector of religion. He also stirs up communal disturbances to better align people in his support, and to project those who could weaken his position as enemies of the religion of the people. Thompson writes that  'Those were the salad days of early summer, before the fateful Supreme Court decision, when Nixon's Goebbels - ex-White House "communications director" Ken Clawson - was creating a false dawn over the White House by momentarily halting Nixon's yearlong slide in the public opinion polls with a daily drumbeat of heavy, headline-grabbing attacks on "professional Nixon haters" in the press, and "unprincipled, knee-jerk liberals in Congress." At that point in time, most of Nixon's traditional allies were beginning to hear the death shrieks of the banshee floating over the White House lawns at night, and even Billy Graham had deserted him. So Clawson, in a stroke of cheap genius, put a sybaritic Jesuit priest and a mentally retarded rabbi on the payroll and sent them forth to do battle with the forces of Evil.'

War

' 'War?' he said.

'Yes!' Number Two gazed contemptuously at Ford Prefect.

'On the next continent?'

'Yes! Total warfare! The war to end all wars!'

'But there's no one even living there yet!'

Ah, interesting, thought the crowd, nice point.

Number Two's gaze hovered undisturbed. In this respect his eyes were like a couple of mosquitoes that hover purposefully three inches from your nose and refuse to be deflected by arm thrashes, fly swats or rolled newspapers.

'I know that,' he said, 'but there will be one day! So we have left an open-ended ultimatum.'

'What?'

'And blown up a few military installations.'

The captain leaned forward out of his bath.

'Military installations, Number Two?' he said

For a moment the eyes wavered.

'Yes, sir, well, potential military installations. All right...trees.'

The moment of uncertainty passed - his eyes flicked like whips over his audience.

'And,' he roared, 'we interrogated a gazelle!'

He flipped his Kill-O-Zap smartly under his arm and marched off through the pandemonium that had now erupted throughout the ecstatic crowd. A few steps was all he managed before he was caught up and carried shoulder high for a lap of honour round the clearing.'

- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams

 

War, of course, is the ultimate distraction to take away the focus of the people from the internal problems caused by the corrupt politician and his ineptitude. War aligns the entire nation to the support of the leader. It also generates vast amounts of wealth for the leader's masters in the petrochemical industry, synthetic pharmaceutical industry, arms industry and construction industry. It ensures that the entire nation, including its media, is now focusing on one thing, the war, and completely disregards all the other much more pressing problems that plague the state. It is another method for concentration of power with the politician in control. Regarding this, Leo Tolstoy writes 'The bells will peal and long-haired men will dress themselves in gold-embroidered sacks and begin to pray on behalf of murder. The familiar, age-old, horrible businesses will recommence. The editors of newspapers will set to work to arouse hatred and murder under the guise of patriotism and will be delighted to double their sales. Manufacturers, merchants, and contractors of army-stores, will hurry about joyfully in expectation of doubled profits. Officials of all sorts will busy themselves in the hope of being able to steal more than usual. Army commanders will bustle here and there, drawing double pay and rations and hoping to receive various trinkets, ribbons, crosses, stripes, and stars, for murdering people. Idle ladies and gentlemen will fuss about, entering their names in advance for the Red Cross and getting ready to bandage those whom their husbands and brothers are setting out to kill - imagining that they will be doing a most Christian work thereby.'

As always, it is the poorest and the working classes who pay the price for everything. They are the ones who sell their votes for a bottle of alcohol, or religion, or a packet of cigarettes. They are the ones who work day and night to make the rich richer. They are the ones who pay the taxes that enable the rich to do what they do. Finally they are the ones who are sent out to war, to kill another fellow human being for no reason, but to consolidate the position of the rich ruling classes. Leo Tolstoy writes that 'The victim is always and ever the deceived, foolish, working folk - those who with blistered hands have built all those ships, fortresses, arsenals, barracks, cannon, harbours, steamers, and moles, and all these palaces, halls, platforms, and triumphal arches; who have set up and printed all these newspapers and pamphlets, and have procured and brought all these pheasants and ortolans, oysters, and wines that are consumed by the men who are fed, brought up, and kept by them, and who are deceiving them and preparing the most fearful calamities for them. It is always the same kindly, foolish folk, who stand open-mouthed like children, showing their healthy white teeth, naively delighted by dressed-up admirals and presidents with flags waving above them, and by fireworks and bands of music; and for whom, before they have time to look around, there will be neither admirals nor presidents nor flags nor bands, but only a desolate battlefield, cold, hunger, and anguish - before them murderous enemies and behind them relentless officers preventing their escape - blood, wounds, suffering, putrefying corpses, and a senseless unnecessary death.' The rich will make this whole affair appear like as if it was the ultimate duty of the poor, a sacred duty that they owe to their country and their religion. The rich will in the meantime gloat over the new opportunities for growing richer. Tolstoy writes that 'And hundreds of thousands of simple kindly folk, torn from their wives, mothers, and children, and with murderous weapons in their hands, will trudge wherever they may be driven, stifling the despair in their souls by songs, debauchery, and vodka. They will march, freeze, suffer from hunger, and fall ill. Some will die of disease, and some will at last come to the place where men will kill them by the thousand. And they too, without themselves knowing why, will murder thousands of others whom they had never before seen, and who had neither done nor could do them any wrong.'
 
Regarding the true costs of war Herman Hesse write in his book, If The War Goes On - 'If your ears should be opened once more to all these things that you have sedulously avoided hearing for months and years, then perhaps you would re-examine your aims, your ideals and theories, with a new mind and attempt to weigh their true worth against the misery of a single month, a single day, of war.' Leo Tolstoy writes about the cost of war, saying 'Every war, even the briefest, with the expenditure usual to war, the destruction of crops, the plundering, the licensed debauchery and murders, the sophisticated excuses as to its necessity and justice, the exaltation and glorification of military exploits, patriotism and devotion to the flag, the feigned solicitude for the wounded, and so on, does more to deprave people in a single year than millions of robberies, arsons, and murders committed in hundreds of years by individual men under the influence of passion.' Tolstoy writes that 'Tomorrow a war may begin, and men driven like cattle to the slaughter, will go where they are sent and perish unprotestingly, and destroy other men without even asking themselves why they do it. And not only will they feel no remorse about it, they will even swagger and be proud of the geegaws they are allowed to wear for their skill in killing people, and they will exalt those unhappy or wicked men who placed them in such a position, and erect monuments to them.'

Religion

We replaced the religions that essentially preached the universal ideals of love, peace and equality espoused by founders such as Siva, Buddha and Jesus - with religions that espouse material wealth, classes and castes. The church, and the religion of Christianity as it has been practiced for 2000 years, are far removed from what its founder intended. What exists today is the very opposite of what was sought to be destroyed. The key maxim 'Money is the root of all evil' has been completely ignored, as have concepts such as truth, love and peace. Instead, what has been established is the divinity of the middlemen - the church - and the power of the priest as god's representative to absolve anyone of the sins they perpetrate. The politician is god's chosen one on earth, approved and sanctioned by the priest and the church, to enforce god's will on earth. The church works hand in hand with the State, ensuring that the rich get richer, that people submit to both state and church alike, as if it was the will of god. The appropriation of Christ's teachings by the church enabled it to work along with the state to consolidate the position of the rich in the West. The so-called Christian nations plundered the world, and killed hundreds of millions of people in the name of Jesus. The bible-thumping belts in the US still control which politician rules the nation, ensuring that the rich white man, or his equivalent in terms of ideals, continues to hold power so as to benefit the industries that lay the earth to waste - the petrochemicals, synthetic pharmaceuticals, arms, tobacco, alcohol, chemical fertilizer and pesticides, construction, etc. India witnessed a similar consolidation of the power of the state working in tandem with religion about 5000 years ago. The casteless, classless, egalitarian, minimalist society espoused by the followers of Siva - the early inhabitants of India - was gradually converted into a society based on class and caste, where the king and priest are supreme and the acquiring of wealth is the supreme ideal as espoused by Vaishnavism and the Vedic religions that the new migrants brought. The Chinese discarded Buddhism for a more appealing Communism, that talks about equality while shoring up the wealth of the ruling classes. Islam became just an excuse to loot and plunder nations and to establish the control of the wealthy over the people, with ruler and priest working in tandem. Today, all gods are almost entirely dead, unless serving as props to channelize the money of the people to our middlemen and the rich. With the establishment of control over the people using religion as a tool, we decided that either god did not even exist or that if he did, he stood for classes, castes, the state and the accumulation of material wealth and power. One person who vastly influenced the former way of thinking, that god is an illusion, especially in the West - which had earlier adopted the concept of church as an ally of the state with a vengeance killing millions in the name of Christianity - was Sigmund Freud. In Carl Jung's psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, he says 'The religious phenomenon will elude him entirely, and his idea of religion will be distorted by personalism and subjectivism. His book, The Future of an Illusion (1927), illustrates how little Freud, despite his genius, understood the phenomenon of religion. So when someone tells him that a dream has conveyed a message to him, or brings him a vision, or when he reads of experiences of mystics and artists, he will inevitably say: "Well, that's nothing other than a complex!" He will accord it no reality...God is only a complex.' With this, both those who believed in god, and those who did not, were absolved of all accountability when it came to getting rich.  

Let us see what Friedrich Nietzsche, in his book The Will to Power, had to say about Christianity. His observations on Christianity hold good for every religion in the world that has as its founder a person who espoused the universal human values of love, peace, justice, equality, unity, truth, etc., values that were then completely disregarded by the so-called followers who claimed to represent the founder and establish a new religion.  Nietzsche says:

• 'Christianity should not be confounded with that one root from which it takes its name. The other roots from which it has sprung have been far more powerful, more important in forming its nucleus, than this one. It does an unparalleled injustice to his holy name to identify it with such horrible forms of deformity and decay as the 'Christian Church', 'Christian faith', 'Christian life'. What did Christ deny? Everything that goes by the name of Christian.'

• 'Christians have never practised what Jesus preached; the chief and only significance of the shameless cant about 'faith' and the 'justification by faith' is that it is the result of the Church having neither the courage nor the will to espouse the works that Jesus commanded - this and nothing more' 
  

• 'Christianity's indifference as to whether a thing is true provided it is effective betrays an utter want of intellectual integrity. Everything is acceptable, including lying, slander or the most shameless hypocrisy, provided it serves to raise the temperature - until people 'believe'.
  

• 'The exemplary life is one of love and humility, a life whose large-heartedness does not exclude even the lowliest; a life which formally renounces entitlement, self-defence and victory (in the sense of personal triumph); a life which has faith in a beatitude here on earth, in spite of hardship, opposition and a life which seeks no reward and is bound to no one; a life of the most spiritual and intellectual emancipation; a life in which pride is subordinated to voluntary poverty and service. Once the state had taken away the whole of Christian practice, and had expressly sanctioned life in the state, the kind of life which Jesus had opposed and condemned, it had to find the meaning of Christianity elsewhere: in the faith in incredible things, in ceremonial prayer, worship, feasts, etc. The notions 'sin', 'forgiveness', 'punishment', 'reward', which are all quite insignificant for, and almost precluded by, early Christianity, now comes to the fore. A dreadful mishmash of Greek philosophy and Judaism; asceticism; perpetual judgements and condemnations; hierarchy...'
  

• 'The Church is precisely that against which Jesus preached and against which he taught his disciples to fight.'
  

• 'Thanks to Paul, the attempt to do away with priests and theologians led to a new priesthood and theology - a ruling class and a church. The attempt to do away with self-importance, the importance attached to the 'person', led to belief in an eternally existing 'personal identity', to concern about 'eternal salvation'...and to the most paradoxical exaggeration of personal egoism.'
  

• 'The humour of the thing, the tragic humour, is that Paul re-established on a grand scale precisely what Jesus had nullified by the example of his life. And when at last the Church was completed, even the existence of the state received its sanction...NB. Paul took the rudiments of a new peace movement not unlike Buddhism, a possible cure for 'ressentiment' which had arisen in the very focus of the epidemic...and transformed it into its opposite, a pagan mystery religion, which eventually learns how to get along with the entire organization of the state...which eventually wages war, condemns, tortures, swears and hates.'
  

• 'You shall not resist him that does you evil, either in thought or deed. You shall recognize to cause for divorcing your wife, perhaps you should even 'prune' yourself. You shall make no distinction [between] strangers and neighbours, foreigners and fellow countrymen. You shall be angry with no one, you shall despise no one...Give alms in secret - you shall not want to get rich - you shall not swear - you shall not judge - you shall be reconciled, you shall forgive - do not pray in public - let your good works be seen, let your light shine! Who shall enter into heaven? He that does the will of my Father which is in heaven. 'Salvation' is not something promised: it is present, if you live and act in such and such a manner'
  

• 'The submission of the master races to Christianity is essentially due to their recognition that Christianity is a gregarious religion, that it teaches obedience: in short, that Christians are more easily ruled than non-Christians. Even in this day and age the Pope, having some inkling of this, recommends Christian propaganda to the emperor of China.'

 

Patriotism

Patriotism is one of the key tools that politicians use to control the masses. The politician views patriotism as the most important virtue that a citizen must possess. Patriotism here means complete unquestioning submission to the ruling class. The concept of nation is amplified to make it appear morally superior to all other nations. The nation to which one belongs is the chosen nation, god's people. Every other nation must be dominated over, or completely eliminated as evil that works against the will of god, i.e. the will of the ruling class. There is probably no other value that excites passion among the imbeciles that make up the masses than to identify with their tribe. The politician will put on a big show of love of country for the benefit of the people, even as he works to consolidate the position of his wealthy masters. To further the wealth of his masters, the politician will continue to work with the ruling and wealthy classes of the very nations that he denigrates by inciting patriotism in the people of his own country. To examine patriotism for what it is, let us see what Leo Tolstoy had to say regarding the subject, in his book The Kingdom of God and other Peace Essays:

• 'What is called patriotism today is merely, in our day, on the one side a certain frame of mind constantly produced and supported among the people by the schools, the Church, and a venal press, for purposes required by the government; and on the other side a temporary excitement aroused in the classes of the lowest mental and moral level by special means adopted by the ruling classes and afterwards given out as the permanent will of the whole nation. The patriotism of oppressed nationalities is no exception to this. That too is unnatural in the labouring classes, and is artificially fostered in them by the upper classes.' 
  

• 'If patriotic feeling were really so innate in the people, they would be left to appear freely of themselves and would not have to be worked up continually by artificial means as well as on special occasions.'
  

• 'People of the ruling classes say that with such complete conviction that patriotism is a lofty sentiment, that common folk who have not experienced it acknowledge themselves to blame for not feeling it, and try to persuade themselves that they do feel it, or at least pretend to do so.'
  

• 'Patriotism in our day is a cruel tradition from an outlived past. It is maintained only by inertia and because governments and ruling classes, feeling that their power and even their existence is bound up with it, persistently excite and maintain it among the people by cunning and by violence. Patriotism in our time resembles scaffolding which was needed for the erection of the walls of a building, and which though it now obstructs the use of the building is still not removed because its existence is profitable to certain people.'
  

• 'Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed.'
  

• 'Patriotism is slavery' 
  

• 'The working people are too much taken up with the task of earning a living for themselves and their families to be able to interest themselves in the political questions that figure as the chief motives of patriotism. The question of Russia's influence in the East, the unification of Germany, the return of France's lost provinces, of the cession of this or that part of one State to another, and so on, does not interest them - not only because they hardly ever know the conditions under which these questions arise, but because the interests of their life are quite apart from national and political interests.'
  

• 'There is a public opinion that patriotism is a great moral sentiment, and that people should consider their own nation and State as the best in the world; and this results in a public opinion that it is right and proper to acknowledge the authority of the government and to submit to it, that it is right and proper to serve in the army and submit to its discipline, that it is right and proper to give one's earnings to the government in the form of taxes, that it is right and proper to accept the decisions of the courts, and that it is right and proper to accept as divine truth whatever the emissaries of the government deliver to us. And once such a public opinion exists, a mighty power is established, controlling in our days milliards of money, an organized mechanism of administration, the postal service, telegraphy, telephones, disciplined armies, the law courts, the police, a submissive clergy, schools, and even newspapers; and this power maintains among the people the public opinion needed for its own maintenance.' 
  

• 'So that not the imaginary but the real patriotism which we all know, by which most people today are swayed and from which humanity suffers so severely, is not the wish for spiritual benefits for one's own people (it is impossible to desire spiritual benefits for one's own people only), but is a very definite feeling of preference for one's own people or State above all other people and States, and a consequent wish to get for that people or State the greatest advantages and power that can be got - things which are obtainable only at the expense of the advantages and power or other peoples or States. It would therefore seem obvious that patriotism as a feeling is bad and harmful, and as a doctrine is stupid. For it is clear that if each people and each State considers itself the best of peoples and States, they all live in a gross and harmful delusion.'
  

• 'Patriotism and its resulting wars give an enormous revenue to the newspaper trade and profits to many other trades. The more every writer, teacher, and professor preaches patriotism the more secure is he in his place. The more every emperor and king is addicted to patriotism the more fame he obtains. The ruling classes have in their hands the army, the schools, the churches, the press, and money. In the schools they kindle patriotism in the children by means of histories describing their own people as the best of all peoples and always on the right. Among adults they kindle it by spectacles, jubilees, monuments, and by a lying patriotic press. Above all they inflame patriotism by perpetrating every kind of injustice and harshness against other nations, provoking in them enmity towards their own people, and then in turn exploit that enmity to embitter their people against the foreigner.'

Drugs of power

The ruling classes use drugs to increase their own strength, and to weaken the people. Drugs like heroin, cocaine, synthetic pharmaceutical drugs and alcohol are used by politicians to give them the limitless energy required to work tirelessly for their masters. They also provide for the masses drugs like alcohol, tobacco, methamphetamine, fentanyl and synthetic pharmaceutical drugs to keep the people addicted and slaves to the ruling classes, weakening the minds and bodies of the people while at the same time earning vast revenues for the rich. Natural medicinal safe intoxicants - cannabis, peyote, psilocybin - that strengthen the minds and the bodies of the people are taken away to ensure that they have no choice but the poisons provided by the rich. The war on drugs is essentially a war against the people to keep them shackled while the rich indulge in the drugs of their choice. The use of drugs by politicians and the ruling classes is deemed as the privilege of their positions. They are above the law since they control law enforcement. Even as they plunge into addictions, they oppress the people with campaigns like the war on drugs in order to achieve their ulterior motives of power retention. A significant amount of funding for politicians and political parties comes from legal and illegal drugs. The whole drug industry, legal and illegal, is kept alive through the active support of politicians. Cannabis is kept prohibited by politicians for the precise reason that it will greatly impact the drug industry and its ability to amass wealth. Hunter Thompson writes about the use of drugs by politicians  - '[Hubert] Humphrey's addiction with Wallot has not stirred any controversy, so far. He has always campaigned like a rat in heat, and the only difference now is that he is able to do it eighteen hours a day instead of ten. The main change in his public style, since '68, is that he no longer seems aware that his gibberish is not taken seriously by anyone except Labor Leaders and middle-class Blacks.' He writes about another presidential candidate 'In retrospect, however, it is easy to see why Muskie fell apart on the caboose platform in the Miami train station. There he was - far gone in a bad ibogaine frenzy - suddenly shoved out in a rainstorm to face a sullen crowd and some kind of snarling lunatic going for his legs while he tried to explain why he was "the only Democrat who can beat Nixon." It is entirely conceivable - given the known effects of ibogaine - that Muskie's brain was almost paralyzed by hallucinations at the time, that he looked out at that crowd and saw gila monsters instead of people, and that his mind snapped completely when he suddenly felt something large and apparently vicious clawing at his legs.' Cannabis is always regarded as a threat by politicians because the cannabis smoker sees things as they are, questions and rebels against the hypocrisy and the corruption of authority. As the Nepali Times reports - 'White House recordings from the early 1970s reveal Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warning Nixon: “They come from Nepal to demonstrate against you because up there they can get free pot … or at least it is legal.”'

The Covid pandemic as a innovative tool for power consolidation on a global scale

Abusive governments seem to display behavioral traits similar to abusive individuals, possibly because the head(s) or leader(s) of such governments are such individuals. We observe a pattern of alternating abuse and the application of what seems like a balm to soothe the pain. This balm is often an eyewash (handwash?) and, to a certain extent, also serves to hypnotize the victim into thinking that the abuser means well. Mostly applied in alternating fashion, the balm is also sometimes applied as a distraction to one part of the victim while the abuse happens on another part. The mind of the victim, increasingly confused and submissive, focuses on the region where the balm is applied and shuts out the region where the abuse is taking place as a defense mechanism. With abuse and balm, applied over long periods of time in increasing fashion and in alternating turns, where the abuse is always much, much greater than the balm applied, the body and the mind of the victim, whether it be an individual or a nation, gradually weakens, becoming increasingly submissive and obedient to the will of the abuser, till a point is reached where the abuser has complete control and the victim will do anything thinking that it is good...

In the year 2020 when the world's super rich, and the regressive governments they fund, found their vast amounts of illusory wealth rapidly diminishing, panic set in among them. The problem: people were getting restless everywhere, especially the young; people believed that governments were becoming increasingly authoritarian; the respect for political parties, supreme leaders and governments was decreasing; businesses that fund governments were finding increasing opposition from the public and were being identified as key catalysts of climate-induced damage; cannabis threatened to become legal globally. The solution: get all the authoritarian leaders and the businesses facing threat such as pharmaceuticals, medical industry and petrochemicals together; rope in the media; change the ongoing opioid and pharmaceutical drug crises to work in one's favor; attribute as many deaths as possible - from old age, pharmaceutical drug abuse and related illnesses in authoritarian countries - to a mystery virus; spread the word around; create fear in the minds of the global public; order them to confine themselves; project governments, health officials, pharma companies as heroes; harp on the necessity of these entities; sell what you can in terms of pharma drugs, medical equipment and services; use the opportunity to suppress all potential opposition to government... It was a bit like that staged Bollywood rape scene...pay goons to stage attack on heroine..hero comes and bashes the bad guys...hero wins the heart of the heroine...

Covid was created, and the symptoms associated with synthetic pharmaceutical drug abuse and related toxicity were linked to the new disease. In this name, the people were pumped with even more of the dangerous synthetic pharmaceutical drugs, and exhorted to purchase the products of the petrochemical industry, in order to give these industries a tremendous boost, in terms of wealth acquired. Then cures were touted and administered with amazing speed and energy. The hype and hysteria surrounding the increasing spread of disease changed direction, and became then the hype and hysteria of the wonderful cure that had been created. Once the dust cleared, it was evident who profited the most from this entire exercise. The composition of the super rich changed as predators moved in to seize the opportunity and eat up the weak among them. It took two years for the world to break free from this global abuse. By then the world's richest had more than doubled their wealth, and almost 5 billion humans had become poorer...The people of the world blindly believed what the rulers said, and willingly submitted themselves to this massive crime of unprecedented scale.

With the false, all one needs to do is to sit back and wait for the move that makes it one false move too many, cutting off the limb that they have worked themselves out onto. No action from one's side is required. Through the Covid pandemic orchestrated to tighten control over the world, the world's authoritarians had, unwittingly, developed a beautiful mechanism through which it became clear for all the people of the world to see who they truly are. China was, hilariously, way out of the charts itself when it came to declaring those killed by the so-called pandemic. The US, Brazil and India were 1st, 2nd and 3rd on the official charts with India fast moving to the official number one spot, reflecting its authoritarian government's unquenchable thirst for money, power and control. Russia, Britain, the EU, Turkey - all authoritarian governments with chronic elite supremacist complexes and long histories of using their people as fodder to fuel their ambitions of world domination - made up the rest of the top rankers. Within India, the states in which authoritarian government held power and influence got the top rankings - Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu...Wasn't this Covid thing a beauty? The authoritarian government measurement tool par excellence...out on a limb, they could not stop sawing it off for fear of facing the truth that is their falsehood...the prize awaited the winners...

Then came the vaccine comedy...To market a house cleaning product as good, one of the things to ensure is that one's own house is clean. This applies to vaccines as well. You could not stake a strong claim for anti-Covid medicine sitting on top of the global Covid mortality charts. This was not the Olympics. To strengthen your claim, you needed to get off the charts. The Chinese did it fast, in and out in a flash, setting off the global vaccine race. France, Germany, Turkey and Iran then did it. Spain, Italy and UK started doing it, replacing their positions with Peru and Chile. The UK staked its claim to the magic vaccine. The US, Brazil, and India, sitting pretty on top of the Covid mortality charts, were starting to resemble sitting ducks. Their hydroxychloroquine gambit seemed to have failed, a move too fast too soon, even though their leaders continued to promote it by self medicating. They needed to slide off the charts, but it was not so easy to start going down suddenly when you had created upward momentum to exaggerate the hoax. And also, especially with China supplying the test kits, medicines and PPEs. The Chinese appear to have played masterfully, winning both at home, with all dissent quelled, and abroad, selling its Covid products...the old one two, eh Xi? Everybody else was playing catch up now trying to secure vaccine rights. Which pharma promised the biggest cash prize? WHO was refereeing. All had achieved the primary goal of stunning and tightening control over the restless public..for the time being at least...

Magicians use sleight of hand, optical illusions and distractions to do what appears to be magic and make you joyfully part with your money. Charlatans also use sleight of hand, distractions and optical illusions to make you part, not very joyfully though, with your money. Some of the common tricks used by charlatans are - bumping against you and relieving you of your purse while your mind is focused on the point of impact, one person drawing your attention while the other fills an incorrect amount of fuel at a fuel station, etc. These are small tricks. On a larger scale you have an entire nation watching a satellite launch while a state is locked down and bifurcated into two. On a truly global scale you have the entire world's attention brought to watch old people dying everyday from old age, pharmaceutical drugs and their related illnesses, convincing all that it is because of a dreadful virus and making them willingly confine themselves, while authoritarian governments and their friends go about their looting without any opposition and without having to use the slightest force..now isn't that one of the better magic tricks you've ever seen?

Eventually, after two years, the public started feeling the strain of the hoax. People started to resist the mass hypnotism of Covid and its cures. South Africa belled the cat when it said that none of the vaccines were working against a virus strain that had been discovered there. People everywhere wanted to get on with their lives, and the threat of mass rebellion against all the governments of the world increased by the day. Finally governments decided that they needed to put an end to the charade or face mass retaliation. It was declared that the omicron variant of Covid was resistant to all vaccines, and that the whole exercise was useless. Only China flogged the horse a little longer. By this time, all the goals of the perpetrators of the Covid hoax had been met. They could start looking for another way to milk the world's people into parting with their money. There was always the good old foolproof recipe - war.

Having tasted the wine of enforced control, governments and the rich masters that they serve, now tried to spark new demand by lighting up the minds of the billions that were feeling the strain of anxiety and repressed anger. Huge stockpiles of armaments that some nations had hoarded over the recent years remained unused. The arms industries - the masters of war - looked at an uncertain immediate future with no nation likely to openly brag about its sale and purchase of weapons of death during the Covid farce. The arms industry had been left out of the Covid feeding frenzy that enabled pharmaceutical and petrochemical industries make a pile. Had sufficient humans in the form of cannon fodder been primed now to unleash the adventures of war and death once again? Could humans who faced hunger and starvation and the threat of prison now be convinced to take up arms against those of their neighbours who also faced a similar state of mind? Could the regressive governments, finding their popularity eroding, now create further distraction by projecting themselves as not only the saviors against contagion, but also saviors against the disease of people who are not willing to toe their line, within their own borders and without? Creating of further demand and supply in the weapons of war and its usage on the masses was the next step of blind and foolish men intoxicated with power, armed to the teeth and looking at the frightening prospect of rapidly declining wealth and popularity...Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Hamas triggered a war in the Middle East in 2023 that is spreading out like ripples across Middle East Asia. China readies to inflame Far East Asia with its increasing pressure on Taiwan...Brace up for the next card to be dealt by the politician, and his friends, against the people of the world...There are enough people in this world to fall victim to this age-old trick played by politicians. As Leo Tolstoy writes in The Kingdom of God and other Peace Essays, 'Both those in authority and their subordinates, though they explain the motives of their conduct differently, agree that they act as they do because the existing order is just the order that must and should exist at the present time, and that to support it is therefore each man's sacred duty. On this acceptance of the necessity and therefore the immutability of the existing order rests also the argument by which those who take part in governmental violence always justify themselves. They say that as the existing order is immutable, the refusal of some one individual to fulfill the duties laid upon him has no real influence on things, but only means that his place will be taken by someone else who may do worse than he; that is, exercise more cruelty and do more harm to the victims. It is this conviction that the existing order is a necessary and therefore immutable order, to support which is the sacred duty of every man, that makes it possible for good men, of high principles in private life, to take part with more or less untroubled conscience in affairs such as that committed in Orel, and that which the men in the Tula train were going to perpetrate.'

The impact of politicians on the people

What is the result of this prolonged political decadence on the people of the world? Some of the results are: increased corruption and crime in society; political exhaustion of the people; fear; despotism; inability to differentiate fact from fiction; hypocrisy as a way of life; bullying by the dominant class or caste of the weaker classes and castes; widening of gap between the rich and poor...

The people have no one else to blame but themselves for the state that we are in. Giving away our power to decide who will gain power over us to the worst possible human, and raising the most dangerous greed for material wealth as the number one human virtue to be pursued by society, we have put ourselves in this situation. As Emerson says in Power, Emerson The Writings of America's Sage, 'The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power. It is the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to blind the beholder.' As he further says 'The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is - Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men at all times, and even in heroes in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity, custom and fear. This gives force to the strong-that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.' The political exhaustion that the people experience after having gone through repeated cycles of blind faith and deception, leaves them looking at elections as just another mindless exercise. Often, instead of trying to bring about far-reaching and permanent change to the corrupt political system, they will just try and choose what they perceive to be lesser of the evils before them, choosing a candidate who will ensure that the worst do not come back to power. This of course is no solution at all to the problem, because the one perceived to be the lesser of the two evils is, in fact, hand in hand with the person being rejected. Once in power, the so-called lesser of the two evils will pick up where the former left off. Hunter Thompson says 'After five and a half years of watching a gang of fascist thugs treating the White House and the whole machinery of the federal government like a conquered empire to be used like the spoils of war for any purpose that served either the needs or whims of the victors, the prospect of some harmless, half-bright jock like Ford running a cautious, caretaker-style government for two or even six years was almost a welcome relief. Not even the ominous sight of Vice President Nelson Rockefeller hovering a heartbeat away from the presidency had much effect on my head. After more than ten years of civil war with the White House and all the swine who either lived or worked there, I was ready to give the benefit of the doubt to almost any president who acted half human and had enough sense not to walk around in public wearing a swastika armband.' He further writes that 'Let's face it, Bubba. The main reason I'll vote for Clinton is George Bush, and it has been that way from the start...There is no way around it (for me) and no reason to apologize for it. George Bush is a dangerously failed President and a half-bright top-level Nerd who has spent the last four years avoiding grocery stores and gas stations while he tried to keep tabs on the disastrous fallout from the orgy of greed and short selling that was the "Reagan Revolution."' Thoreau writes regarding this in his essay, Civil Disobedience - 'I hear of a convention to be held in Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors and men who are politicians by profession; but, I think, what is it to any independent, intelligent, and respectable man what decision they may come to? Shall we not have the advantage of his wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? Can we not count upon some independent votes? Are there not many individuals in the country who do not attend conventions? But no; I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected as the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought. O for a man who is a man and, as my neighbour says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through!' Hunter Thompson writes about the exhaustion of the people with elections, saying 'The only people who seen genuinely interested in the '72 elections are the actual participants - the various candidates, their paid staff people, the thousands of journalists, cameramen & other media-connected hustlers who will spend most of this year humping the campaign along...and of course all the sponsors, called "fat cats" in the language of New-Politics, who stand to gain hugely for at least the next four years if they can muscle their man down the homestretch just a hair ahead of the others.' Regarding the naivete of the public, and the ease with each can be fooled, Herman Hesse writes that 'You see, I haven't much to say to most of my German correspondents. Certain things are very much the same as at the end of the First World War, and besides, I have grown older and more suspicious. Just as today all my German friends are united in their condemnation of Hitler, so then, in the early days of the German Republic, they were united in condemning militarism, war, and violence. They all fraternized, a little late but very effusively, with us opponents of the war; Gandhi and Rolland were revered almost as saints. The slogan of the day was 'Nie wieder Krieg!' ('No more war!'). But only a few years later Hitler was able to risk his Munich Putsch.'

The despair and exhaustion of the people means that they are now weak and desperate enough to do anything that the ruling classes require of them. It becomes a case of complete capitulation. The people are ready to even die for the ruling class because there is not much else that can be done. This is when the people are primed to be used as cannon fodder and ammunition in war. Leo Tolstoy writes that 'All the injustice and cruelties customary in present-day life have become habitual only because there are men always ready to carry out these injustices and cruelties. If it were not for them there would not only be no one to wreak violence on those immense masses of oppressed people, but those who issued the orders would never venture to do so, and would not even dare to dream of the sentences they now confidently pass.' The people willingly volunteer themselves to be the weapons of the state against their very own people. Patriotism, mass hypnotism, religion, hypocrisy and sheer poverty drive many from the weakened classes to become the thugs of the ruling classes. Leo Tolstoy says that 'Often when I see not only the levies of recruits, the military exercises and the manoeuvres, but also the policemen with loaded revolvers and the sentries with rifles and fixed bayonets, when for whole days at a time I hear (as I do in the Khamovniki where I live) the whistling and rattle of bullets as they hit the target; and when I see in the city (where any attempt at violence in self-defence is suppressed, where the sale of drugs and ammunition is prohibited, and where rapid driving and treatment by an unlicenced doctor is forbidden) thousands of disciplined men trained to murder and subject to one man's will, I ask myself: How can people who value their safety quietly allow and put up with this? Apart from its harmfulness and immorality, nothing can be more dangerous. What are men - I do not speak of Christians, ministers of religion, humanitarians, and moralists, but simply men who value their own lives, safety, and welfare - what are they thinking about? For this organization will act in the same way in whomsoever's hands it may be.' The drop in human values is so low that they are now no more than the animals that Carl Jung spoke about in his psychoanalysis of the common man. Tolstoy writes about this drop in human values when he says 'Men of our time, availing themselves of the order of things maintained by violence, and at the same time protesting that they love their neigbours very much, and who do not notice that they are doing evil to their neighbours all the time, are like a man who, after a life of robbery, when at last caught with lifted knife in the act of striking a victim who is frantically crying for help, should declare that he did not know that what he was doing was unpleasant to the man he had robbed and was just about to kill. As that robber and murderer could not deny what was evident to everyone, so it would seem impossible for men of our time, living on the sufferings of the oppressed classes, to persuade themselves and others that they desire the welfare of those whom they unceasingly plunder, and that they do not know how the advantages they enjoy are obtained.'

With the older sections of the electorate it is a problem of mental exhaustion and imbecility that prompts them to choose the candidate that they finally do. With the millions of young voters who enter the political arena for the first time in each elections, it is the naivete that makes them choose who they choose. The youth vote is easily swayed by the image doctoring of the politician, even as the older sections of the population get wise to these shenanigans of the charlatans...

A look at some politicians

Past politicians who went out of the way to get cannabis outlawed and launched a massive global war on cannabis include Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Current politicians doing all they can to keep cannabis illegal include Vladimir Putin of Russia,  Joe Biden of US, Xi Jinping of China, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel,  Boris Johnson (now out) of UK  and Narendra Modi of India . These politicians have been complicit with big businesses and waged the war on cannabis through international bodies such as the UN and WHO. Other leaders have come into the public spotlight through their brutal action on drugs such as Rodrigo Duterte of Philippines and Jair Bolsanaro of Brazil , and also in places like Bangladesh, Indonesia, Singapore and Sri Lanka. In addition to these politicians are the leaders of the petrochemical countries, the heroin countries and the arms supplying and arms purchasing countries specifically Iran, UAE and Saudi Arabia. A number of politicians are showing their dual nature, flattering to deceive, such as Thailand, Mexico, South Korea, Malaysia, Australia, Lebanon, Ghana, Spain, New Zealand and Colombia.

For all the above listed politicians, economic and military power and the resulting personal wealth seem to be the motivating factor rather than the well being of the lives and the world that they are supposed to represent. 

 

Let us examine the lives of some of the politicians to see what they are all about. In terms of specific politicians I have chosen mostly US presidents - past and present - since the US government was, almost single-handedly, responsible for bringing about global cannabis prohibition, and it still continues to resist cannabis legalization - both nationally and internationally - with its hypocritical political leaders doing what they do best - getting rich and making their friends rich - while putting on a show of being champions of universal human ideals. I look at Richard Nixon, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and the current president Joe Biden. They are from both Republican and Democratic parties but the concept of a party is chimera, the nature of the politician is uniform. I will also look at the current Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, to show that the political hypocrite and cheat is not only American, but everywhere in the world, in almost every single country of the world...There are innumerable other politicians, almost every politician that took the responsibility of being the leader of the people...To list them out would need probably hundreds of pages...Everywhere cannabis prohibition was brought about because the politician's masters wanted it to be so...Everywhere cannabis remains prohibited because these politicians continue to work for their masters, rather than the people that they were elected to serve...

Richard Nixon

Possibly no other politician has been responsible for global cannabis prohibition as much as Richard Nixon has been. Even as Timothy Leary moved the US Supreme Court to remove cannabis from the list of prohibited drugs as a constitutional violation, Nixon created the 1971 Controlled Substances Act with cannabis in the most severe Schedule I. There it remains for 53 years now. Regarding this, Leafly reports that 'In 1965, Timothy Leary (who would go on to be an advocate for psychedelics) was arrested for possession of cannabis while crossing the border from Mexico into Texas. Leary argued that the Marihuana Tax Act required him to self-incriminate—registering for the act showed intent to possess marijuana, which would violate the fifth amendment. The US Supreme Court agreed with him in 1969 and struck down the Marihuana Tax Act. However, with the loss of the Tax Act, President Richard Nixon passed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, setting up a framework for the federal regulation and criminalization of drugs. The Controlled Substances Act created five categories of drugs and classified cannabis under Schedule I—drugs considered dangerous with no medical use and a high potential for abuse, such as heroin and cocaine. Nixon appointed former Pennsylvania Republican governor Raymond Shafer as the head of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse—later called “The Shafer Commission”—to review all research and literature on cannabis to correctly classify it in the Controlled Substances Act. Shafer’s 1972 report debunked damaging myths about marijuana, found that the plant did not threaten society, and recommended decriminalizing the plant. Nixon ignored the report, and the plant stayed on Schedule I, where it remains today.' Not only did Nixon add form, structure and venom to the war against cannabis in the US, he also launched the global war on drugs - essentially a war on cannabis - by getting the US government to coerce other nations world wide to create similar controlled substances lists, and a war on drugs, with cannabis as the central focus. All US presidents since Nixon have continued the war, irrespective of the party that they belonged to.

It is no wonder that Hunter S Thompson considered Nixon the worst politician ever, saying that if it were not for Nixon, he would never have gotten interested in politics. Hunter Thompson wanted to be on the Enemies of the White House list so badly, that he considered it an affront to him when his name did not appear in the list that was published...Nixon had it all. Regarding his steps taken to concentrate power, Hunter Thompson writes - 'The possibility that even some of the justices The Boss himself had appointed to the court might not cheerfully endorse a concept of presidential immunity that mocked both the U.S. Constitution and the Magna Carta had apparently been considered for a moment and then written off as too farfetched and crazy even to worry about by all of Nixon's personal strategists. It is still a little difficult to believe, in fact, that some of the closest advisers to the president of a constitutional democracy in the year nineteen-hundred and seventy-four might actually expect the highest court in any constitutional democracy to crank up what is possibly the most discredited precedent in the history of Anglo-American jurisprudence - the "divine right of kings" - in order to legalize the notion that a president of the United States or any other would-be democracy is above and beyond "the law." That Nixon and his personal gestapo actually believed this could happen is a measure of the insanity quotient of the people Nixon took down in the bunker with him when he knew the time had come to get serious.' Regarding Nixon's violation of the maxim of Unity among Thieves, Hunter Thompson writes - 'Cheap-shot artists don't last very long in pro football. To cripple another person intentionally is to violate the same kind of code as the legendary "honor among thieves." More linebackers than thieves believe this, but when it comes to politics - to a twenty-eight-year career of cheap shots, lies, and thievery - there is no man in America who should understand what is happening to him now better than Richard Milhous Nixon. He is a living monument to the old army rule that says: "The only real crime is getting caught."' On this he further writes 'Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing - a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family.' Regarding Nixon's nature, Hunter Thompson writes - '...and it is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie doll president, with his Barbie doll wife and his box of Barbie doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts, on nights when the moon comes too close...' On Nixon's nature, Thompson further writes - 'Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man - evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him - except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.' He says 'Nixon's meteoric rise from the unemployment line to the vice presidency in six quick years would never have happened if TV had come along ten years earlier. He got away with his sleazy "my dog Checkers" speech in 1952 because most voters heard it on the radio or read about it in the headlines of their local, Republican newspapers. When Nixon finally had to face the TV cameras for real in the 1960 presidential campaign debates, he got whipped like a red-headed mule. Even die-hard Republican voters were shocked by his cruel and incompetent persona. Interestingly, most people who heard about those debates on the radio thought Nixon had won. But the mushrooming TV audience saw him as a truthless used-car salesman, and they voted accordingly. It was the first time in fourteen years that Nixon lost an election. When he arrived in the White House as VP at the age of forty, he was a smart young man on the rise - a hubris-crazed monster from the bowels of the American dream with a heart full of hate and an overweening lust to be president. He had won every office he'd run for and stomped like a Nazi on all of his enemies and even some of his friends.'  Regarding Nixon's hatred for the other, Thompson says 'The main thing he feared in his life - even worse than the Queers and Jews and Mutants - was people who might run amok; he called them "loose cannons on the deck," and he wanted them all put to sleep.' Regarding his opinion that Richard Nixon was the worst US president ever, Hunter Thompson writes - 'No other president in American history has been driven out of the White House in a cloud of disgrace. No other president has been forced to preside over the degrading collapse of his own administration or been forced to stand aside and watch helplessly - and also guiltily - while some of his close friends and ranking assistants are led off to jail. And finally, no president of the United States has ever been so vulnerable to criminal prosecution, so menaced by the threat of indictment and trial, crouched in the dock of a federal courtroom and so obviously headed for prison that only the sudden grant of presidential pardon from the man he appointed to succeed him could prevent his final humiliation.' Regarding Nixon's egocentricity and self-obsession, Hunter Thompson writes - 'According to Butterfield, Nixon was so obsessed with recording every move and moment of his presidency for the history books that he often seemed to be thinking of nothing else. When he walked from the White House to his office in the Executive Office Building (EOB), for instance, he would carry a small tape recorder in front of his mouth and maintain a steady conversation with it as he moved in his stiff-legged way across the lawn...And although we will never hear those tapes, the mere fact that he was constantly making them, for reasons of his own, confirms Alex Butterfield's observation that Richard Nixon was so bewitched with the fact that he really was the president that his only sense of himself in that job came from the moments he could somehow record and squirrel away in some safe place, for tomorrow night or the ages. There is a bleeding kind of irony in this unnatural obsession of Nixon with his place in history when you realize what must have happened in his mind when he finally realized, probably sometime in those last few days of his doomed presidency, just exactly what kind of place in history was even then being carved out for him.' Regarding Nixon's use of war as a tool for suppression both internally and externally, Hunter Thompson writes - 'Nixon was no more a Saint than he was a Great President. He was more Sammy Glick than Winston Churchill. He was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal who bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II, and he denied it to the day of his death. When students at Kent State University, in Ohio, protested the bombing, he connived to have them attacked and slain by troops from the National Guard.' Nixon's hypocrisy is evident when Hunter Thompson says - 'They were all scum, but only Nixon walked free and lived to clear his name. Or at least that's what Bill Clinton says - and he is, after all, the president of the United States. Nixon liked to remind people of that. He believed it, and that was why he went down. He was not only a crook but a fool. Two years after he quit, he told a TV journalist that "if the president does it, it can't be illegal."' Regarding Nixon's greed, Hunter Thompson writes - 'So...what we are looking at here is a millionaire ex-president and admitted felon: a congenital thief and pathological liar who spent twenty-eight years on the public sugar tit and then quit just in time to avoid the axe. If he had fought to the bitter end, as he'd promised Julie he would "as long as even one senator believes in me," he risked losing about 95 percent of the $400,000 annual allowance he became qualified for under the "Former Presidents Act" by resigning...But a president who gets impeached, convicted, and dragged out of the White House by U.S. marshals is not covered by any Former Presidents Act. If Nixon had fought to the end and lost - which had become absolutely inevitable by the time he resigned - he would have forfeited all but about $15,000 a year from the federal dole...So, in retrospect, the reason he quit is as easy to see as the numbers on his personal balance sheet. The difference between resignation and being kicked out of office was about $385,000 a year for the rest of his life. Most of this annual largesse will come, one way or another, out of the pockets of the taxpayers. All of the taxpayers.' About the damage that Nixon caused to the people, Thompson writes 'He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.' Regarding the way that Nixon went down, Thompson writes - 'The Nixon presidency never really had time to crumble, except in hazy retrospect...In reality, it disintegrated, with all the speed and violence of some flimsy and long-abandoned gazebo suddenly blasted to splinters by chain lightning.' And that is generally how all these politicians who think that they are god disappear suddenly one fine day, just when they think that they are invincible.

George Bush(s)

The father-son duo of George Bush(s) continued where, following Nixon, Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy Reagan left off the war on drugs with their Just Say No campaigns. The Bush(s) started a full-fledged war in the Middle East, calling it a War Against Terrorism, when in fact it was just a way to distract the American public from their ineptitude, and a way to help their friends in the petrochemical and construction industries. The actions of the Bush(s) has resulted in 40 years of hatred against Islam, and has reduced the Middle East to shambles, from where another war, on a much larger scale now threatens to erupt. Regarding George Bush Jr., Hunter Thompson writes - 'Presidential politics is a vicious business, even for rich white men, and anybody who gets into it should be prepared to grapple with the meanest of the mean. The White House has never been seized by timid warriors. There are no rules, and the roadside is littered with wreckage. That is why they call it the passing lane. Just ask any candidate who ever ran against George Bush - Al Gore, Ann Richards, John McCain - all of them ambushed and vanquished by lies and dirty tricks. And all of them still whining about it. That is why George W. Bush is president of the United States, and Al Gore is not. Bush simply wanted it more, and he was willing to demolish anything that got in his way, including the U.S. Supreme Court. It is not by accident that the Bush White House (read: Dick Cheney & Halliburton Inc.) controls all three branches of our federal government today. They are powerful thugs who would far rather die than lose the election in November. The Republican establishment is haunted by painful memories of what happened to Old Man Bush in 1992. He peaked too early and he had no response to "It's the economy, stupid." Which has always been the case. Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the military-industrial complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous "trickle-down" theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow "trickle-down" to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote.' Regarding the seizure of power by George Bush Jr., Hunter Thompson writes - 'I look at elections with the cool and dispassionate gaze of a professional gambler, especially when I'm betting real money on the outcome. Contrary to most conventional wisdom. I see Kerry with 5 points as a recommended risk. Kerry will win this election, if it happens, by a bigger margin than Bush finally gouged out of Florida in 2000. That was about 46 percent, plus 5 points for owning the U.S. Supreme Court - which seemed to equal 51 percent. Nobody really believed that, but George W. Bush moved into the White House anyway. It was the most brutal seizure of power since Hitler burned the German Reichstag in 1933 and declared himself the new Boss of Germany. Karl Rove is no stranger to Nazi strategy, if only because it worked, for a while, and it was sure as hell fun for Hitler. But not for long. He ran out of oil, the whole world hated him, and he liked to gobble pure crystal hiphetamine and stay awake for eight or nine days in a row with his maps & his bombers & his dope-addled general staff. They all loved the whiff. It is the perfect drug for War - as long as you are winning - and Hitler thought that he was King of the Hill forever. He had created a new master race, and every one of them worshipped him. The new Hitler Youth loved to march and sing songs in unison and dance naked at night for the generals. They were fanatics. That was sixty-six years ago, far back in ancient history, and things are not much different today. We still love War. George Bush certainly does. In four short years, he has turned our country from a prosperous nation at peace into a desperately indebted nation at war. But so what? He is the president of the United States and you're not. Love it or leave it.' Regarding the eventual demise of George Bust Jr., Hunter Thompson writes - 'Armageddon came early for George Bush this year, and he was not ready for it. His long-awaited showdown with my man John Kerry turned into a series of horrible embarrassments that cracked his nerve and demoralized his closest campaign advisers. They knew he would never recover, no matter how many votes they could steal for him in Florida, where the presidential debates were closely watched and widely celebrated by millions of Kerry supporters who suddenly had reason to feel like winners. Kerry came into October as a five-point underdog with almost no chance of winning three out of three rigged confrontations with a treacherous little freak like George Bush. But the debates are over now, and the victor was clearly John Kerry every time. He steamrolled Bush and left him for roadkill. Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all. The tide turned early, in Coral Gables, when Bush went belly up less than halfway through his first bout with Kerry, who hammered poor George into jelly. It was pitiful...I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him "Mister President," and then I felt ashamed.' Regarding his opinion of George Bush Jr., and why he would not vote for him, Hunter Thompson wrote, referring to a newspaper article that had appeared - 'KERRY WINS GONZO ENDORSEMENT: DR. THOMPSON JOINS DEMOCRAT IN CALLING BUSH "THE SYPHILIS PRESIDENT"- "Four more years of George Bush will be like four more years of syphilis," the famed author said yesterday at a hastily called press conference near his home in Woody Creek, Colorado. "Only a fool or a sucker would vote for a dangerous loser like Bush," Dr. Thompson warned. "He hates everything we stand for, and he knows we will vote against him in November." "I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago," he said, "and I will do everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat hammer, to help him be the next president of the United States." Which is true; I said all those things, and I will say them again. Of course I will vote for John Kerry. I have known him for thirty years as a good man with a brave heart - which is more than even the president's friends will tell you about George W. Bush, who is also an old acquaintance from the white-knuckle days of yesteryear. He is hated all over the world, including large parts of Texas, and he is taking us all down with him. Bush is a natural born loser with a filthy rich daddy who pimped his son out to rich oilmongers. He hates music, football, and sex, in no particular order, and he is no fun at all.'

Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton, the Democratic candidate, was the person that Americans voted for as US president after they had had enough of the George Bush(s), and what the father-son duo had done to not just the country, but the whole world, as a part of their job working for their masters in the petrochemical and construction industries. Bill Clinton was elected by an exhausted nation, not because he was a remarkable leader, but because in comparison to the Bush(s) he appeared to be the lesser of the two evils. Hunter Thompson himself voted for Bill Clinton but later wrote - 'Ah, but we are not talking about Joey Buttafuoco here. We are talking about William Jefferson Clinton from Hope, Arkansas, the forty-second president of the U.S.A. Try a booming 73 percent approval rating in the polls, Bubba - up from 51 percent before the Sex Scandal. That's not a bad bump on the charts for a lame-duck, degenerate president with a minority in both houses of Congress and a whole raft of sex-related lawsuits on his hands from women who may or may not be claiming that they were preyed upon by a brute worse than Hermann Goering or even Benjamin Franklin.'

Donald Trump

After some more experiments with Democratic candidates like Barack Obama, the US public decided that they wanted another Republican as their president. They chose Donald Trump, an industrialist and businessman who exemplified everything that was degenerate about upper class America. Trump gave America Covid, as a gift which he and his friends - Xi, Putin, Johnson and Modi - had together devised as a means to suppress dissent and to boost the synthetic pharmaceutical and petrochemical industries that backed them. Trump openly showed the upper class American's hatred for cannabis, even as he vied to upstage Nixon, Reagan and the Bush(s) as the worst president of the US ever. Vice reports that 'Trump’s remarks about the causal relationship between weed and IQ are disputed by one of his own governmental agencies, the National Institute of Drug Abuse. “Recent results from two prospective longitudinal twin studies did not support a causal relationship between marijuana use and IQ loss,” NIDA says on its website. “No predictable difference was found between twins when one used marijuana and one did not.”' Marijuana Moment reports that 'President Trump on Monday urged Republicans not to place marijuana legalization initiatives on state ballots out of concern that it will increase Democratic turnout in elections. The president, who has rarely weighed in on cannabis policy without being prompted, said in extemporaneous remarks at a campaign event that he blames marijuana legalization efforts on former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) defeat in the 2018 election.' Trump got booted out by the US public but prepares himself to run for the US president again in 2024, banking on the hopes of like-minded imbeciles and bigots among the public, even as he is facing an onslaught of sexual misdemeanor and criminal misconduct cases. As I write this, he appears to be the Republican front-runner for US presidency. Good luck with that, US of A...

Joe Biden

After the trauma caused by the Trump presidency, the exhausted people of the US of A once again decided that they wanted anybody but Trump. So they chose the lesser of the two evils once again, Joe Biden. Biden was responsible for setting up the office of the Drug Czar, an office entirely dedicated to the war on drugs, especially cannabis. Despite an overwhelming majority of the US being in favor of federal cannabis legalization, they still voted for this arch-enemy of cannabis who they thought might have now changed his view point. To think that a semi-senile octogenarian would have changed his way of thinking shows the imbecility and desperation of the American public. Biden displayed his hypocrisy and lust for power, when he and his co-president Kamala Harris made all the right noises regarding cannabis, lulling the people into thinking that they would reform federal cannabis laws. Even though there were many more competent candidates among the Democrats, they were weeded out to leave Biden and Harris. This was most likely done at the behest of the petrochemical, synthetic pharmaceutical, construction and arms industries who control American politics, irrespective of which party a politician belongs to. Biden, as US president, was the best option for these opponents to cannabis, since he would at least slow down the push towards cannabis legalization, and delay it till these opponents of cannabis found a more suitable candidate to serve them. And Biden has done just that in the years that he has taken over from Donald Trump. Marijuana Moment reports that 'Though Biden has come around to the idea of removing criminal penalties for marijuana possession, and he is now advocating for clearing the records of those who’ve been punished for such crimes, his longstanding record of opposing reform and embracing punitive drug policies leave questions about what actions he’d be willing to take concerning the issue if elected to the Oval Office. He remains out of step with the majority of his party on the question of legalization, and it doesn’t seem likely that cannabis reform would be at the top of his agenda if elected. That said, his recent pivot in favor of decriminalization and medical cannabis legalization indicates that he recognizes that a tough-on-crime approach to drugs is no longer politically acceptable to voters in his party and signals that further evolution in his position on cannabis is possible.' Reporting on Biden's, and his vice-president Kamala Harris's, hypocrisy and anti-cannabis bias, Boston Herald reports that 'Assured by transition staff that Biden’s team was more understanding of recreational marijuana use than past White Houses have been, young staffers had disclosed marijuana use in documents which were part of their lengthy background checks, something standard for employees at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. But some of those same staffers were disappointed and frustrated when they were later suspended or asked to resign from their roles at the White House over long-past use of the drug. The unfairness of the apparent turnaround especially stings when Vice President Kamala Harris openly talked about past marijuana use on the campaign trail, telling radio host Charlamagne tha God she has smoked, “and I did inhale,” she added, giggling.' Marijuana Moment reports that 'President Joe Biden’s stance on marijuana legalization “has not changed,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday. Asked whether the president supports efforts by Democratic senators to end federal cannabis prohibition, Psaki said Biden “spoke about this on the campaign” and that he “believes in decriminalizing the use of marijuana, but his position has not changed” on broader reform.' Leafly reports that 'Perhaps Biden is waiting for Congress to take the lead on legalization. If so, he’ll have a chance to step up and proclaim his support for true reform soon enough. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is preparing an all-encompassing legalization bill that may be introduced later this month. It’s expected to be the next iteration of the MORE Act, which passed the House but failed in the Senate late last year. Joe Biden caused this mess years ago as a young senator who believed he was doing the right thing. But it was a mistake. His crime legislation opened America’s age of mass incarceration. He was a driving force behind civil asset forfeiture, mandatory minimum sentences, and the militarization of our police. If Schumer’s bill moves forward, President Biden will have the opportunity to correct those mistakes and atone for his misguided work. So far he has chosen not to. He’s busy, they say.' Marijuana Moment further reports that 'The reporter pushed back, noting that moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule II under the Controlled Substances Act, as Biden is proposing, wouldn’t facilitate mass clemency given that being convicted for crimes related to drugs in that slightly lower category—which currently includes cocaine—also carries significant penalties. “It addresses things moving forward, though, which is important and important to many advocates,” Psaki argued. But advocates don’t really see it that way. For one, they support descheduling marijuana entirely. But when it comes to the relationship between scheduling and sentencing, moving cannabis to Schedule II would in no way fulfill Biden’s 2019 campaign pledge, when he said, “I think everyone—anyone who has a record—should be let out of jail, their records expunged, be completely zeroed out” for marijuana convictions.' Forbes reports that 'Perhaps Joe is ten years behind the curve. It’s time to wake and smell the coffee. This is a global industry that is generating billions in revenue, employing thousands of Americans, and capturing much needed tax dollars. Not to mention, cannabis reform and equity licensing programs can perhaps begin to remedy the decades of social and racial injustices that have been perpetuated by American drug policy. As of late, equity has been at the heart of shaping cannabis legalization policy in states around the country, including Illinois and Massachusetts. And, of course, is a major tenet of the MORE Act. Get with the times, Mr. President.' Marijuana Moment reports that 'Part of the reason that advocates are monitoring each of Biden’s nominations is because skepticism prevails about how his administration will approach cannabis policy considering that the president remains opposed to legalization, and so each development sheds light on what to expect in the coming years.' The addiction of Joe Biden's son, Hunter, with cocaine is well known. It is also suspected that the father himself has a cocaine problem, but nobody wants to say that the current US president is able to move around, mainly through the use of a banned stimulant. But this might explain the reluctance of Joe Biden to legalizing cannabis, as people in the cocaine business would surely object to the move. So what if 70% of the people want cannabis legalized, and so what if 24 out of 50 US states have legalized adult recreational use, and so what if 38 US states have legalized medical use, and so what if the HHS has recommended the re-scheduling of cannabis. It is what works for the president, and his son, that matters the most. Sure, we can make some noises to show that we do care about the people enough to make sure that they re-elect us, but to legalize that evil drug of the lowest classes of society, the Hispanics, Blacks, and the hippies? You got to be kidding...Have you forgotten what Nixon, Reagan, Trump and all the others said about cannabis? Never mind what the scientists and the people say. Opioid and methamphetamine addictions can be treated with more opioids and methamphetamine, and a good dose of other synthetic pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol and cocaine, of course...That's how we upper classes handle the situation...so what is it with these whining masses that they want so much to legalize that ganja? CNN reported that '"I am damn proud of my son who overcame being addicted and he did it and he's doing it and he's in good shape, thank God," said Biden of his son Hunter. "We don't have nearly enough people involved in mental health and drug addiction services," continued Biden. "...We shouldn't be sending people to jail for use. We should be sending them to mandatory rehabilitation... they should be getting treatment while they are in jail." "We have to deal with the idea of addiction by providing for what we all know: it's a disease of the brain... and has to be treated as such," he said.' Marijuana Moment reported that 'StarTalk co-host Chuck Nice pointed out that while Biden has emphasized the need to follow the science when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, the same can’t be said with respect to his marijuana policy position. The president remains opposed to federally legalizing cannabis. [Neil Degrasse] Tyson said that makes sense “because he’s the Reefer Madness generation—that’s why, that’s why.”'

Biden's vice-president, Kamala Harris, won favor with the people because of her seemingly pro-cannabis stance during election campaigns. Finally, after she was elected, she showed her true colors, and cannabis was put on the back-burner like as if it did not even exist. Post-Gazette reports that 'A vice president has to defer to the president’s decisions on policy, but vice presidents can also help shape it. Dick Cheney pushed George W. Bush to invade Iraq, and Joe Biden gave Barack Obama a nudge to endorse same-sex marriage. Maybe Kamala Harris will convince Mr. Biden to push for legalizing marijuana. There are reasons to think so. One was her laughing reply last year when an interviewer asked if she had ever smoked cannabis: “Half my family’s from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?” Another is that as attorney general of California, she endorsed legalization of recreational weed, which the state’s voters approved in 2016.' That was a few years ago.

Narendra Modi

Finally, after a tour of the psychopaths that have held office in the US, and their war on cannabis, let us go across the world and examine another specimen. This time in the land of ganja itself, India. The land that supposedly worships Siva, the great god of ganja, is now the world's leading official producer of opium. Its leader openly works for his bosses in the petrochemical and synthetic pharmaceutical industries, and does not leave a single stone unturned when it comes to clearing the path for his masters. Ganja - the medicine, intoxicant, key agricultural crop and entheogen - of the poor, the working classes and the spiritual mendicants who make up more than 70% of the country, was prohibited by the British with the help of the Indian upper classes and upper castes that Narendra Modi seeks to protect and promote with his every action. He does this while fooling the imbecile masses with his portrayal of himself as the protector of the Hindus, the man chosen by god to bring Hinduism to its culmination under his guidance. The imbecile public are so enamored and hypnotized by his illusions that they do not see that he works to secure only his masters and himself, and that the Hinduism that he talks about is the very form of oppression by the upper classes and castes that Indians have fought to free themselves for centuries now. He has managed to get himself elected twice by the imbecile public, and now threatens another five years of torment on the people.

What makes the whole study of this politician - who exemplifies everything loathsome about the political class, and who is dearly beloved among the masses - so much fun is the theatrics he provides for the entertainment of one and all.

For example, here is a story - One day a clown erected a big statue for a great man, displacing all the local communities in the area, saying how much he revered the great man and wanted to show his admiration by building the tallest possible statue for him. After some time the clown got a stadium that was named after the great man renamed after himself. What a funny clown...what a sad nation, needing constant entertainment, it decided to crown a clown king...And that was not all...It was just the prelude to the main show...Narendra Modi believes that he is divine and that everything that he graces will be purified. Hence all the consecrations of parliament buildings, temples and stadiums. All opposing teams playing India may request the BCCI to include Narendra Modi, in his golfcart chariot doing a circumambulation of the playing field, before any game, as it appears to inspire opposition teams. There is no need to even waste money making a portrait of him before each match...Just give him a mirror to keep staring at his own mug...Modi's circumambulation of the Sardar Vallabhai Patel stadium, now renamed the Narendra Modi stadium, before the India-Australia test match was enough to inspire the Aussies, who had been down and out in the Test Series till then, to fight back and produce a draw. Not only that, in the 2023 Cricket ODI World Cup, India played its final against Australia once again, after steamrolling all opposition to reach the final. Narendra Modi's fanatical supporters had already organized elaborate post-match celebrations where their leader would appear as the divine protector under whose auspicious presence nothing could go wrong. Unfortunately, Australia once again decided that there was no better place to slay India than in front of its bloated leader and his lakhs of devotees. The same eerie silence that Indians enjoyed with glee and bragged about every time Pakistan took an Indian wicket in a previous match, was what the Aussies enjoyed as much when they sent the Indian team packing in front of the bigoted politician.

Hitler had Goebbles. Nixon had Kissinger. Bush had Cheney. Just like every despot has a man Friday, Narendra Modi has his number two - Amit Shah...Two strategies to fund his poll campaigns - demonetization and Covid; the two bosses he works for - Adani and Ambani; his two strategies to win the mindless masses - Ayodhya and Kashmir abrogation; his two favorites things - money and power; his two legacies - statues and useless toilets; his two key attributes - double speak and mass hypnotism; his two favorite enemies - Muslims and Nehru; his two biggest allies - thugs and sycophants; his two favorite drugs - opium and synthetic pharmaceuticals; his two greatest achievements - making the rich richer and destroying democracy; his two old buddies - Trump and Johnson; his two new pals - Putin and Xi; his two former loves - Sardar Vallabhai Pant and Savarkar; his two current loves - Amit Shah and another term as PM; his two servants - the people of India and the BJP...Two terms starting with showing his two ass cheeks to the nation to begin the journey of two-timing the country...If one goes down, two is sure to follow...

India's public suffers from severe attention deficiency syndrome and collective amnesia. All political crimes are forgiven and forgotten as long as it serves the interests of the elitists, upper classes and upper castes; the poor are thrown straws to clutch on...The harbinger of good days, prime minister Narendra Modi, is the most corrupt, bigoted, criminal and fascist leader - bar none - that India has ever had in its entire history, including all the Mughal rulers and the kings before them. Only a nation of fools, petty criminals and fascists - in a pharmaceutical drug stupor with delusions of caste, religious, and national superiority - would be proud of such a criminal as its leader...In most other countries, a fraction of these crimes would have seen him booted out and put behind bars a long, long time ago. As we gear up once again to re-elect this repulsive, money-thirsty and power-hungry monster, here's a list of Narendra Modi's crimes committed over the last nine years, not exhaustive and in no particular order, to jog the public memory: Kashmir abrogation; NRC-CAA; demonetization; enforcement of Aadhar resulting in poor losing out on essentials; anti-same-sex stance despite Supreme Court ruling; splurging of public funds on central vista; use of central agencies such as ED, CBI and drug enforcement to target opposition; parliament disruption to silence opposition; passing of bills in parliament without debate; Pegasus to snoop on opponents; telecom monopoly to Reliance; contracts across country to Adani ports to petrochemicals; convenient deaths of senior party members who posed leadership threat to Modi; attempt at Muslim population control; ban on loudspeaker use by mosques; weakening of Wildlife Act to enable land grab; African cheetah introduction instead of Asiatic lion protection; support for Putin in Ukraine war; close ties with and and open support for Trump; lucrative postings for judges post retirement from judiciary; Agniveer scheme to weaken army; farm laws; UP law and order nightmare; biased Ayodhya verdict; release of Bilkis Bano rapists; ban on BBC documentary on Godhra; government promotion of Kashmir Files movie; attack on Muslims with bulldozers; religious-anti-conversion bill; appointment of partisan governors in non-BJP states; governor interference in state government formation; GST disruption of small and medium businesses; MLA Rahul Gandhi disqualification; leading global arms purchaser; anti-cattle-slaughter bill; attacks on reputation of India's freedom icons; increase in wealth concentration among top 1 percent; fake pandemic Covid used to quell opposition and increase wealth of pharma and petrochemical industries; setting of 2070 target for urgent climate action; bottom of global rankings on human development, poverty, democracy, criminal justice, media freedom; promotion of Hindutva over all other religions; use of anti-sedition laws to harass political activists; media control and intimidation; attack on prominent universities for liberal ideals; labeling of all critics as anti-nationals; hijab ban; use of external loans to address budget deficits; increase in wages and pensions to personnel of all government entities; staged Pakistan attacks; non-transparent electoral bonds; MLA poaching; Dalit atrocities; citizen surveillance; doublespeak on global stage; bad loans to financial criminals; budget cuts for education and health; voter list culling to remove minorities; blocking of RTI through biased appointments and vacancies in NIC; CEC appointments that favor ruling party; attempt to rewrite history in favor of ruling dispensation; degradation of national morals and ethics with criminal prime minister as role model; financial non-accountability of political parties; criminals in parliament; unsustainable infrastructure development; communal disharmony in Manipur; consecration of Ram temple well before Lok Sabha polls EC code of conduct rules come into play; law bills that increase law enforcement involvement and chances of misuse; etc., etc.

Even though this despicable politician has been dealt numerous blows, with some significant blows being delivered by the Supreme Court, none of this has served to shake him and his supporters out of their delusion. The imbeciles have managed, in their delusion, to project the blows as achievements by their glorious leader. If Richard Nixon represented all that was dark, despicable and venal about the US of A, Narendra Modi represents all that is dark, despicable and venal about India...

What needs to be done

Given the situation that the people of the world find themselves in, with the human species facing its extinction as a result of human-induced climate catastrophe, and the greed and corruption of its leaders, it is easy to throw up our hands in despair and say that there is no hope for us. But then, to go down without a fight would be continuing to do just the thing that has led us to where we currently are. Some things are beyond our control, but some things we can still change, and hope that is gives the human species at least a new lease of life, even for a short while. That I would think is the least we can do, for the children that we continue to produce like machines, without a thought about the world that they are entering, and what they may have to face and suffer. Many claim that they accumulate wealth for the benefit of their children, the future generations. The logic of this can be seen for its hollowness, when we consider that the act of getting rich is itself rapidly diminishing the future of the children. This is in addition to the increased decadence that it nurtures in the children knowing that they have more than ample to meet their needs and even squander. It also imparts the very same value of ego-centricity by seeking to become richer, at all costs, especially at the cost of others, in the children. When we look at what we have done with a honest mind, we see that we have only worked to secure our own selfish interests at all costs, at cost to other human beings, at cost to other living species on earth, at cost to nature, and at cost to the very children we claim to love.

Can we come out of this hopeless situation that we find ourselves in? For one thing, there needs to be a complete re-vitalization of society - the substratum or soil from which these politicians emerge. For that, society has to undergo a paradigm shift in terms of its education, knowledge, values and behavior - very, very fast. Society has to recognize that what is most urgent is the value of sustainability of the human race, and that means de-prioritizing the goal of getting as rich as possible. Society must recognize that the universal human ideals are something that each of us must practice, not something that we relegate to a world outside our reality.  The accumulation of wealth beyond one's needs and wants so as to enjoy it in the future is similar to the practicing of religion so as to find paradise in the next world. There is no next world and there is also no future besides approaching death. Instead of living the universal human ideals, all persons looking to accumulate religious merit and material wealth will soon find that they are dead because they disregarded the reality of this world, and disregarded what was most important for its sustenance, instead pursuing material wealth and blindly adopting meaningless religious practices by following the steps of our deceitful and hypocritical leaders - our priests and politicians.

We need to first and foremost recognize the most urgent and potent threat facing humanity as a species, and on a broader scale, life itself on earth. We need to recognize the actions that have brought us to this point, and what, if anything, can be done to stop the disaster. What we are facing is unprecedented damage to the earth through the thriving of industries that are opposed to nature. At the root of this threat is our thinking that nature is our enemy, or at the very least our servant to work for us. The supreme truth that nature is god, and that we exist only because of nature, needs to be recognized and acknowledged. Our entire value systems need to be turned upside down. We need to recognize that to become rich, at all costs, is a sign of weakness, not strength. The rich are the weakest class of humans, insecure and greedy, thinking that the amassment of wealth will protect them from suffering and death which are the ultimate realities that all life on earth must face. Through their weakness, they perpetrate disproportionate and unimaginable harms on the rest of life on earth, increasing the suffering of others to try and lessen their own.  The strong humans, the ones who can bear disproportionate pain, who take only what is essential for them, and who work unceasingly for the ultimate goal, are suppressed and dominated by the weak - the ones who want more and more to be content. This has resulted in widespread catastrophic damage to the earth's life systems, to the well being and the health of the entire human species. All the systems that we have created, our politics and our religion, should have served the purpose of ensuring the ultimate goal of protecting nature - our mother who feeds us - and the purpose of ensuring that the weak do not dominate the strong and dictate terms.

One of the most important traits of the strong is the ability to change according to the needs of the situation, and to do what is best in any given context. In that sense, yes, the industries that carried us forward were useful, and even necessary, at a certain point in time. But they have long served their purposes, and our continued efforts to keep the existing system that has failed, and refusal to adapt to change now when it is urgently required shows our weaknesses. We need to acknowledge that the world is today wired to benefit the rich, and that this is only going to bring about catastrophe for all, very quickly.

To bring about the rewiring of the system, indeed its reconstruction, requires that the minds of the people of this world be reconnected to nature. This will enable mental and physical strength, vigor and will power to flow back out of nature and return to the people of the world. It will enable people to discern what is important and what is deceit. Through this, the people of the world can return to the adoption of the universal human values that are so essential for the preservation of nature and the protection of the human species. Through this, we can ensure a political class that is more in tune with nature, and the welfare of the people. When the soil becomes fertile again, it can provide the necessary kind of fruit bearing trees that can nourish humanity and nature. When the human population raises its level of strength, then the kind of politicians and leaders we produce can be able and competent to execute their responsibilities.

There have been very, very few politicians who seemed to have the welfare of the people as their goals. I can think of some names like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Jimmy Carter, Jawaharlal Nehru, MK Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. They were the rare exceptions in a overwhelmingly corrupt political world dominated by crooks. Even the stance of these politicians were suitable for their times, but probably hold less relevance to the needs of our current times. Some of the things we can do immediately, with relation to politics in general, are: calling out the politician; recognizing the importance of universal values, changing our public opinion of what is most important and urgent; increasing the accountability of political parties...

Calling out the politician

In terms of calling out the politician for what he really is - a glib talking hypocrite who works only for his own interests and that of his wealthy masters, with the only goal of amassing material wealth and power - let us see what various great thinkers have said. Thoreau says, in his essay on Civil Disobedience, 'No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude to a nation. They have no genius or talent for comparatively humble questions of taxation and finance, commerce, and manufactures, and agriculture. If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among nations. For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?' In terms of calling out the current politician for what he really is, we need to show the ferocity and relentlessness that Hunter Thompson showed in his battle against Richard Nixon. Writing about his disappointment in not figuring in the "Enemies of the White House" list, Thompson writes - 'I was, after all, the only accredited journalist covering the 1972 presidential campaign to compare Nixon with Adolph Hitler...I was the only one to describe him as a congenital thug, a fixer with the personal principles of a used-car salesman. And when these distasteful excesses were privately censured by the docile White House press corps, I compounded my flirtation with Bad Taste by describing the White House correspondents as a gang of lame whores & sheep without the balls to even argue with Ron Zeigler - who kept them all dancing to Nixon's bogus tune until it became suddenly fashionable to see him for the hired liar he was and has been all along. The nut of my complaint here - in addition to being left off The List - is rooted in a powerful resentment at not being recognized (not even by Zeigler) for the insults I heaped on Nixon before he was laid low. This is a matter of journalistic ethics - or perhaps even "sportsmanship" - and I take a certain pride in knowing that I kicked Nixon before he went down. Not afterward - though I plan to do that, too, as soon as possible.' Thompson further writes - 'If the current polls are reliable - and even if they aren't, the sheer size of the margin makes the numbers themselves unimportant - Nixon will be reelected by a huge majority of Americans who feel he is not only more honest and more trustworthy than George McGovern, but also more likely to end the war in Vietnam. The polls indicate that Nixon will get a comfortable majority of the Youth Vote. And that he might carry all fifty states. Well...maybe so. 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.' In terms of calling out the politician, Leo Tolstoy writes - 'When all this becomes quite evident to everybody it will be natural for men to ask themselves: "Why should we feed and maintain all these kings, emperors, presidents, and members of various chambers and ministries, since nothing comes of their meetings and talks? Would it not be better, as some humorist has said, to make an India-rubber queen?' Tolstoy further writes - 'But a time is approaching and draws near when it will become perfectly evident to everyone that these people are of no use at all but are merely a hindrance, and those whom they interfere with will say amiably and quietly, like the man in the peasant's coat: "Don't interfere with us, please!" And then all these emissaries, and those who send them, will have to follow the good advice, that is, cease to ride about with an arm akimbo hindering people, and get off their horses, doff their uniforms, listen to what is being said, and join with others in real human work.' One of the stories I love from reading Tolstoy is of an incident where an official has gone to a poor village to collect taxes that are due. In order to teach the villagers a lesson, he gathers a number of them in a large barn and commands them to start flogging each other as punishment. Out of fear, the villagers start to flog each other, while the official stands back and looks on with satisfaction. Suddenly, one of the villagers throws down his weapon and refuses to continue the punishment. Seeing him the others soon stop as well. They realize that it is they who are inflicting the punishment on themselves, and that if they decide together not to act upon the words of the official, he is powerless...

Recognizing the importance of universal human values

In terms of recognizing the importance of universal human values, and the way in which the existing system prevents the progress towards, and achievement of these values, Emerson, in his essay on Politics, says 'We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tributes to governments founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment and a sufficient belief in the unity of things, to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable and a good neighbour, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation. What is strange too, there never was in any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the State on the principle of right and love. All those who have pretended this design have been partial reformers, and have admitted in some manner the supremacy of the bad State.' Leo Tolstoy writes 'Those who do violence (that is, those who take part in government) and those who profit by violence (that is, the rich) no longer represent as used to be the case the flower of our society and the ideal of all human well-being and grandeur towards which all the violated used formerly to strive. Now very often the oppressed do not strive to gain the position of the oppressors or try to imitate them. On the contrary, users of violence often voluntarily renounce the advantages of their position, choose the condition of the oppressed, and try to resemble them in the simplicity of their life. Not to speak of the now openly despised duties and occupations - such as those of spies, agents of the secret police, usurers, and publicans - a large number of professions held by users of violence, which used to be considered honourable (such as those of police officials, courtiers, officers of the law, administrative functionaries, the clergy, the military, the monopolists and bankers) are no longer accounted honourable by everyone, but are even condemned by a certain much respected section of people. There are already people who voluntarily abandon these positions which were once accounted irreproachable, and prefer less advantageous positions not connected with violence.' Tolstoy writes that 'The condition of Christian humanity, with its fortresses, cannon, dynamite, rifles, torpedoes, prisons, gallows, churches, factories, custom-house and palaces, is really terrible. But neither the fortresses nor the cannon nor the rifles will attack anyone of themselves, the prisons will not of themselves lock anyone up, the gallows will not of themselves hang anyone, nor will the churches delude anyone or the custom-houses hold anyone back, and the palaces and factories do not build themselves or maintain themselves. All this is done by people. And if they once understand that there is no necessity for all these things, these things will disappear. And men already begin to understand. If they do not all understand, the leaders among them do - those whom the rest will follow. And what the leaders have once understood they cannot possibly cease to understand. And what the leaders have understood the rest of mankind not only can, but inevitably must, understand too.' Tolstoy further says 'If people tell you that all this is necessary for the maintenance of the existing order of life and that this social order, with its destitution, hunger, prisons, executions, armies and wars, is necessary for society, that still more miseries will ensue were that organization infringed; all that is said only by those who profit by such an organization. Those who suffer from it - and  they are ten times as numerous - all think and say the contrary. And in the depth of your soul you yourself know it is untrue, you know that the existing organization of life has outlived its time and must inevitably be reconstructed on new principles, and that therefore there is no need to sacrifice all human feeling to maintain it.' Emerson says 'For, according to the order of nature, which is quite superior to our will, it stands thus; there will always be a government of force where men are selfish; and when they are pure enough to abjure the code of force they will be wise enough to see how these public ends of the post-office, of the highway, of commerce and the exchange of property, of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and science can be answered.' Tolstoy says 'The abolition of the organization of government formed to do violence does not at all involve the abolition of what is reasonable and good, and therefore not based on violence, in laws or law courts, or in property, or in police regulations, or in financial arrangements, or in popular education. On the contrary, the absence of the brutal power of government which is needed only for its own support, will facilitate a more just and reasonable social organization, needing no violence. Courts of justice, and public affairs, and popular education, will all exist to the extent to which they are really needed by the people, but in a form which will not involve the evils contained in the present form of government. Only that will be destroyed which was evil and hindered the free expression of the people's will.'

Changing public opinion

On the power of public opinion, Leo Tolstoy writes - 'The power of the governments rests on public opinion and possessing power they can always support the sort of public opinion they require by their whole organization, officials, law courts, schools, the Church, and even the Press. Public opinion produces power , power produces public opinion; and it seems as if there were no escape from this position. And that would really be the case if public opinion were something fixed and unchanging and if governments could always produce the public opinion they desired. But fortunately that is not so. In the first place, public opinion is not something constant, unchanging and stagnant, but on the contrary is something continually changing and moving with the movement of mankind. And secondly, public opinion not only cannot be produced at will by governments, but is what produces governments and gives or deprives them of power.' He further writes - 'But yet in these apparently unimportant actions - in our indicating to the extent of our powers the unreasonableness of what we clearly see to be irrational and refraining from taking part in it - lies our great and irresistible power: the power which constitutes that unconquerable force which makes up real genuine public opinion - that opinion which with its own advance moves all humanity. Governments know this. They tremble before that force and strive in every possible way to counteract and overcome it. They know that strength lies not in force but in the action of the mind and in the clear expression. And they fear that expression of independent thought more than an army. So they establish censorship, bribe newspapers, and seize control of the Churches and schools. But the spiritual force which moves the world eludes them. It is not in a book or a newspaper: it cannot be trapped but is always free, for it lies in the depth's of man's consciousness. This most powerful, elusive, and free force shows itself in a man's soul when he is alone and reflects on the phenomena of the world and then involuntarily expresses his thoughts to his wife, his brother, his friend, and to all whom he accounts it a sin to conceal what he considers to be the truth. No milliards of rubles, or millions of troops, or any institutions, or wars, or revolutions, can or will produce what a free man can produce by the simple expression of what he considers right, independently of what exists and what is impressed upon him.' In terms of changing our public opinion, Thoreau writes in Civil Disobedience, 'Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? - in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must a citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then?' Regarding changing public opinion, Leo Tolstoy wrote in the 19th century - 'It is the same in regard to whether the time has or has not come to do away with governmental authority and substitute a new type of society. If, through the growth of a higher consciousness, men no longer comply with the demands of the State, if they no longer find sufficient room in it and at the same time no longer need its protection, then the question whether they have matured sufficiently to discard the State form of life is decided from quite a different side - just as in the case of chicks that break out of their shells into which no power on earth can make them return - by the men themselves who have outgrown the State and whom no power on earth can replace in it.' Tolstoy further writes - 'And therefore the transformation of human life (through which those in power will renounce power and there will be none anxious to seize it) will not come about solely by all men consciously and separately assimilating a Christian conception of life, but will come when a Christian public opinion so definite and comprehensive as to reach everybody has arisen and subdued the whole inert mass which is not able to attain the truth by its own intuition and is therefore always swayed by public opinion. Such public opinion does not need hundreds and thousands of years for its formation and growth, for it possesses an infectious quality of acting on people and attracting collective masses with great rapidity.' On all that it takes to change public opinion - just being honest with ourselves - Tolstoy writes - 'All that is necessary is to cease acquiescing in the public opinion of the past, now false and already defunct and only artificially induced by governments. It is only necessary for each individual to say what he really thinks and feels or at least refrain from saying what he does not think. If only men - even a few - would do that, the out-worn public opinion would at once and of itself fall away and a new, real, and vital opinion would manifest itself. And with this change of public opinion all that inner fabric of men's lives which oppresses and torments them would change of its own accord. One is ashamed to say how little is needed to deliver all men from the calamities which now oppress them. It is only necessary to give up lying! Only let men reject the lie which is imposed upon them; only let them stop saying what they neither think nor feel, and at once such a change of the whole structure of our life will be accomplished as the revolutionaries would not achieve in centuries even if all the power were in their hands.' On this, Tolstoy further writes - 'But let each man according to the strength that is in him profess the truth he knows and practises in his own life - or at least cease to excuse the falsehood he supports by representing it as truth - and at once, in this very year 1893, such changes would be accomplished towards man's liberation and the establishment of truth on earth, as we dare not hope for in hundreds of years.' Tolstoy says 'Men have only to understand that what is given out to them as public opinion and is maintained by such complicated, strenuous, and artificial means, is not public opinion but a dead relic of what was once public opinion; they have only, above all, to believe in themselves - in the fact that what they are conscious of in the depths of their souls and what craves expression in each of them and remains unexpressed only because it runs counter to existing social opinion, is that force which transforms that world and to express which is man's vocation - they have only to believe that the truth lies not in what is said by the people around them, but in what is said by their conscience, that is, by God, - and the false and artificially maintained public opinion will instantly vanish and a true public opinion establish itself.'

Bringing accountability to political parties

In today's world, there are only authoritarian governments of varying degrees. I can see no democratic government serving its people, as it is supposed to. The root cause of this problem is the political party. All elected representatives owe more allegiance to a political party than the people. The political party functions with the same tribal instincts as nations and business organizations. Its only goal is to sustain, retain and grow its own power and control at all costs, ultimately costs to the people. Even in the few instances where a person, and not a political party, is voted for by the people, the political party takes over and decides what role the representative must perform, irrespective of the person's abilities. Independent candidates ultimately join political parties that offer the most benefits. The party comes between the elected representative and the people and calls the shots. Like all middlemen, the political party - a non-accountable entity - grows more and more powerful feeding off both the people and their elected representative. To end this evil, the ideal political reform required is a ban on all political parties world wide, and the direct election of persons for the roles that they are best suited for...But this may not be possible in a democratic society. If that is the case, then the political party which these days claims to function like a corporate entity, must bring in all the checks and balances that exist for a corporate entity in our world today to prevent unfair practices. Quite often, political parties are led astray by corrupt leaders with powerful personalities. As Emerson says, in his essay on Politics, 'We might as wisely reprove the east wind, or the frost, as a political party, whose members, for the most part, could give no account for their position, but stand for the defence of those interests in which they find themselves. Our quarrel with them begins when they quit this deep natural ground at the bidding of some leader, and obeying personal considerations, throw themselves into the maintenance and defence of points nowise belonging to their system. A party is perpetually corrupted by personality. Whilst we absolve the association from dishonesty, we cannot extend the same charity to their leaders. They reap the rewards of the docility and the zeal of the masses which they direct.' Hence, in addition to bringing about accountability to political parties, we must also ensure that the political party holds its leader accountable for the direction that it takes. A corporate leader who brings his organization to ruin is punished both by the stakeholders and the law. It must be the same case with a political party. Friedrich Nietzsche says in The Will to Power - 'How treacherous are all parties! For a party brings something of the leader to light which he may have taken great care to hide under a bushel.'

Cleaning up governance by banning political parties is not such a herculean task. All it requires is that the institutions set up to safeguard the Constitution and protect the people, such as the Supreme Court and the Election Commission, do their jobs properly. Some simple mandatory criteria for a political party to be legit, will achieve the goal of ridding politics of its bane, the corrupt political party, within the blink of an eye. They are:

• A political party must clearly state its vision, ideals, and goals, and must walk the talk
• A political party must report on its progress and performance measured against its vision, ideals and goals
• No person with a criminal or corruption record must be provided membership to a political party
• No donations must be made to political parties from undisclosed sources. Amounts donated must also be disclosed under RTI
• Gender, race, social and economic equity must be mandatory within a party
• Parties must declare income, pay income tax and submit themselves to income audits like all other organizations
• Shifting political parties when one currently holds a post as elected representative is prohibited
• Parties must establish controls so that the leader does not corrupt the party and take it down the path of his personal agenda
• Parties must have clearly laid out processes for rise to leadership, and succession plans. No single person should be allowed to gain disproportionate power within the party
• A political party must be banned for ten years from standing for elections if it produces a head of state who commits crime against humans and nature, within the country or internationally.

Cannabis prohibition as a cause for current situation

When it comes to cannabis, politicians, in general, have been firmly in the category of its opponents so far. This may not be from a personal dislike for cannabis, but more because most politicians owe greater allegiance to their political parties, that are funded by lobbies opposed to cannabis such as pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, alcohol, tobacco, arms, mining, automobiles and the medical lobbies, than they do to the people who elected them. Many are also firm believers in the stereotypes that are  firmly established in society. When the majority ethnic groups, elite upper classes and the world's super rich are opposed to cannabis, showing any support for it could result in a quick end to one's political career. The masses of the working class and poor people who elect these persons, from whom politicians beg for votes with promises of serving them and being their humble servants, find them assuming the role of king and lord once elected to power. 

 

The prohibition of cannabis is one of the primary causes for the current state of affairs. In its prohibition we can see all the elements of the politician's nature - hypocrisy, greed and unity among thieves. In its prohibition we can see all the tools that politicians employ - patriotism, religion, war, image doctoring, inequality, distraction, drugs of power, etc. Cannabis was prohibited for the following reasons: it was a threat to opium, tobacco, alcohol and the medicine of the west; it was a roadblock to the goals of increased revenue through taxation of the people; it gave the working classes strength, health and vigor; it promoted independent thinking and questioning of the value systems of the rich; it was practiced by the religions that stood for the values that were opposed by the rich - unity, love, peace, equality, minimalism, contentment, etc.; it provided an opportunity for the lower classes and castes to adopt ways of livelihood that meant they would be less likely to work for the rich; it was used by the very castes and classes that the ruling classes wished to suppress and dominate.

Cannabis prohibition has nothing to do with science or universal human values, even though the opponents of cannabis legalization would like you to think so. The science overwhelmingly is in favor of cannabis. A number of government attempts have been made in the US to try and malign cannabis through government initiated research. All the research only came back with the findings that cannabis should not be prohibited, findings which the government refused to acknowledge. For example, as Leafly reports 'Nixon appointed former Pennsylvania Republican governor Raymond Shafer as the head of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse—later called “The Shafer Commission”—to review all research and literature on cannabis to correctly classify it in the Controlled Substances Act. Shafer’s 1972 report debunked damaging myths about marijuana, found that the plant did not threaten society, and recommended decriminalizing the plant. Nixon ignored the report, and the plant stayed on Schedule I, where it remains today.' Science, on the other hand, not just today, but as early as in the 19th century when the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1895 conducted a detailed study of cannabis use in India and the feasibility of its prohibition, has always showed that the prohibition of cannabis is unscientific. The prohibition of cannabis is primarily a result of greed, religion, morality and hypocrisy by the ruling classes, upper classes and upper castes of society everywhere. Morality is a concept that has no definite meaning but shifts according to who is interpreting it. In 19th century India, for example, the British tried to portray cannabis as immoral, stating that it was used by criminals. The Indian upper classes and castes, on the other hand, tried to portray cannabis as immoral, stating that it was used by the despicable lowest classes and castes of society, and by the women who were sex workers. All over the world this variable interpretation of morality, as convenient to the ruling and upper classes, has been used to prohibit cannabis. The propaganda has been that the use of cannabis is immoral, that its users are immoral, and that the ones who are enlightened and cultured shun the use of cannabis as a social evil, and the prohibition of cannabis brings about social and moral reforms to society, when, in fact it has brought us to the doorstep of death.

With the prohibition of cannabis, the rich upper classes and castes consolidated their positions. The politics of cannabis prohibition ensured that the synthetic pharmaceutical industries, fossil fuel industries, medical industries, chemical fertilizer and pesticides, illegal synthetic drugs, fossil-fuel-based construction, petrochemical based plastics and synthetic fibers, timber industry based paper, opium, tobacco, law enforcement, drug enforcement, and alcohol thrived. They ensured that the minds and bodies of the working classes and the poor were chained to the drugs provided by the state, weakening them to the extent required to control them using the tools of religion, patriotism, etc. AP News reports that 'Although Nixon declared the war on drugs on June 17, 1971, the U.S. already had lots of practice imposing drug prohibitions that had racially skewed impacts. The arrival of Chinese migrants in the 1800s saw the rise of criminalizing opium that migrants brought with them. Cannabis went from being called “reefer” to “marijuana,” as a way to associate the plant with Mexican migrants arriving in the U.S. in the 1930s. By the time Nixon sought reelection amid the anti-Vietnam War and Black power movements, criminalizing heroin was a way to target activists and hippies. One of Nixon’s domestic policy aides, John Ehrlichman, admitted as much about the war on drugs in a 22-year-old interview published by Harper’s Magazine in 2016. Experts say Nixon’s successors, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, leveraged drug war policies in the following decades to their own political advantage, cementing the drug war’s legacy. The explosion of the U.S. incarceration rate, the expansion of public and private prison systems and the militarization of local police forces are all outgrowths of the drug war.'

In the US, the Republican party has been the key roadblock to federal cannabis legalization. They have even tried their best to block state level legalization. In many of the US states that have not been able to take their cannabis reforms forward, it the the Republican party that is quite often responsible for holding it back, despite overwhelming support from the people for legalization. The Republican party has come to be closely associated with the petrochemical, synthetic pharmaceutical, arms and construction industries. Most GOPs owe their wealth and positions to these masters whom they serve openly and discretely. Hence the production of specimens like Nixon, Reagan, Bush(s) and Trump. The magazine Otherwords reports that 'For years, politicians have proclaimed that “Elections have consequences.” Increasingly, when it comes to elections deciding marijuana policy in the United States, Republican lawmakers are seeking to ensure that they don’t. Whether or not one personally supports or opposes cannabis legalization, these cynical and undemocratic tactics ought to be a cause of deep concern. In a healthy and functioning democracy, elected officials represent the views of the electorate. They should not consistently seek to undermine them.' Forbes reports that 'Besides Mississippi, South Dakota and Nebraska, Armentano points to Florida, where the state Supreme Court invalidated a proposed ballot measure to legalize adult-use pot in April, claiming the language was confusing to voters because it did not spell out that marijuana would still be illegal under federal law. (Florida legalized medical marijuana in 2014.) “I think there has been a realization that if this issue goes to the ballot, the initiatives win. And once they go into law, they stay law, they can’t be repealed,” he says. “Accepting that reality, [Republican leaders] pivoted their strategy. What do you do if you can’t win at the ballot box? You do everything you can to not allow it on the ballot.” If it gets on the ballot and is approved, “you get that vote nullified before the law takes effect,” he says.' Speaking about the efforts of Republican politicians to cancel the decision of the people, Counter Punch reports that 'Whether or not one personally supports or opposes cannabis legalization, these cynical and undemocratic tactics ought to be a cause of deep concern. In a healthy and functioning democracy, elected officials represent the views of the electorate. They should not consistently seek to undermine them.'

Globally, leaders of most nations continue to earn their bread from their masters by staunchly opposing cannabis reform. In Russia, Tag24 reports Vladmir Putin as saying - '"Personal freedoms are being absolutized; there is active propaganda of permissiveness, immorality and selfishness; a cult of violence, consumption and pleasure is being enforced; the use of drugs is being legalized and a society is being formed that negates the natural life cycle," the paper says.'

The role of a politician is primarily as law maker who, once elected by the people whom he represents, reviews, makes and updates laws so as to protect the people and the land as per the constitution of the land. The role is also to ensure that specifically the minorities, the poor, the sick, the aged, women and children are ensured of their basic rights and freedoms. It is not to protect big businesses and clear the way for them to exploit the land and the people. In this regard, most politicians in the world have failed to fulfill their basic duties and continue to do so when it comes to the question of cannabis. In the case of cannabis, they have prohibited a plant that was the source of livelihood for many poor and minority people, that was an affordable, healthy and natural source of medicine and recreation for millions of the poor, the elderly and the ill, for thousands of years. It is one of the most sustainable plants that can reduced the harms done to the planet through man's misadventures.

 

Cannabis as remedy for corrupt politics

So you appointed someone to serve you and now you've discovered that he is a scoundrel. Not only does he not do what he is supposed to do, he and his friends are doing what they like to do and benefiting from the position they find themselves in. You, on the other hand, find even your basic freedom in danger. You may wonder, in the middle of these increasing waves of fear and panic, as to how to get this monkey off your back. One of the easiest things to do that is within your power is to stop paying his salary and tips. He loves money and power but loves money more. When he finds that you are not a steady source of money like before, he is going to leave the job and look out for another one elsewhere. He may try to rob you, but don't fear, he can only play that card maybe once or twice...and he's robbing you now anyway...In the process, you may also find out that you don't really need that role and that you can do that job yourself...In the process, he and his friends may take up a job that is truly useful to society and the planet, like Leo Tolstoy said...

Just as the prohibition of cannabis was one of the primary causes for the decadence of the world, and for the precarious state of nature that we find ourselves in today, its legalization globally will bring about the re-wiring and reconstruction of the systems that have brought about this debacle.

Cannabis legalization will: shrink the growth and dominance of the industries causing harm - fossil fuel, synthetic pharmaceutical, chemical fertilizers, construction, plastics., opioid, alcohol, tobacco, etc; it will create sustainable industries that are more aligned to the needs of the times; it will enable the world's population to have a safe intoxicant and medicine that strengthens the minds and bodies of the world's people; it will promote free thinking and innovation; it will blunt the edges of the tools used by the state - religion, patriotism, war, etc. - to subjugate the people; it will enable vast numbers of the world's people to adopt sustainable means of livelihood; it will diminish the gap between the rich and the poor without further weakening nature; it will improve the health and fertility of the human soil from which political leaders emerge just as it does for the natural soil that it grows in

It is really astonishing how few political leaders seem to recognize (more likely, it is a refusal to acknowledge) the potential of the cannabis plant to tremendously boost public health, sustainably revive agricultural and industry, provide a solution to economic growth problems and relieve the crippling stress on the legal system. The simple step of acknowledging the plant and reintroducing it will not only earn the good will of the people, it will help to erase the memories of most wounds, past and present, inflicted on the nations by politicians and may even immortalize them in the annals of modern political history. But like a man lost in the wilderness, with the path to survival right in front of him, political leaders remain paralyzed in greed, apathy, hypocrisy and fear while the world continues to suffer its ever increasing burdens. The plant looms before today's leader, but he neither sees it nor recognizes it...Instead, he adopts all possible measures to destroy the plant, keep it prohibited and keep it out of the reach of the humans and animals that nature created it for...

Whichever authoritarian national, state or local government legalizes ganja for recreational use now stands the chance of winning back the favor of the vast numbers of people who suffer from its prohibition. Many of the working classes, farmers, migrants workers, sanyasis, fakirs, the ill, minorities, tribal communities, young and old will be glad if this is done. They may even forget all the pain and trauma that governments have inflicted on the people in the name of the drama called Covid and erect a few statues and temples for the reformer. People may remember for many centuries the names of the great politicians who removed prohibition of ganja, and they may even find mention (maybe an entire chapter??) in history books. The strongman leader of the authoritarian ruling party across the world's nations, without even having to wear a mask or inject dangerous pharmaceutical drugs, might be viewed as the savior of the human race and the planet and his party could win more elections, thus ensuring that they retain power longer. Maybe statues of all the authoritarian leaders together could be erected at the UN headquarters, a la Justice League or Avengers...Surely this is immortal glory worth chasing?

If India was really concerned about self-sustainability and moving away from economic dependency on China, one of the obvious things to do would be to cut down on the imports of Active Pharmaceutical Intermediaries (APIs) and fertilizers from China. India imports 68% of its APIs from China and 57% of its fertilizers, forming the top two imports, according to a report in Deccan Herald. Legalizing cannabis for recreational, medical, agricultural and industrial use would go a long way in reducing these two dependencies. But then the Indian pharmaceutical and petrochemical industries are the ones who need these imports. They are also, most likely, the largest funders of our politicians. So will cannabis be legalized? Not likely. Instead, our politicians will try to build roads through eco-sensitive regions to import pharma drugs and fertilizers. They will set up border brawls, ban social media platforms that enable free speech, and import arms from other petrochemical nations to put on a display. The petrochemical, pharmaceutical and arms industries will fuel the politician's addiction for money and the politician will protect them. Acknowledging that cannabis can reduce dependencies and increase sustainability, without harming the people and nature is something these entities are fearful of...

One of the greatest American presidents, and global politicians, grew cannabis. And so did other founding fathers of the modern USA, like George Washington. According to PolitiFact, 'Jefferson grew hemp both at Monticello and his other plantation, Poplar Forest, but it was primarily used (along with flax and cotton) to make clothing. Other founding fathers, including George Washington, grew hemp and Americans were legally bound to grow the plant during the colonial period and the early republic.' Outstanding cannabis supporting politicians that come to mind are 'Pepe' Mujica of Uruguay and Justin Trudeau of Canada, who both dared to go against the tide and  egalized recreational cannabis in their countries, and the outstanding politicians of the US today, especially the Democratic governors, constantly working to bring in legalization in the face of federal opposition. Many politicians whose names I am unaware of, such as the Dutch politicians who have ensured that cannabis is decriminalized and available to the people of the Netherlands, and the politicians from Norway who backed legalization in the UN along with Uruguay, are also particularly noteworthy. Switzerland, South Africa, Luxembourg, Mexico and New Zealand also seem to show positive intent.

Some politicians who a decade or so ago were opposed to cannabis are now staunch supporters, even if the motive is to increase personal wealth. A number of politicians who have retired from politics have taken on positions on the boards of fast growing global cannabis companies. Some are part of international advocacy groups pushing for world wide legalization which they opposed when they were in power. A number of politicians, who actively opposed cannabis when they were in power, have gone on to join companies in the cannabis business after retirement, highlighting the hypocrisy of politicians, and reinforcing what Leo Tolstoy said about politicians finding something useful to do once they understand the irrelevance of their positions. If most politicians, who get into the job of politician out of greed, instead, worked in the cannabis field to amass their fortunes, the world would be a much better place. Fortune reports that 'Boehner, a Republican ex-Congressman from Ohio, opposed marijuana legalization while he served in the House of Representatives before stepping down towards the end of 2015. But he cited an evolution in his thinking on Wednesday, reflecting a broader shift in how the public (and politicians) view marijuana decriminalization, legalization, and research. Boehner specifically cited the potential of medical marijuana to help stave off the opioid epidemic as a rationale for his changed thinking.' Bloomberg reports that 'Tilray Inc., the first cannabis company to list directly on a U.S. exchange, announced Thursday the formation of a 10-person advisory board including Howard Dean, a former presidential candidate and chairman of the Democratic National Committee between 2005 and 2009, and Michael Steele, head of the Republican National Committee from 2009 to 2011. Other members of the company’s International Advisory Board include the former foreign ministers of Germany, Joschka Fischer, and Australia, Alexander Downer, Tilray said in a statement.' MJBizDaily reports that 'The former prime minister (Canada Mulroney) will join Acreage in November, upon the close of the RTO, the company said in a press release. Mulroney also joins a growing list of former heads of state in the international cannabis industry.' Bloomberg reports that 'Former Mexican President Vicente Fox expects cannabis will be a part of the new North American free-trade deal following the country's Supreme Court decision to loosen some of the rules on how the drug can be consumed.'

One thing that however makes a politician sit up and do something good is when the people who elected him start putting pressure on him after patiently enduring immense amounts of suffering. Nowhere is this more evident than in the place from where cannabis prohibition spread around the world. The US is seeing a grassroots cannabis revolution like nothing it has ever seen so far. Cannabis legalization is supported by more numbers of the US population now than ever before in the history of the country with over 90% of Americans supporting cannabis legalization in some form. This has forced politicians across party lines to throw in their hats in support of legalization, realizing that to not support the issue is to run the risk of rejection. Whether it is in Congress, or among governors, mayors, at all levels of governance, the support for cannabis is growing. All US states have now legalized cannabis in some form or other. In the US, adult use legalization has covered so much ground mainly due to the governors of states who have been willing to listen to the people. Marijuana Moment reports that 'From New York to New Mexico, top policymakers have signaled that cannabis policy reform is a legislative priority for 2021. To date, at least 11 governors have proactively brought up marijuana in their formal addresses, budget plans or press briefings so far, with more expected to come.'

Besides governors, many government bodies like the HHS, IRS, etc., are changing their stance to a more pro-cannabis one. The HHS recently recommended that cannabis be moved from the current most restrictive Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act to Schedule III. This, however, does not provide any benefit to the people that need it the most, it only aids research bodies and pharmaceutical companies to leverage cannabis for their own profits. At least it is a step in the right direction. The IRS appears more open to cannabis reform, as it offers a chance for increased revenue to the department. Shepherd Express reports that 'Unlike much of the Republican party, reality-minded organizations such as the IRS cannot ignore facts in favor of doctrine. Therefore, despite the best efforts of obstructionist Republicans, the IRS is explicitly on the side of business owners and fair trade, and thus, on the side of legal cannabis.' Marijuana Moment reports that 'While CRS found that the president cannot in fact deschedule cannabis unilaterally with an executive order, “he might order executive agencies to consider either altering the scheduling of marijuana or changing their enforcement approach.” That includes having federal officials start a process to completely remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) without requiring any additional action from Congress.'

It is despite politicians that the US has reached where it has with cannabis. Cannabis reform in the US is a grassroots movement of the people who have had enough of the wiles of the politicians, and their masters. The people have campaigned incessantly for decades, and have slowly turned the tide in favor of cannabis. The politicians, however, have never missed an opportunity to try and take credit for it, and hog the limelight. Heady NJ reports that '“Politicians are always lagging behind public opinion. They always wait for a parade and then run to get in front of it,” Erik Altieri said.  Altieri said to obtain federal legalization a true, multi-racial, class, and generation coalition is needed. NORML has built strong alliances with the ACLU and NAACP, among others. They also have some unexpected allies like AARP, which advocates for seniors since clinical cannabis benefits them greatly. “We have the American people at our back, and we’ll finally see prohibition crumble and be a relic of history,” Erik Altieri predicted.'

Internationally too, the number of countries that have legalized medical cannabis is rapidly growing. This is primarily driven by the people who are rejecting the existing healthcare system with its expensive, ineffective and highly dangerous synthetic pharmaceutical drugs. With increasing awareness and information about the benefits of cannabis and the harms brought about by its prohibition, the people in many countries are driving their politicians to take a closer look at cannabis and reconsider its legal position. Ironically most of these countries are the very same countries that pushed through world wide prohibition to support the growth of their big businesses.

 

Increased awareness through world wide communication technology of the harms of cannabis prohibition is offering some hope to the numerous living beings, the planet and the much maligned cannabis plant. The elected politician, being the lawmaker, is the one in the most important position with the power to change the unjust laws that have prohibited cannabis world wide and brought untold suffering and harm to humans and life on earth. The rumblings of change can be heard rising up from the ground, the grassroots that sustain the politician. To ignore it and the awakening of a new world means increasing political peril.

 

In conclusion

The rulers of this world desire that the people of the world toil to make them richer rather than become poets, artists, dreamers and philosophers whiling away their time on things like spirituality, existence and the protection of nature...The removal of natural intoxicants like cannabis, peyote and psilocybin and the introduction in their place of addictive alcohol, opium and synthetic pharmaceutical drugs are one of the means to enslave the masses of humans to the money-churning machines of the rich...To break these chains that bind the global masses needs more awareness and moral fortitude from more people and the increased demand to abolish the enslaving laws that prohibit the wonderful natural intoxicants...Legalization of cannabis will benefit not just humans, but numerous other species that also suffer because of the stupidity of humans...Cannabis was created by nature for the benefit of all species, not just the elite super rich humans who enjoy it freely, while keeping it away from all other humans and other species...

Consider this...The cannabis plant has been around for about 30 million years, and it has been prohibited by humans for 150 years...Life on earth has been around for about 3 billion years, and modern humans will exist for probably 150,000 years...So, a species that has been around for 0.005 percent of the total time span of life on earth will have prohibited a plant for 0.0005 percent of the plant's life on earth...On modern human timescales, we would have prohibited the cannabis plant for 0.1 percent of our own life on earth...The humans are nothing, in terms of nature's timescales and what we did with the cannabis plant is nothing, in terms of the cannabis plant's timescales...But the 0.1 percent of the time that we spent on earth during which we prohibited the cannabis plant, was probably more than enough to ensure that we humans would not be even a very, very faint blip on the graph of nature's timescales...unnoticeable, invisible imbeciles who thought that they were the masters of nature with the power to decide which of nature's creation should, or should not, exist...

The kingdom of god is not somewhere in the afterlife that you can reach through the accumulation of merit, as the priests will tell you. It is also not somewhere in the future of this life that you can reach through the accumulation of material wealth, as the politicians and their masters - the rich - will tell you. These entities would rather have you slave for them, in total obedience to their will, to enable them to get what they want now. The kingdom of god is a state of mind that you can reach this very instant, if you so decide. Cannabis, as the supreme entheogen, can enable the most number of persons worldwide, to reach this state in the fastest, safest and most affordable ways. The middlemen - the politicians and the priests - know this. That is why they strive to keep cannabis prohibited globally, and out of reach of the people of the world. Cannabis legalization will suck the power out of these charlatans, and the masters that they work for - the rich - and put the power back into the hands of the people of the world. Then, maybe, we can prolong our stay in this world as the human species for a little bit longer...No other means or methods exist, as far as I can see, that can have the kind of impact that global cannabis legalization can have, to stop the human species from hurtling and accelerating towards its world wide suicide...

Epitaph for the human species

A suitable epitaph for the human species could read as follows - "Here lies a species that existed for 0.005 percent of life's timespan in nature...It thought it was the masters of nature...Its elected leaders, the politicians, hastened and brought about its demise thinking that they were god's chosen ones, nay, god itself..."

 

Related articles

Listed below are articles taken from various media related to the above subject. Words in italics are the thoughts of your truly at the time of reading the article. 

 

Some Republican lawmakers, including Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, say that the public consumption of marijuana is a nuisance to people who don’t like the smell and a quality-of-life issue.

Meanwhile, advocates of marijuana legalization argue that lawmakers are exaggerating the scale of the problem and using the smell issue as a smoke screen for their actual gripe: that cannabis should not be legal.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/29/cannabis-legalization-smell-complaint-republican


Clowns, who think they are kings, now increasingly share the dais with democracy...

https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/in-global-elections-strongmen-are-taken-down-a-notch-2-3055214


https://restofworld.org/2024/bjp-whatsapp-modi/


The Republican Party of Florida is calling upon voters to reject Amendment 3, a proposed constitutional initiative legalizing adult-use marijuana sales. Voters will decide on the amendment this November.

Members of the Party’s Executive Board voted to formally oppose the amendment at its quarterly meeting, resolving that it “[puts] children at risk and endanger[s] Florida’s family-friendly business and tourism climates.”

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has also committed to raising money to assist ‘counter-messaging’ efforts to defeat the amendment.

Speaking at a recent press conference, the Governor claimed that passing Amendment 3 would “reduce [Floridians’] quality of life.”

Amendment 3 amends the state Constitution to allow existing medical cannabis facilities to engage in adult-use marijuana sales. Under the proposal, those 21 and older may legally possess up to three ounces of cannabis, of which not more than five grams may be in the form of concentrate. Home cultivation of marijuana for one’s own personal use is not permitted. The majority of funding for the measure was provided by the multi-state cannabis company Trulieve.

https://norml.org/news/2024/05/09/florida-republican-party-to-formally-oppose-marijuana-legalization-initiative/


Senate members voted 15 to 9 to defeat legislation, SB 2487, which sought to reduce marijuana possession penalties.

The defeat marked a sudden about-face for Senate lawmakers. In April, Senators voted 24 to 1 in favor of the bill. Last week, they once again expressed support for the measure, agreeing to House-backed changes to the legislation.

State law defines the possession of more than three grams of cannabis as a criminal misdemeanor, punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. Those penalties would have been reduced to a $25 civil fine under the proposal.

In April, Senators voted 19 to 6 in favor of separate legislation, SB 3335, which sought to legalize and regulate the adult-use cannabis market. That legislation was ultimately tabled by the House.

Opponents of both measures alleged that liberalizing Hawaii’s cannabis laws would undermine tourism and send the wrong message to young people.

Nikos Leverenz, board president for the Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii, told Marijuana Moment: “Too many legislators this cycle have ceded to the histrionic arguments by many in the criminal legal lobby and others who want to ensure broad prohibition. Hopefully next year’s legislature will produce a bona fide recalibration of cannabis policy in Hawaii.”

https://norml.org/news/2024/04/25/hawaii-senators-abruptly-reject-marijuana-decriminalization-legislation/


As was widely expected, Virginia’s Republican governor vetoed a bill that would have finally legalized adult-use marijuana sales in the state.

“The proposed legalization of retail marijuana in the Commonwealth endangers Virginians’ health and safety,” Gov. Glenn Youngkin said in a statement announcing his Thursday veto, adding that other states that have legalized recreational cannabis sales are following a “failed path.”

“States following this path have seen adverse effects on children’s and adolescent’s health and safety, increased gang activity and violent crime, significant deterioration in mental health, decreased road safety, and significant costs associated with retail marijuana that far exceed tax revenue.

“Attempting to rectify the error of decriminalizing marijuana by establishing a safe and regulated marketplace is an unachievable goal.”

Virginia legalized adult-use cannabis in 2021 with a bill signed into law by then-Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat.

https://mjbizdaily.com/virginia-governor-youngkin-vetoes-adult-use-marijuana-legalization/


A Republican House advisory committee is formally opposing marijuana banking legislation and a separate bill to remove past cannabis use as a disqualifying factor for federal employment and security clearances, while broadly criticizing the substance as a “gateway drug” that causes “violence, depression and suicide.”

The guidance, which is meant to inform how the GOP caucus should approach marijuana policy issues, briefly describes the history of prohibition and the state legalization movement. It then makes the case that cannabis is a dangerous substance linked to mental health disorders such as schizophrenia, attributing that in part to “the high concentration of THC.”

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/house-gop-committee-urges-opposition-to-marijuana-banking-bill-saying-gateway-drug-causes-violence-depression-and-suicide/


The cocaine was found in a West Wing phone locker while the Biden family was away for the Fourth of July weekend at Camp David.

On July 13, the Deputy Chief of the U.S. Secret Service Foreign Missions Branch sent a report to the Uniform Division, indicating that the bag of “unknown white powdery substance” was identified as cocaine by the FBI laboratory.

These photos and documents detail the disruption and expense of the Biden White House cocaine scandal. Few Americans buy that the Biden administration can’t figure out who brought this cocaine into the West Wing. Indeed, the lack of documentation about the “investigation” of who was responsible is striking.

https://www.judicialwatch.org/biden-wh-cocaine-scandal/

 
"I know there must be a question hanging in the air as to what happened to the company’s top management," Putin said. "The Investigative Committee head [Alexander Bastrykin] reported to me just the other day that hand grenade fragments had been found in the bodies of those killed in the plane crash."

Putin hinted that those on board might have played a role in their own demises, insinuating alcohol or cocaine might have led to play with grenades.

“Unfortunately, tests on traces of alcohol or drugs in the blood of those killed were not taken, although we know that after the events we all know about [the uprising] the FSB [Russia's intelligence agency] found not only 10 billion [rubles] in cash, but also 5 kilograms of cocaine in the Saint Petersburg office" of Prigozhin’s company, Putin said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/europe/vladimir-putin-hints-wild-tale-drugs-grenades-causing-fatal-crash-kill-rcna119067


A group of South Dakota lawmakers, regulators and law enforcement officials are raising concerns the state has issued too many medical marijuana cards for patients.

Jennifer Seale, the state’s MMJ program administrator, told the Legislature’s Republican-controlled Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee that the program has issued nearly 12,000 patient cards.

That total doubles initial projections at least a year ahead of estimates, according to South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

https://mjbizdaily.com/south-dakota-medical-marijuana-card-demand-prompts-regulatory-concerns/
 

 

While Biden’s mass pardon covers people who have committed non-violent federal cannabis possession offenses at the federal level and under Washington, D.C. law, it did not free anyone who is currently incarcerated and excludes people who were convicted of selling cannabis, among other groups that advocates would like to see get relief. And despite the president seemingly conflating pardons and expungements in his recent and prior remarks, those are two separate processes.

Cannabis reform activists have also expressed frustration that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has still not yet made available application forms for people who wish to obtain certificates demonstrating that they are covered by the pardon proclamation. Pardon Attorney Elizabeth Oyer said in December that the online application would be posted “very soon,” but that has not yet happened.

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/biden-highlights-marijuana-pardons-at-black-history-month-event/

 

 

' Bulletin

KERRY WINS GONZO ENDORSEMENT: DR. THOMPSON JOINS DEMOCRAT IN CALLING BUSH "THE SYPHILIS PRESIDENT"
""Four more years of George Bush will be like four more years of syphilis," the famed author said yesterday at a hastily called press conference near his home in Woody Creek, Colorado. "Only a fool or a sucker would vote for a dangerous loser like Bush," Dr. Thompson warned. "He hates everything we stand for, and he knows we will vote against him in November."

"I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago," he said, "and I will do everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat hammer, to help him be the next president of the United States.""

Which is true; I said all those things, and I will say them again. Of course I will vote for John Kerry. I have known him for thirty years as a good man with a brave heart - which is more than even the president's friends will tell you about George W. Bush, who is also an old acquaintance from the white-knuckle days of yesteryear. He is hated all over the world, including large parts of Texas, and he is taking us all down with him.

Bush is a natural born loser with a filthy rich daddy who pimped his son out to rich oilmongers. He hates music, football, and sex, in no particular order, and he is no fun at all.'

- The Fun-Hogs in the Passing Lane, November 11, 2004, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

 

'While CRS found that the president cannot in fact deschedule cannabis unilaterally with an executive order, “he might order executive agencies to consider either altering the scheduling of marijuana or changing their enforcement approach.” That includes having federal officials start a process to completely remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) without requiring any additional action from Congress.

Further, the president could also use his pardon powers to either individually, or on a mass scale, grant clemency to people facing charges over federal marijuana offenses, CRS concluded. That blanket amnesty could apply even to people who have committed, but have not yet been charged with, a federal cannabis crime.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/biden-administration-can-legalize-marijuana-without-waiting-for-lawmakers-congressional-researchers-say/
 

 

'Unlike much of the Republican party, reality-minded organizations such as the IRS cannot ignore facts in favor of doctrine. Therefore, despite the best efforts of obstructionist Republicans, the IRS is explicitly on the side of business owners and fair trade, and thus, on the side of legal cannabis.'

https://shepherdexpress.com/cannabis/cannabis/irs-launches-cannabis-initiative-to-support-federally-illega/

 

'The letter by Booker and Warren notes that the federal Controlled Substances Act empowers the U.S. attorney general to initiate proceedings to deschedule or reschedule a drug.

In fact, as the letter pointed out, the executive branch considered petitions to reschedule cannabis in 2016, but the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration rebuffed the efforts, partly because the United States had signed an international treaty regulating cannabis.'

https://mjbizdaily.com/us-senators-booker-warren-ask-justice-department-to-deschedule-marijuana/

'Richard Nixon looks like a flaming liberal compared to a golem like George Bush. Indeed. Where is Richard Nixon now that we finally need him?

If Nixon were running for president today, he would be seen as a "liberal" candidate, and he would probably win. He was a crook and a bungler, but what the hell? Nixon was a barrel of laughs compared to this gang of thugs from the Halliburton petroleum organization that are running the White House today - and who will be running it this time next year, if we (the once proud, once loved and widely respected "American people") don't rise up like wounded warriors and whack those lying petroleum pimps out of the White House on November 2.

Nixon hated running for president during football season, but he did it anyway. Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for - but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him.

You bet Richard Nixon would be my Man. He was a crook and a creep and a ginsot, but on some nights, when he would get hammered and wander around in the streets, he was fun to hang out with. He would wear a silk sweat suit and pull a stocking down over his face so nobody could recognize him. Then we would get into a cab, and cruise down to the Watergate Hotel, just for laughs.'

- The Fun-Hogs in the Passing Lane, November 11, 2004, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'In 1965, Timothy Leary (who would go on to be an advocate for psychedelics) was arrested for possession of cannabis while crossing the border from Mexico into Texas. Leary argued that the Marihuana Tax Act required him to self-incriminate—registering for the act showed intent to possess marijuana, which would violate the fifth amendment. The US Supreme Court agreed with him in 1969 and struck down the Marihuana Tax Act.

However, with the loss of the Tax Act, President Richard Nixon passed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, setting up a framework for the federal regulation and criminalization of drugs. The Controlled Substances Act created five categories of drugs and classified cannabis under Schedule I—drugs considered dangerous with no medical use and a high potential for abuse, such as heroin and cocaine.

Nixon appointed former Pennsylvania Republican governor Raymond Shafer as the head of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse—later called “The Shafer Commission”—to review all research and literature on cannabis to correctly classify it in the Controlled Substances Act.

Shafer’s 1972 report debunked damaging myths about marijuana, found that the plant did not threaten society, and recommended decriminalizing the plant. Nixon ignored the report, and the plant stayed on Schedule I, where it remains today. '

https://www.leafly.com/learn/legalization/marijuana-illegal-history

 

 

'The United States is committed to working together with the countries of the Western Hemisphere as neighbors and partners to meet our shared challenges of drug trafficking and use. My Administration will seek to expand cooperation with key partners, such as Mexico and Colombia, to shape a collective and comprehensive response and expand efforts to address the production and trafficking of dangerous synthetic drugs that are responsible for many of our overdose deaths, particularly fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, and methamphetamine. In Mexico, we must continue to work together to intensify efforts to dismantle transnational criminal organizations and their networks, increase prosecutions of criminal leaders and facilitators, and strengthen efforts to seize illicit assets. In Bolivia, I encourage the government to take additional steps to safeguard the country’s licit coca markets from criminal exploitation and reduce illicit coca cultivation that continues to exceed legal limits under Bolivia’s domestic laws for medicinal and traditional use. In addition, the United States will look to expand cooperation with China, India, and other chemical source countries in order to disrupt the global flow of synthetic drugs and their precursor chemicals. '

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/09/15/a-memorandum-for-the-secretary-of-state-on-presidential-determination-on-major-drug-transit-or-major-illicit-drug-producing-countries-for-fiscal-year-2022/

 

'But after I'd watched Nixon's speech for the third time, a strange feeling of nervousness began working on me, and I decided to get out of town as soon as possible. The movie was over - or at least it would be over in two or three hours. Nixon was leaving at ten o'clock, and Ford would be sworn in at noon. I wanted to be there on the White House lawn when Nixon was lifted off. That would be the end of my movie.

It was still raining when I left, and the pool was still empty. I put the TV set back in the canvas bag and climbed over the gate by the lifeguard shack. Then I stopped and looked back for a moment, knowing I would never come back to this place, and if I did it would not be the same. The pool would be the same, and it would be easy enough to pick up a case of Bass ale or a battery TV set...And I could even come down here on rainy summer mornings and watch the morning news...

No...even with the pool and the ale and the grass and the portable TV set, the morning news will not be the same without the foul spectre of Richard Nixon glaring out of the tube. But the war is over now, and he lost...Gone but not forgotten, missed but not mourned; we will not see another like him for quite a while. He was dishonest to a fault, the truth was not in him, and if it can be said that he resembled any other living animal in this world, it could only have been the hyena.'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'The group said “the government is accountable for remediating all negative impacts of cannabis prohibition through every aspect of cannabis legalization and policy reform, specifically to ensure that communities disproportionately impacted by the prohibition of cannabis are able to benefit from this multi-billion dollar industry.”

To that end, the group is calling on Congress and President Joe Biden to “remove cannabis, specifically delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9 THC) and its derivatives, from the Drug Enforcement Agency’s list of controlled substances, to end criminal penalties for cannabis possession and use, and to automatically expunge all past cannabis convictions, including resentencing and restoring all rights particularly voting rights,”

It further implores the administration and lawmakers to “create and update all public policies to reflect that cannabis is medicine and an effective treatment for a variety of health conditions.” That includes “amending policies to specifically protect cannabis patients from THC-based drug screening for access to employment and public resources such as housing, financial assistance, health care and education.”'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/mayors-across-the-u-s-push-biden-and-congress-to-legalize-marijuana-with-a-focus-on-racial-equity/

 

'The marijuana industry should expect to feel the same impacts as other industries from imminent federal regulations requiring businesses with more than 100 employees to impose a coronavirus vaccine mandate or mandatory weekly testing for those who don’t vaccinate.

President Joe Biden on Thursday announced the proposed rules, which will be implemented by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) via an upcoming emergency order.'

https://mjbizdaily.com/bidens-vaccine-mandate-expected-to-apply-to-marijuana-industry/

 

 

'Indeed, the numbers are weird today, and so is this dangerous election. The time has come to rumble, to inject a bit of fun into politics.

I look at elections with the cool and dispassionate gaze of a professional gambler, especially when I'm betting real money on the outcome. Contrary to most conventional wisdom. I see Kerry with 5 points as a recommended risk. Kerry will win this election, if it happens, by a bigger margin than Bush finally gouged out of Florida in 2000. That was about 46 percent, plus 5 points for owning the U.S. Supreme Court - which seemed to equal 51 percent. Nobody really believed that, but George W. Bush moved into the White House anyway.

It was the most brutal seizure of power since Hitler burned the German Reichstag in 1933 and declared himself the new Boss of Germany. Karl Rove is no stranger to Nazi strategy, if only because it worked, for a while, and it was sure as hell fun for Hitler. But not for long. He ran out of oil, the whole world hated him, and he liked to gobble pure crystal hiphetamine and stay awake for eight or nine days in a row with his maps & his bombers & his dope-addled general staff.

They all loved the whiff. It is the perfect drug for War - as long as you are winning - and Hitler thought that he was King of the Hill forever. He had created a new master race, and every one of them worshipped him. The new Hitler Youth loved to march and sing songs in unison and dance naked at night for the generals. They were fanatics.

That was sixty-six years ago, far back in ancient history, and things are not much different today. We still love War.

George Bush certainly does. In four short years, he has turned our country from a prosperous nation at peace into a desperately indebted nation at war. But so what? He is the president of the United States and you're not. Love it or leave it.'

- The Fun-Hogs in the Passing Lane, November 11, 2004, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
 

 

'To understand the sports ban, it’s important to look at the broader origins of marijuana prohibition in the U.S., Gruber said. Despite the historic use of cannabis as a medicine, it was banned and demonized during during a period of hysteria driven by the 1936 propaganda film “Reefer Madness,” when the nation “really fell under this spell” that marijuana was dangerous and warranted criminalization.

While many myths about cannabis have been debunked and there’s a growing scientific literature demonstrating its therapeutic value, the government—and sports associations—have stalled on enacting reform that reflects that reality.

StarTalk co-host Chuck Nice pointed out that while Biden has emphasized the need to follow the science when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, the same can’t be said with respect to his marijuana policy position. The president remains opposed to federally legalizing cannabis.

Tyson said that makes sense “because he’s the Reefer Madness generation—that’s why, that’s why.”'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/biden-opposes-marijuana-legalization-because-hes-from-the-reefer-madness-generation-neil-degrasse-tyson-says/

 

'In recent years, we have seen synthetic opioids, such as illicitly manufactured fentanyl, drive many overdose deaths with cocaine- and methamphetamine-related deaths also increasing at alarming rates. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the overdose epidemic, as necessary pandemic restrictions made it harder for individuals with addiction to receive the treatment and support services they need. These factors contributed to the more than 93,000 drug overdose deaths in 2020. As a Nation, we need a strong response to America’s overdose epidemic and an investment in prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery services, as well as strategies to reduce the supply of illicit drugs. '

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/08/27/a-proclamation-on-overdose-awareness-week-2021/

 

'I took a cab down to the White House and pushed through the sullen mob on the sidewalk to the guardhouse window. The cop inside glanced at my card, then looked up - fixing me with a heavy-lidded Quaalude stare for just an instant, then nodded and pushed his buzzer to open the gate. The pressroom in the West Wing was empty, so I walked outside to the Rose Garden, where a big olive-drab helicopter was perched on the lawn, about one hundred feet from the stairs. The rain had stopped, and a long red carpet was laid out on the wet grass from the White House door to the helicopter. I eased through the crowd of photographers and walked out, looking back at the White House, where Nixon was giving his final address to a shocked crowd of White House staffers. I examined the aircraft very closely, and I was just about to climb into it when I heard a loud rumbling behind me; I turned around just in time to see Richard and Pat coming toward me, trailing their daughters and followed closely by Gerald Ford and Betty. Their faces were grim and they were walking very slowly; Nixon had a glazed smile on his face, not looking at anybody around him, and walked like a wooden Indian full of Thorazine.

His face was a greasy death mask. I stepped back out of his way and nodded hello, but he didn't seem to recognize me. I lit a cigarette and watched him climb the steps to the door of the helicopter...Then he spun around very suddenly and threw his arms straight up in the famous twin-victory signal; his eyes were still glazed, but he seemed to be looking over the heads of the crowd at the White House.

Nobody was talking. A swarm of photographers rushed the plane as Nixon raised his arms - but his body had spun around too fast for his feet, and as his arms went up I saw him losing his balance. The grimace on his face went slack, then he bounced off the door and stumbled into the cockpit. Pat and Ziegler were already inside; Ed Cox and Tricia went in quickly without looking back; and a marine in dress blues shut the door and jumped away as the big rotor blades began turning and the engine cranked up to a dull, whining roar.'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'Although Nixon declared the war on drugs on June 17, 1971, the U.S. already had lots of practice imposing drug prohibitions that had racially skewed impacts. The arrival of Chinese migrants in the 1800s saw the rise of criminalizing opium that migrants brought with them. Cannabis went from being called “reefer” to “marijuana,” as a way to associate the plant with Mexican migrants arriving in the U.S. in the 1930s.

By the time Nixon sought reelection amid the anti-Vietnam War and Black power movements, criminalizing heroin was a way to target activists and hippies. One of Nixon’s domestic policy aides, John Ehrlichman, admitted as much about the war on drugs in a 22-year-old interview published by Harper’s Magazine in 2016.

Experts say Nixon’s successors, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, leveraged drug war policies in the following decades to their own political advantage, cementing the drug war’s legacy. The explosion of the U.S. incarceration rate, the expansion of public and private prison systems and the militarization of local police forces are all outgrowths of the drug war.'

https://apnews.com/article/war-on-drugs-75e61c224de3a394235df80de7d70b70

 

'"I am damn proud of my son who overcame being addicted and he did it and he's doing it and he's in good shape, thank God," said Biden of his son Hunter.

"We don't have nearly enough people involved in mental health and drug addiction services," continued Biden. "...We shouldn't be sending people to jail for use. We should be sending them to mandatory rehabilitation... they should be getting treatment while they are in jail."

"We have to deal with the idea of addiction by providing for what we all know: it's a disease of the brain... and has to be treated as such," he said.'

https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-town-hall-cincinnati-07-21-21/h_ac525d76de3b3aa3b23ba86c64b7afaa

 

'The genetically vicious nature of presidential campaigns in America is too obvious to argue with, but some people call it fun, and I am one of them. Election Day - especially a presidential election - is always a wild and terrifying time for political junkies, and I am one of those, too. We look forward to major Election Days like sex addicts look forward to orgies. We are slaves to it.

Which is not a bad thing, all in all, for the winners. They are not the ones who bitch and whine about slavery when the votes are finally counted and the losers are forced to get down on their knees. No. The slaves who emerge victorious from these drastic public decisions go crazy with joy and plunge each other into deep tubs of chilled Cristal champagne with naked strangers who want to be close to a winner.

That is how it works in the victory business. You see it every time. The Weak will suck up to the Strong, for fear of losing their jobs and their money and all the fickle power they wielded only twenty-four hours ago. It is like suddenly losing your wife and your home in a vagrant poker game, then having to go on the road with whoremongers and beg for your dinner in public.

Nobody wants to hire a loser. Right? They stink of doom and defeat.

That is the nature of high-risk politics. Veni Vidi Vice, especially among Republicans. It's like the ancient Bedouin saying, As the camel falls to its knees, more knives are drawn.'

- The Fun-Hogs in the Passing Lane, November 11, 2004, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
 

 

'Clutching his briefcase and keeping his eyes averted as he approached, President Joe Biden rushed past an intimidating circle of senators smoking weed on the Capitol steps, sources confirmed Friday. “Excuse me, folks, just trying to get through here,” said the commander-in-chief, reportedly holding his breath as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) blew smoke in his direction and laughingly offered him a toke from a lit joint. “Oh, uh, no thanks, haha. I’m running late. Plus, uh, I heard that stuff can make you go crazy.” At press time, a hyperventilating Biden was reportedly lying on the floor of the Oval Office trying to come down from a contact high.'

https://www.theonion.com/nervous-biden-rushes-past-intimidating-circle-of-senato-1847304606

 

'After months of speculation, US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer revealed his long-awaited marijuana legalization bill this morning. The measure closely resembles the MORE Act, which passed the House last year but failed to find traction in the Senate.

The bill would remove cannabis from the federal list of controlled substances, expunge federal cannabis records, impose a federal tax on marijuana, and reinvest that tax revenue in communities and individuals most adversely affected by the War on Drugs.

The new bill, known as the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, was officially introduced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), and co-sponsored by Schumer and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). Politico posted the first publicly available version of the bill earlier this morning. '

https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/chuck-schumer-senate-marijuana-legalization-bill-analysis

 

 
'I was so close that the noise hurt my ears. The rotor blades were invisible now, but the wind was getting heavier. I could feel it pressing my eyeballs back into their sockets. For an instant I thought I could see Richard Nixon's face pressed up to the window. Was he smiling? Was it Nixon? I couldn't be sure. And now it made no difference.

The wind blast from the rotors was blowing people off balance now; photographers were clutching their equipment against their bodies, and Gerald Ford was leading his wife back toward the White House with a stony scowl on his face.

I was still very close to the helicopter, watching the tires. As the beast began rising, the tires became suddenly fat; there was no more weight on them...The helicopter went straight up and hovered for a moment, then swooped down toward the Washington Monument and then angled up into the fog. Richard Nixon was gone.'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'Part of the reason that advocates are monitoring each of Biden’s nominations is because skepticism prevails about how his administration will approach cannabis policy considering that the president remains opposed to legalization, and so each development sheds light on what to expect in the coming years.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/biden-selects-white-house-drug-czar-who-helped-implement-state-marijuana-program-and-touted-medical-benefits/

 

'Former Mexican President Vicente Fox expects cannabis will be a part of the new North American free-trade deal following the country's Supreme Court decision to loosen some of the rules on how the drug can be consumed.

"Cannabis has to be part of the trading between United States, Canada and Mexico," Fox said in a broadcast interview. "Canada is an open market for cannabis, so, too is Mexico today. For the moment today for medical use, in September for recreational use."'

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/cannabis-could-become-part-of-nafta-2-0-trade-deal-former-mexican-president-1.1626313

'Presidential politics is a vicious business, even for rich white men, and anybody who gets into it should be prepared to grapple with the meanest of the mean. The White House has never been seized by timid warriors. There are no rules, and the roadside is littered with wreckage. That is why they call it the passing lane. Just ask any candidate who ever ran against George Bush - Al Gore, Ann Richards, John McCain - all of them ambushed and vanquished by lies and dirty tricks. And all of them still whining about it.

That is why George W. Bush is president of the United States, and Al Gore is not. Bush simply wanted it more, and he was willing to demolish anything that got in his way, including the U.S. Supreme Court. It is not by accident that the Bush White House (read: Dick Cheney & Halliburton Inc.) controls all three branches of our federal government today. They are powerful thugs who would far rather die than lose the election in November.

The Republican establishment is haunted by painful memories of what happened to Old Man Bush in 1992. He peaked too early and he had no response to "It's the economy, stupid."

Which has always been the case. Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the military-industrial complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous "trickle-down" theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow "trickle-down" to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote.'

- The Fun-Hogs in the Passing Lane, November 11, 2004, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'"Personal freedoms are being absolutized; there is active propaganda of permissiveness, immorality and selfishness; a cult of violence, consumption and pleasure is being enforced; the use of drugs is being legalized and a society is being formed that negates the natural life cycle," the paper says.'

https://www.tag24.com/politics/politicians/vladimir-putin/putin-signs-new-strategy-paper-to-counter-pressure-from-the-west-2030171

 

'"I feel totally drained," he said. "It's like the circus just left town. This is the end of the longest-running continuous entertainment this city ever had." He waved his arm at the waitress for another drink. "It's the end of an era. Now I know how all those rock freaks felt when they heard the Beatles were breaking up."

I felt the same way. All I wanted to do was get the hell out of town as soon as possible. I had just come out of the White House pressroom where a smoglike sense of funk - or "smunk", as somebody over there might describe it - had settled on the room within minutes after Ford took the oath. The Deathwatch was finally over; the evil demon had been purged and the Good Guys had won - or at least the Bad guys had lost, but that was not quite the same thing.

We all knew it was coming - the press, the Congress, the "public," all the backstage handlers in Washington, and even Nixon's own henchmen - but we all had our own different timetables, and when his balloon suddenly burst on that fateful Monday in August, it happened so fast that none of us were ready to deal with it. The Nixon presidency never really had time to crumble, except in hazy retrospect...In reality, it disintegrated, with all the speed and violence of some flimsy and long-abandoned gazebo suddenly blasted to splinters by chain lightning.'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'Whether or not one personally supports or opposes cannabis legalization, these cynical and undemocratic tactics ought to be a cause of deep concern. In a healthy and functioning democracy, elected officials represent the views of the electorate. They should not consistently seek to undermine them.'

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/05/28/on-marijuana-republicans-are-canceling-their-own-voters/

 

'First, our opponents are working to restrict future ballot initiatives. In Idaho, politicians have enacted new geographic distribution requirements that will make ballot initiative signature drives extremely difficult to complete. The Idaho Legislature also came close to proposing a constitutional amendment (which would have required voter approval next year) to ban any and all future drug policy reform ballot initiatives including medical cannabis.

Second, our opponents are filing lawsuits to prevent initiatives from qualifying for the ballot. Last year, the Nebraska Supreme Court, in a widely criticized decision, disqualified a proposed medical cannabis ballot initiative that had already collected 190,000 voter signatures.

Third, our opponents are filing lawsuits to overturn ballot initiatives after they have been approved by voters. This month, the Mississippi Supreme Court rejected any concept of common sense or fairness and used an outdated signature drive geographic distribution requirement to overturn a medical cannabis policy that was enacted by voters at the 2020 election. In doing so, the justices also suspended all future ballot initiatives in Mississippi until politicians allow them to be restored.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/the-war-on-ballot-initiatives-has-marijuana-in-the-crosshairs-op-ed/

 

'Besides Mississippi, South Dakota and Nebraska, Armentano points to Florida, where the state Supreme Court invalidated a proposed ballot measure to legalize adult-use pot in April, claiming the language was confusing to voters because it did not spell out that marijuana would still be illegal under federal law. (Florida legalized medical marijuana in 2014.)

“I think there has been a realization that if this issue goes to the ballot, the initiatives win.

And once they go into law, they stay law, they can’t be repealed,” he says. “Accepting that reality, [Republican leaders] pivoted their strategy. What do you do if you can’t win at the ballot box? You do everything you can to not allow it on the ballot.”

If it gets on the ballot and is approved, “you get that vote nullified before the law takes effect,” he says.'

https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyakowicz/2021/05/25/prohibitions-last-stand/

 

 

'Armageddon came early for George Bush this year, and he was not ready for it. His long-awaited showdown with my man John Kerry turned into a series of horrible embarrassments that cracked his nerve and demoralized his closest campaign advisers. They knew he would never recover, no matter how many votes they could steal for him in Florida, where the presidential debates were closely watched and widely celebrated by millions of Kerry supporters who suddenly had reason to feel like winners. Kerry came into October as a five-point underdog with almost no chance of winning three out of three rigged confrontations with a treacherous little freak like George Bush. But the debates are over now, and the victor was clearly John Kerry every time. He steamrolled Bush and left him for roadkill.

Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all. The tide turned early, in Coral Gables, when Bush went belly up less than halfway through his first bout with Kerry, who hammered poor George into jelly. It was pitiful...I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him "Mister President," and then I felt ashamed.

Karl Rove, the president's political wizard, felt even worse. There is angst in the heart of Texas today, and panic in the bowels of the White House. Rove has a nasty little problem, and its name is George Bush. The president failed miserably from the instant he got onstage with John Kerry. He looked weak and dumb. Kerry beat him like a gong in Coral Gables, then again in St. Louis and Tempe - and that is Rove's problem. His candidate is a weak-minded frat boy who cracks under pressure in front of sixty million voters.

That is an unacceptable failure for hardballers like Rove and Dick Cheney. On the undercard in Cleveland against John Edwards, Cheney came across as the cruel and sinister uberboss of Halliburton. In his only honest moment in the entire debate, he vowed, "We have to make America the best place in the world to do business."

Bush signed his own death warrant in the opening round, when he finally had to speak without his TelePrompTer. It was a Cinderella story brought up to date in Florida that night - except this time the false prince turned back into a frog.'

- The Fun-Hogs in the Passing Lane, November 11, 2004, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
 

 

'For years, politicians have proclaimed that “Elections have consequences.” Increasingly, when it comes to elections deciding marijuana policy in the United States, Republican lawmakers are seeking to ensure that they don’t.

Whether or not one personally supports or opposes cannabis legalization, these cynical and undemocratic tactics ought to be a cause of deep concern. In a healthy and functioning democracy, elected officials represent the views of the electorate. They should not consistently seek to undermine them.'

https://otherwords.org/on-marijuana-republicans-are-canceling-their-own-voters/
 

 

'Perhaps Joe is ten years behind the curve. It’s time to wake and smell the coffee. This is a global industry that is generating billions in revenue, employing thousands of Americans, and capturing much needed tax dollars. Not to mention, cannabis reform and equity licensing programs can perhaps begin to remedy the decades of social and racial injustices that have been perpetuated by American drug policy. As of late, equity has been at the heart of shaping cannabis legalization policy in states around the country, including Illinois and Massachusetts. And, of course, is a major tenet of the MORE Act. Get with the times, Mr. President.'

https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthoban/2021/05/10/what-is-bidens-beef-with-cannabis/

 

 
'Ah...mother of jabbering god, how the hell did I get off on that tangent about teenage street crime? This is supposed to be a deep and political essay about Richard Nixon...

Although maybe that wasn't such a tangent after all. The original point, I think, had to do with the street-punk mentality that caused Nixon to push his luck so far that it was finally almost impossible not to get himself busted. For a while, he had the luck and arrogance of a half-smart amateur. From their base in the White House, Nixon and the L.A. account execs he brought with him treated the old-line Washington power structure with the same kind of contempt that the young burglars casing Georgetown seem to have for the forts of the rich and powerful - or that I had for the poor bastard who owned the gas station in Lexington.

This is a very hard thing for professional cops, journalists, or investigators to cope with. Like doctors and lawyers, most of the best minds in police work have been trained since puberty to think in terms of patterns and precedents; anything original tends to have the same kind of effect on their investigative machinery as a casually mutilated punch card fed into a computer. The immediate result is chaos and false conclusions...But both cops and computers are programmed to know when they've been jammed by a wild card or a joker, and in both cases there are usually enough competent technicians standing by to locate the problems and get the machinery working again pretty quickly.'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'The debate over strong weed isn’t going to fade away in Florida or anywhere else. But so far, most lawmakers haven’t been willing to endorse strict caps on an industry that is expected to double in size — topping $40 billion — over the next four years.

“I've been pushing this boulder uphill, just trying to educate members of the Legislature,” said Davis, the Washington state lawmaker. “They, without fail, without exception, have said, ‘I just had no idea.’”'

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/the-cannabis-industrys-next-war-how-strong-should-its-weed-be/ar-BB1gc2a6

 

'Steves said his devotion to the legalization cause was largely inspired by his travels abroad, and by witnessing the safe and compassionate approach that many European nations have taken to marijuana.

“In Europe, they’re not into legislating morality and incarceration, they’re into something called pragmatic harm reduction,” he said. “And in this country right now, it’s [confronting] a law based on lies, started by President Nixon in 1971 when he was mad at the hippies.” '

https://www.wgbh.org/news/national-news/2021/04/20/step-aside-bellingham-hippies-rick-steves-has-a-marijuana-message-for-the-squares

'Bill Clinton has been worried about the nature of his Legacy in History, but he should worry no longer. He can shuck off his list of previous accomplishments: ending Welfare as we know it, presiding over the greatest peacetime prosperity since Octavian, paying off the Federal deficit, opening up the entire hemisphere to free trade, and engineering Wall-Street's great six-year Bull Run.

Most historians now agree that Clinton's lasting image will be as the president who Legalized Sodomy and set millions of Americans free from the chains of prudery and hopeless Ignorance.

Abe Lincoln freed the Slaves, Thomas Jefferson bought half of America for seventeen cents an acre, and Bill Clinton legitimized oral sex on the job. The real victim of this mess will be the vice president. It is no small thing for a sitting two-term president to leave his successor with near-record approval ratings. This means that the people are happy with the way things are and will expect more of the same. Al Gore will come under terrible pressure to maintain Clinton's standard of lewdness. Yes, we are in the midst of a revolution. Should the vice president have any questions, he would do himself a favor to look up the definition of "lewd' in the Random House dictionary.

lewd (lood) adj. -er, -est. 1 inclined to, characterized by, or inciting lust or lechery; lascivious 2 obscene or indecent, as language or songs; salacious 3 [Obs.] a) low, ignorant, or vulgar b) base, vile, or wicked, esp. of a person c) bad, worthless, or poor, esp. of a thing.

Sounds bad, eh? Well, get ready to know it up close pretty soon, Bubba. The electorate have spoken, and it will speak again in the year 2000.'

- Memo from the National Affairs Desk: More Trouble in Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, March 19, 1998, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'The reporter pushed back, noting that moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule II under the Controlled Substances Act, as Biden is proposing, wouldn’t facilitate mass clemency given that being convicted for crimes related to drugs in that slightly lower category—which currently includes cocaine—also carries significant penalties.

“It addresses things moving forward, though, which is important and important to many advocates,” Psaki argued.

But advocates don’t really see it that way. For one, they support descheduling marijuana entirely. But when it comes to the relationship between scheduling and sentencing, moving cannabis to Schedule II would in no way fulfill Biden’s 2019 campaign pledge, when he said, “I think everyone—anyone who has a record—should be let out of jail, their records expunged, be completely zeroed out” for marijuana convictions.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/biden-press-secretary-misstates-marijuana-reschedulings-impact-for-federal-prisoners-who-want-clemency/

 

'The country has come a long way since the days of politicians dismissing or shying away from marijuana issues. And a good example of that shift is the ever-growing number of lawmakers who are leaning into the cannabis holiday 4/20 with calls for reform.

For example, to kick of Tuesday’s Senate session, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke on the floor about the need to end federal marijuana prohibition, saying that “hopefully the next time this unofficial holiday 4/20 rolls around, our country will have made progress.”

Then there are the tweets—so many tweets—from state and congressional lawmakers, office seekers and regulators marking the occasion. It’s become a theme each year, and as more states pursue legalization, it seems more elected officials have grown comfortable embracing the holiday in their own ways.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/how-politicians-are-celebrating-the-marijuana-holiday-4-20-this-year/

 

'Right...and now we have gone off on a dangerous compound tangent. And it has mushroomed into something unmanageable...But before we zoom off into whatever direction might come next, it would be unfair not to mention that the Times was the first paper to break the Pentagon Papers story, a command decision that forced Nixon and his would-be enforcers to come out in the open with fangs bared, snarling threats to have everybody connected with the publication of the Pentagon Papers either lashed into jail or subpoenaed into so many courtrooms that their minds would snap before they finally ended up in the poorhouse.

As it turned out, however, the Times management strapped on its collective balls and announced that they were prepared to go to the mat with Nixon on that one - a surprisingly tough stance that was almost instantly backed by influential papers like the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch...And the appearance of that solid front, however shaky, caused serious turmoil in the White House. Spiro Agnew was pried loose from his kickback racket and sent out on the stump to stir up the Silent Majority against the "radiclibs" and "liberal elitists" of the "eastern media establishment" - the "nattering nabobs of negativism."

Jesus! Those were the days, eh?'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'Perhaps Biden is waiting for Congress to take the lead on legalization. If so, he’ll have a chance to step up and proclaim his support for true reform soon enough. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is preparing an all-encompassing legalization bill that may be introduced later this month. It’s expected to be the next iteration of the MORE Act, which passed the House but failed in the Senate late last year.

Joe Biden caused this mess years ago as a young senator who believed he was doing the right thing. But it was a mistake. His crime legislation opened America’s age of mass incarceration. He was a driving force behind civil asset forfeiture, mandatory minimum sentences, and the militarization of our police.

If Schumer’s bill moves forward, President Biden will have the opportunity to correct those mistakes and atone for his misguided work.

So far he has chosen not to. He’s busy, they say.'

https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/president-biden-isnt-too-busy-to-carry-out-the-cruelties-of-the-drug-war

 

'President Joe Biden’s stance on marijuana legalization “has not changed,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday.

Asked whether the president supports efforts by Democratic senators to end federal cannabis prohibition, Psaki said Biden “spoke about this on the campaign” and that he “believes in decriminalizing the use of marijuana, but his position has not changed” on broader reform.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/bidens-opposition-to-marijuana-legalization-has-not-changed-press-secretary-says/

'Seventy-three percent is big numbers on the campaign trail, Bubba. Very big. I would feel safe in betting heavily that there aren't too many members of this Congress who came in with 73 percent of the vote. That is a Landslide. That is Victory.

Newt Gingrich has his victory, too. Remember the Republican Revolution of 1994? Now the only people who still have any respect for it are cops, preachers, and creeps who hang out on the fringes of Klan rallies and worship Charlton Heston. And in November, Gingrich is looking at a Total Loss of personal and political power as the year 2000 looms down on us. Things happen faster and faster in the nineties.

And the difference between Winning and Losing is very big. Look what happened to the dumb bastards who accused Richard Jewell of being the "mad bomber" of the '96 Atlanta Olympics. They got shamed, humiliated, and ripped to shreds for their carelessness. Some people take these warnings seriously, I know I do. The Lewd Revolution is coming, that is the message, and Bill Clinton is only one of its messengers. Never mind what William Bennet says. Anybody who writes a bestseller called The Book of Virtues is riding for a serious fall - and now we are back in Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, at the nexus of the Lewd Revolution...That is what is happening, that is the message, and anybody against it will be like King Canute trying to hold back the sea.'

- Memo from the National Affairs Desk: More Trouble in Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, March 19, 1998, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'Assured by transition staff that Biden’s team was more understanding of recreational marijuana use than past White Houses have been, young staffers had disclosed marijuana use in documents which were part of their lengthy background checks, something standard for employees at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

But some of those same staffers were disappointed and frustrated when they were later suspended or asked to resign from their roles at the White House over long-past use of the drug.

The unfairness of the apparent turnaround especially stings when Vice President Kamala Harris openly talked about past marijuana use on the campaign trail, telling radio host Charlamagne tha God she has smoked, “and I did inhale,” she added, giggling.'

https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/03/22/editorial-white-house-in-the-weeds-on-pot-use/

 

'“Certainly, (former President) Trump has established that you can lose an election and continue to act like you didn’t,” Armentano said.

“Certainly, that’s a playbook that’s been shown to the world.”

But even before the November election, reluctance to implement the public’s will has been in evidence in some states.'

https://mjbizdaily.com/marijuana-legalization-foes-aim-to-overturn-election-results/

 

 
'The headline in today's Washington Post says Richard Nixon is "lonely and depressed" down there in his exile hideout in San Clemente. Jesus! How much more of this cheapjack bullshit can we be expected to take from that stupid little gunsel? Who gives a fuck if he's lonely and depressed out there in San Clemente? If there was any such thing as true justice in this world, his rancid carcass would be somewhere down around Easter Island right now, in the belly of a hammerhead shark.

But no - he is sitting out there in the imitation-leather-lined study of his oceanside estate, still guarded constantly by a detail of Secret Service agents and still communicating with the outside world through an otherwise unemployable $40,000-a-year mouthpiece named Ron Ziegler...and still tantalizing the national press with the same kind of shrewdly programmed leaks that served him so well in the last months of his doomed presidency...'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'"We have to put more money in police work so we have legitimate community policing and we're in a situation where we change the legislation," he continued. "No one should go to jail for a drug offense. No one should go to jail for the use of a drug. They should go to drug rehabilitation."'

https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/joe-biden-town-hall-02-16-21/h_63e3cddcaed0d44992d5b981ac08c864

 

'From New York to New Mexico, top policymakers have signaled that cannabis policy reform is a legislative priority for 2021. To date, at least 11 governors have proactively brought up marijuana in their formal addresses, budget plans or press briefings so far, with more expected to come.

While the governors might not be able to unilaterally enact the reforms they’re seeking, their support for the issue could significantly improve the chances of cannabis policy changes succeeding this year, at least in some states.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/governors-across-u-s-push-for-marijuana-reform-in-2021-speeches-and-budget-plans/

 

 

'"The devil made me do it the first time. The second time I done it on my own." - Waylon Jennings

That is how it goes with politicians. The worst are relentless greedheads, and the best can't control their own lusts. Spiro Agnew took brown bags full of cash, and Bill Clinton will suffer the little children to come unto him. Some people go to jail or get impeached for these things, while others are hailed as New Age Wizards and stylish rogues with unfortunate personal addictions. One man's Innocent Child is another man's Raging Slut - and, as always in combat, one loose cannon on your own deck is more dangerous than six enemy cannons.

Welcome to Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, folks. It may be weird, but it's ours. We like it here - except for a handful of worrywarts and Sex Nazis who will never be happy anyway. They are in the Minority now, and their atavistic thinking is about to take another serious whack. They hate perverts, but so what? They hated Joey Buttafuoco, too, and he became a major folk hero and a legendary Sodomite in spite of them.

Ah, but we are not talking about Joey Buttafuoco here. We are talking about William Jefferson Clinton from Hope, Arkansas, the forty-second president of the U.S.A.

Try a booming 73 percent approval rating in the polls, Bubba - up from 51 percent before the Sex Scandal. That's not a bad bump on the charts for a lame-duck, degenerate president with a minority in both houses of Congress and a whole raft of sex-related lawsuits on his hands from women who may or may not be claiming that they were preyed upon by a brute worse than Hermann Goering or even Benjamin Franklin.'

- Memo from the National Affairs Desk: More Trouble in Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, March 19, 1998, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
 

 

'U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he’s putting together a new federal marijuana legalization bill that would allow states freedom to “do whatever they’d like” and put tax revenues into minority communities most harmed by prohibition.

A New York Democrat who filed a marijuana descheduling bill in 2018, Schumer said his latest effort draws from a number of reform bills. He reportedly is working with both Democratic senators and some Republicans.'

https://mjbizdaily.com/senate-leader-chuck-schumer-pushing-federal-marijuana-legalization/
 

 

'With the recent election of the majority-making Georgia Senators both favoring the end of marijuana criminalization, it only increases the political pressure for action in this Congress.

In describing the impetus for including marijuana policy reform as part of the priority agenda, Leader Schumer was characterizing it as a matter of racial and economic justice. “A young man is arrested with a small amount of marijuana in his pocket. He has a criminal record the rest of his life, can’t become a productive citizen—this one won’t hire him, that won’t hire him. Change that,” he said. “There’s lots to do, and we have to succeed.”'

https://norml.org/blog/2021/01/27/senate-majority-leader-schumer-reiterates-push-for-cannabis-reform/

 

'“Despite all of our progress in 2020, with ballot initiative victories and the historic passage of the MORE Act in the House of Representatives, there remained one huge roadblock to finally ending federal prohibition and that roadblock was named Mitch McConnell,” NORML Executive Director Erik Altieri told L.A. Weekly.

Altieri believes with control of the Senate switching back over to the Democrats, odds have never been better for advocates to move comprehensive marijuana law reform legislation through Congress.

“With Democrats in charge of the upper chamber, many of our closest allies in the Senate will take over chair positions on key committees and Senator Chuck Schumer, who has already pledged to schedule hearings and votes for crucial marijuana legislation should his party take power, as majority leader, we couldn’t be in a better position to achieve true federal reform in 2021,” Altieri said.'

https://www.laweekly.com/senate-flip-opens-door-for-big-cannabis-reforms/

 

 

'Nixon's spirit will be with us for the rest of our lives - whether you're me or Bill Clinton or you or Kurt Cobain or Bishop Tutu or Keith Richards or Amy Fisher or Boris Yeltsin's daughter or your fiancee's sixteen-year-old-beer-drunk brother with his braided goatee and his whole life like a thundercloud out in front of him. This is not a generation thing. You don't even have to know who Richard Nixon was to be a victim of his ugly, Nazi spirit.

He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.'

- He Was a Crook, June 16, 1994, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'Many 2021 state legislative sessions are already in full swing, as several states are poised to enact significant reform in the year ahead. Several Governors and other top legislative leaders across the country have been ramping up their calls for enacting marijuana legalization this year, whether it be for adult or medical use. Here’s a breakdown of which Governors and where are calling on lawmakers to enact meaningful reform in 2021.'

https://norml.org/blog/2021/01/12/governors-speak-out-in-favor-of-marijuana-legalization-nation-wide/

 

 

' According to an analysis by Marijuana Moment, one thing is certain: sharing your ballot with cannabis will embarrass you. In the red states, in the blue states and in the battleground states, pot is more popular than the pols. This year, medical cannabis beat the president in South Dakota and Mississippi. Adult-use bested all the Senate, House and gubernatorial candidates in Montana and beat both Trump and Biden in New Jersey and Arizona.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/did-trumps-failure-to-embrace-marijuana-legalization-cost-him-votes-op-ed/

 

'In a trailer released last week, Carter is shown talking about his relationship with the music industry—including his friendship with artists like Nelson and Bob Dylan. At one point, he mentions how Nelson, a cannabis culture icon, disclosed in a biography that he smoked marijuana during a trip to the White House.

“When Willie Nelson wrote his autobiography, he confessed that he smoked pot in the White House and he says that his companion was one of the servants of the White House,” Carter said, as CelebStoner first reported. “It actually was one of my sons.”'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/president-carter-talks-about-his-son-smoking-marijuana-at-the-white-house-with-willie-nelson/

 

'Meanwhile with either Price or Buchanan or both standing ready to write his memoirs for him, Nixon was pondering an offer from Reader's Digest to sign as a "consulting editor" at a salary of $100,000 a year...And Thursday of that week, President Ford made headlines urging the Congress to appropriate $850,000 to cover Nixon's pension, living expenses, and other costs of the painful transition from the White House to San Clemente. When the $850,000 runs out, he will have to scrimp until July 1 of next year, when he will have to pick up another $400,000 that will have to last him until July 1, 1976. For as long as he lives, Richard Nixon will be on the federal dole for $400,000 a year -$60,000 pension, $96,000 to cover personal staff salaries, $40,000 for travel, $21,000 to cover his telephone bills, and $100,000 for "miscellaneous."

On top of his $300,000 annual expense account, Nixon's twenty-four-hour-a-day Secret Service protection will cost the taxpayers between $500 and $1000 a day for as long as he lives - a conservative figure, considering the daily cost of things like helicopters, patrol boats, walkie-talkies, and car telephones, along with salaries and living expenses for ten or twelve full-time agents. There is also the $40,000 a year Ron Ziegler still commands as a ranking public servant. Add another $30,000 to $50,000 each for personal aides like Stephen Bull and Rose Mary Woods, plus all their living and travel expenses - and the cost of maintaining Richard Nixon in exile adds up to something like $750,000 a year...and these are merely the expenses. His personal income will derive from things like the $2 million advance on his memoirs, his $100,000-a-year stipend from Reader's Digest, and the $5,000 a crack he can average, with no effort at all, on the year-round lecture circuit.

So...what we are looking at here is a millionaire ex-president and admitted felon: a congenital thief and pathological liar who spent twenty-eight years on the public sugar tit and then quit just in time to avoid the axe. If he had fought to the bitter end, as he'd promised Julie he would "as long as even one senator believes in me," he risked losing about 95 percent of the $400,000 annual allowance he became qualified for under the "Former Presidents Act" by resigning...But a president who gets impeached, convicted, and dragged out of the White House by U.S. marshals is not covered by any Former Presidents Act. If Nixon had fought to the end and lost - which had become absolutely inevitable by the time he resigned - he would have forfeited all but about $15,000 a year from the federal dole...So, in retrospect, the reason he quit is as easy to see as the numbers on his personal balance sheet. The difference between resignation and being kicked out of office was about $385,000 a year for the rest of his life.

Most of this annual largesse will come, one way or another, out of the pockets of the taxpayers. All of the taxpayers. Even George and Eleanor McGovern will contribute a slice of their income to Richard Nixon's retirement fund...And so will I, unless Jaworski can nail the bastard on enough felony counts to strip him not only of his right to vote, like Agnew, but also his key to the back door of the Federal Treasury - which is not very likely now that Ford has done everything but announce the date for when he will grant the pardon.'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'According to one avid supporter of Donald Trump, the Republican Party is behind the times on weed.

That would be Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL).

"Marijuana politics have more multitudes in 2020 than 2018," he explained. "[T]he political opportunity is there for either party in 2020 on marijuana policy. And there are many marijuana voters… He [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], and I have even sponsored legislation together to democratize access to marijuana research. We get it. The establishment in both parties doesn't."'

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-worried-marijuana-could-derail-221101397.html

 

 

'Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is urging Americans to wear face masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus—and he wants those coverings to be made of hemp.

During an event at the Kentucky-based hemp company Ecofibre on Monday, McConnell talked about the challenges the burgeoning market for the newly legal crop has faced, especially amid the pandemic, but he said it represents a viable commodity that is bolstering the economy.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/mitch-mcconnell-wants-americans-to-wear-hemp-face-masks-to-prevent-coronavirus-spread/

 

'Shit. Not even Spiro Agnew was that dumb. He was a flat-out, knee-crawling thug with the morals of a weasel on speed. But he was Nixon's vice president for five years, and he only resigned when he was caught red-handed taking cash bribes across his desk in the White House.

Unlike Nixon, Agnew didn't argue. He quit his job and fled in the night to Baltimore, where he appeared the next morning in the U.S. District Court, which allowed him to stay out of prison for bribery and extortion in exchange for a guilty (no contest) plea on income-tax evasion. After that he became a major celebrity and played golf and tried to get a Coors distributorship. He never spoke to Nixon again and was an unwelcome guest at the funeral. They called him Rude, but he went anyway. It was one of those Biological Imperatives, like salmon swimming up waterfalls to spawn before they die. He knew he was scum, but it didn't bother him.

Agnew was the Joey Buttafuoco of the Nixon administration, and Hoover was its Caligula. They were brutal, brain-damaged degenerates worse than any hit man out of The Godfather, yet they were the men Nixon trusted most. Together they defined his presidency.

It would be easy to forget and forgive Henry Kissinger of his crimes, just as he forgave Nixon. Yes, we could do that - but it would be wrong. Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure. Nixon was one of these, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end.

Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger, and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.'

- He Was a Crook, June 16, 1994, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'A vice president has to defer to the president’s decisions on policy, but vice presidents can also help shape it. Dick Cheney pushed George W. Bush to invade Iraq, and Joe Biden gave Barack Obama a nudge to endorse same-sex marriage. Maybe Kamala Harris will convince Mr. Biden to push for legalizing marijuana.

There are reasons to think so. One was her laughing reply last year when an interviewer asked if she had ever smoked cannabis: “Half my family’s from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?” Another is that as attorney general of California, she endorsed legalization of recreational weed, which the state’s voters approved in 2016.'

https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2020/08/18/Steve-Chapman-Can-Harris-get-Biden-to-push-for-legalizing-pot/stories/202008180014

 

'Fifty-eight percent of respondents — including 69 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of Republicans — agreed that “the federal government should legalize the use and sale of marijuana for adults.” Support among Democrats rose to 79 percent when respondents were provided details about the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, which is currently pending before Congress and seeks to remove the cannabis plant from the federal Controlled Substances Act. Sixty percent of Republicans also endorsed the MORE Act. By contrast, Independent voters were largely undecided on the issue.'

https://norml.org/blog/2020/08/19/poll-support-for-legalizing-marijuana-is-bipartisan/
 

 

'Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) was asked about Biden’s marijuana platform during an interview with an executive of cannabis company Canopy Growth Corporation. He said that he’s been actively discussing the issue with the campaign and Biden “is evolving” despite his ongoing opposition to legalization—but he “needs to embrace it.”

In the meantime, the former vice president’s pledge to simply decriminalize marijuana at the federal level doesn’t go far enough, the congressman said.

“It is demanded by the American public. It’s no longer controversial,” Blumenauer, who is co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, said of legalization. “For the campaign to talk about decriminalization is essentially meaningless. Your grandmother is for decriminalization.”'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/bidens-marijuana-decriminalization-plan-is-meaningless-democratic-congressman-says/

 

 

'Neither John Ehrlichman nor Charles Colson, for instance, were "officially" aware of the stunningly sophisticated network of hidden bugs that the Technical Security Division of the Secret Service had constructed for President Nixon. According to Alex Butterfield's testimony in closed hearings before the House Judiciary Committee, Nixon told chief SS agent Wong to have his electronics experts wire every room, desk, lamp, phone, and mantelpiece inside the White House grounds where the president was likely ever to utter a word of more than one syllable on any subject.

I've been using tape recorders in all kinds of journalistic situations for almost ten years, all kinds of equipment, ranging from ten-inch studio reels to raisin-sized minibugs - but I have never seen anything like the system the Secret Service experts rigged up for Nixon in the White House. In addition to dozens of wireless, voice-activated mikes about the size of a pencil eraser that he had built into the woodwork, there were also custom-built sensors, delay mechanisms, and "standby" switches wired into telephones that either Bull or Butterfield could activate.

In the Cabinet Room, for instance, Nixon had microphones built into the bases of the wall lamps that he could turn on or off with harmless-looking buzzers labeled "Haldeman" and "Butterfield" on the rug underneath the cabinet table in front of his chair. The tapes and recording equipment were installed in a locked closet in the basement of the West Wing, but Nixon could start the reels rolling by simply pressing on the floor buzzer marked "Butterfield" with the toe of his shoe - and to stop the reels, putting the machinery back on standby, he could step on the "Haldeman" button...'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
 

 

'President Trump on Monday urged Republicans not to place marijuana legalization initiatives on state ballots out of concern that it will increase Democratic turnout in elections.

The president, who has rarely weighed in on cannabis policy without being prompted, said in extemporaneous remarks at a campaign event that he blames marijuana legalization efforts on former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) defeat in the 2018 election.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/trump-voices-concern-that-putting-marijuana-on-the-ballot-makes-republicans-lose/
 

 

'Though Biden has come around to the idea of removing criminal penalties for marijuana possession, and he is now advocating for clearing the records of those who’ve been punished for such crimes, his longstanding record of opposing reform and embracing punitive drug policies leave questions about what actions he’d be willing to take concerning the issue if elected to the Oval Office.

He remains out of step with the majority of his party on the question of legalization, and it doesn’t seem likely that cannabis reform would be at the top of his agenda if elected. That said, his recent pivot in favor of decriminalization and medical cannabis legalization indicates that he recognizes that a tough-on-crime approach to drugs is no longer politically acceptable to voters in his party and signals that further evolution in his position on cannabis is possible.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/where-presidential-candidate-joe-biden-stands-on-marijuana/

 

'Nixon had no friends except George Will and J. Edgar Hoover (and they both deserted him). It was Hoover's shameless death in 1972 that led directly to Nixon's downfall. He felt helpless and alone with Hoover gone. He no longer had access to either the Director or the Director's ghastly bank of Personal Files on almost everybody in Washington.

Hoover was Nixon's right flank, and when he croaked, Nixon knew how Lee felt when Stonewall Jackson got killed at Chancellorsville. It permanently exposed Lee's flank and led to the disaster at Gettysburg.

For Nixon, the loss of Hoover led inevitably to the disaster of Watergate. It meant hiring a New Director - who turned out to be an unfortunate toady named L. Patrick Gray, who squealed like a pig in hot oil the first time Nixon leaned on him. Gray panicked and fingered White House Counsel John Dean, who refused to take the rap and rolled over, instead, on Nixon, who was trapped like a rat by Dean's relentless, vengeful testimony and went all to pieces right in front of our eyes on TV.

That is Watergate, in a nut, for people with seriously diminished attention spans. The real story is a lot longer and reads like a textbook on human treachery. They were all scum, but only Nixon walked free and lived to clear his name. Or at least that's what Bill Clinton says - and he is, after all, the president of the United States.

Nixon liked to remind people of that. He believed it, and that was why he went down. He was not only a crook but a fool. Two years after he quit, he told a TV journalist that "if the president does it, it can't be illegal."'

- He Was a Crook, June 16, 1994, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'Both Harris and Biden have evolved their positions on cannabis over time. Harris, a former prosecutor who campaigned against legalization in her own state has become the lead sponsor of a bill to federally legalize marijuana. Biden, who authored punitive drug legislation during his time as a senator, now supports modest cannabis reforms such as decriminalization and rescheduling, though he continue to oppose legalization. If the Democratic ticket gets elected, it remains to be seen to what extent the new administration would prioritize drug policy reform efforts and whether Harris would seek to encourage Biden to get behind full legalization.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/where-vice-presidential-candidate-kamala-harris-stands-on-marijuana/

'In each of these situations one turns away to ponder the question: Who has made the decision that sets in motion these chains of poisonings, this ever-widening wave of death that spreads out, like ripples when a pebble is dropped into a still pond? Who has placed in one pan of the scales the leaves that might have been eaten by the beetles and in the other the pitiful heaps of many-hued feathers, the lifeless remains of the birds that fell before the unselective bludgeon of insecticidal poisons? Who has decided - who has the right to decide - for the countless legions of people who were not consulted that the supreme value is a world without insects, even though it be also a sterile world ungraced by the curving wing of a bird in flight? The decision is that of the authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power; he has made it during a period of inattention by millions to whom beauty and the ordered world of nature still have a meaning that is deep and imperative.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962

'There is only one kind of help possible - the abolition of that terrible cone of violence which enables the person or persons who succeed in seizing the apex to have power over all the rest, and to hold that power the more firmly the more cruel and inhuman they are, as we see, by the cases of the Napoleons, Nicholas I, Bismarck, Chamberlain, Rhodes, and our Russian Dictators who rule the people in the Tsar's name.

There is only one way to destroy the binding together of this cone - it is by shaking off the hypnotism of patriotism.

Understand that you yourselves cause all the evils from which you suffer, by yielding to the suggestions by which emperors, kings, members of Parliament, governors, officers, capitalists, priests, authors, artists, and all who need this fraud of patriotism in order to live upon your labour, deceive you!

Whoever you may be - Frenchman, Russian, Pole, Englishman, Irishman, or Bohemian - understand that all your real human interests, whatever they may be - agricultural, industrial, commercial, artistic, or scientific - as well as your pleasures and joys, in no way run counter to the interests of other peoples or States, and that you are united with the folk of other lands by mutual co-operation, by interchange of services, by the joy of wide brotherly intercourse, and by the interchange not merely of goods but also of thoughts and feelings.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism - which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You have to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

Nixon's meteoric rise from the unemployment line to the vice presidency in six quick years would never have happened if TV had come along ten years earlier. He got away with his sleazy "my dog Checkers" speech in 1952 because most voters heard it on the radio or read about it in the headlines of their local, Republican newspapers. When Nixon finally had to face the TV cameras for real in the 1960 presidential campaign debates, he got whipped like a red-headed mule. Even die-hard Republican voters were shocked by his cruel and incompetent persona. Interestingly, most people who heard about those debates on the radio thought Nixon had won. But the mushrooming TV audience saw him as a truthless used-car salesman, and they voted accordingly. It was the first time in fourteen years that Nixon lost an election.

When he arrived in the White House as VP at the age of forty, he was a smart young man on the rise - a hubris-crazed monster from the bowels of the American dream with a heart full of hate and an overweening lust to be president. He had won every office he'd run for and stomped like a Nazi on all of his enemies and even some of his friends.'

- He Was a Crook, June 16, 1994, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'About this time an anti-narcotics drive hit the town. The chief of police said, "This drive is going to continue as long as there is a single violator left in the city." The State legislators drew up a law making it a crime to be a drug addict. They did not specify where or when or what they meant by drug addict.
The cops began stopping addicts on the street and examining arms for needle marks. If they found marks, they pressured the addict to sign a statement admitting his condition so he could be charged under the "drug addicts law." The addicts were promised a suspended sentence if they would plead guilty and get the new law started. Addicts ransacked their persons looking for places to shoot in outside the arm area. If the law could find no marks on a man they usually let him go. If they found marks they would hold him for seventy-two hours and try to make him sign a statement.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953


'Safe in Mexico, I watched the anti-junk campaign. I read about child addicts and Senators demanding the death penalty for dope peddlers. It didn't sound right to me. Who wants kids fr customers? They never have enough money and they always spill under questioning. Parents find out the kid is on junk and go to the law. I figured that either Stateside peddlers have gone simple-minded or the whole child-addict set-up is a propaganda routine to stir up anti-junk sentiment and pass some new laws.
Refugee hipsters trickled into Mexico. "Six months for needle marks under the vag-addict law in California." "Eight years for a dropper in Washington." "Two to ten for selling in New York."' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

 

'Any serious description of Nixon's awesome tape-recording system would take thousands of words and boggle the minds of most laymen, but even this quick capsule is enough to suggest two fairly obvious but rarely mentioned conclusions: Anybody with this kind of a tape system, installed and maintained twenty-four hours a day by Secret Service electronics experts, is going to consistently produce extremely high quality voice reproductions. And since the White House personnel office can hire the best transcribing typists available and provide them with the best tape-transcribing machinery on the market, there is only once conceivable reason for those thousands of maddening, strategically spotted "unintelligibles" in the Nixon version of the White House Tapes. Any Kelly Girl agency in the country would have given Nixon his money back if their secretaries had done that kind of damage to his transcripts. Sloppiness of that magnitude can only be deliberate, and Nixon is known to have personally edited most of those tape transcripts before they were typed for the printer...Which doesn't mean much, now that Nixon's version of the transcripts is no longer potential evidence but sloppy artifacts that are no longer even interesting to read except as an almost criminally inept contrast to the vastly more detailed and coherent transcripts that the House Judiciary Committee transcribers produced from the same tapes. The only people with any reason to worry about either the implications of those butchered transcripts or the ham-fisted criminal who did the final editing job are the editors at whichever publishing house decides to pay Richard Nixon $2 million for his presidential memoirs, which will be heavily dependent on that vast haul of Oval Office tapes that Gerald Ford has just decreed are the personal property of Richard Nixon. He will have the final edit on those transcripts, too - just before he sends the final draft of his memoirs to the printer. The finished book will probably sell for $15, and a lot of people will be stupid enough to buy it.'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Popularity is for dolls. "Steep and craggy," said Porphyry," is the path of the gods." - Culture, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage


'We might as wisely reprove the east wind, or the frost, as a political party, whose members, for the most part, could give no account for their position, but stand for the defence of those interests in which they find themselves. Our quarrel with them begins when they quit this deep natural ground at the bidding of some leader, and obeying personal considerations, throw themselves into the maintenance and defence of points nowise belonging to their system. A party is perpetually corrupted by personality. Whilst we absolve the association from dishonesty, we cannot extend the same charity to their leaders. They reap the rewards of the docility and the zeal of the masses which they direct.' - Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage

'The funeral was a dreary affair, finely staged for TV and shrewdly dominated by ambitious politicians and revisionist historians. The Rev. Billy Graham, still agile and eloquent at the age of 136, was billed as the main speaker, but he was quickly upstaged by two 1996 GOP presidential candidates: Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and Gov. Pete Wilson of California, who formally hosted the event and saw his poll numbers crippled when he got blown off the stage by Dole, who somehow seized the no. 3 slot on the roster and uttered such a shameless, self-serving eulogy that even he burst into tears at the end of it.

Dole's stock went up like a rocket and cast him as the early GOP front-runner for '96. Wilson, speaking next, sounded like an Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator and probably won't even be reelected as governor of California in November.

The historians were strongly represented by the no. 2 speaker, Henry Kissinger, Nixon's secretary of state and himself a zealous revisionist with serious axes to grind. He set the tone for the day with a maudlin and spectacularly self-serving portrait of Nixon as even more saintly than his mother and as a president of many godlike accomplishments - most of them put together in secret by Kissinger, who came to California as part of a huge publicity tour for his new book on diplomacy, genius, Stalin, H.P. Lovecraft, and other great minds of our time, including himself and Richard Nixon.

Kissinger was only one of the many historians who suddenly came to see Nixon as more than the sum of his many squalid parts. He seemed to be saying that History will not have to absolve Nixon, because he had already done it himself in a massive act of will and crazed arrogance that already ranks him supreme, along with other Nietzschean supermen like Hitler, Jesus, Bismarck, and the Emperor Hirohito. These revisionists have catapulted Nixon to the status of an American Caesar, claiming that when the definitive history of the twentieth century is written, no other president will come close to Nixon in stature. "He will dwarf FDR and Truman," according to one scholar from Duke University.

It was all gibberish, of course. Nixon was no more a Saint than he was a Great President. He was more Sammy Glick than Winston Churchill. He was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal who bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II, and he denied it to the day of his death. When students at Kent State University, in Ohio, protested the bombing, he connived to have them attacked and slain by troops from the National Guard.'

- He Was a Crook, June 16, 1994, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'The abolition of governments will merely rid us of an unnecessary organization for the commission of violence and for its justification.

'But there will then be no laws, no property, no courts of justice, no police, no popular education', say people who intentionally confuse the use of violence by governments with various social activities.

The abolition of the organization of government formed to do violence does not at all involve the abolition of what is reasonable and good, and therefore not based on violence, in laws or law courts, or in property, or in police regulations, or in financial arrangements, or in popular education. On the contrary, the absence of the brutal power of government which is needed only for its own support, will facilitate a more just and reasonable social organization, needing no violence. Courts of justice, and public affairs, and popular education, will all exist to the extent to which they are really needed by the people, but in a form which will not involve the evils contained in the present form of government. Only that will be destroyed which was evil and hindered the free expression of the people's will.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'Netanyahu said at a press conference Thursday that he agreed to give a ministerial post in a future government to Zehut leader Moshe Feiglin and advance medical marijuana legislation, an issue supported by Feiglin. In exchange, Feiglin’s party agreed not to run in next month’s elections.'
https://apnews.com/818f3295e3814bacb02ecf9cb7354a7f

 

 

'The more patriotic an official is, the more he prospers in his career. The war produced by patriotism gives the army man a chance of a promotion.

Patriotism and its resulting wars give an enormous revenue to the newspaper trade and profits to many other trades. The more every writer, teacher, and professor preaches patriotism the more secure is he in his place. The more every emperor and king is addicted to patriotism the more fame he obtains.

The ruling classes have in their hands the army, the schools, the churches, the press, and money. In the schools they kindle patriotism in the children by means of histories describing their own people as the best of all peoples and always on the right. Among adults they kindle it by spectacles, jubilees, monuments, and by a lying patriotic press. Above all they inflame patriotism by perpetrating every kind of injustice and harshness against other nations, provoking in them enmity towards their own people, and then in turn exploit that enmity to embitter their people against the foreigner.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays 

'These are harsh words for a man only recently cannonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern - but I have written far worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man - evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him - except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.

It is fitting that Richard Nixon's final gesture to the American people was a clearly illegal series of 21 105-mm howitzer blasts that shattered the peace of a residential neighborhood and permanently disturbed many children. Neighbors also complained about another unsanctioned burial in the yard at the old Nixon place, which was brazenly illegal. "It makes the whole neighborhood like a graveyard," said one. "And it fucks up my children's sense of values."

Many were incensed about the howitzers - but they knew there was nothing they could do about it - not with the current president sitting fifty yards away and laughing at the roar of the cannons. It was Nixon's last war, and he won.'

- He Was a Crook, June 16, 1994, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'" And the best thing possible for the education of the denizens of the heaving hemp-smelling bivouacs that now litter Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park ... would be for them to stop blocking the traffic and buy a copy of Charles’s magnificent book so that they can learn about a true feminist, green revolutionary who changed the world for the better.”'
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-hemp-smelling-crusties-extinction-rebellion_uk_5d9b9a99e4b03b475f9e51cd?guccounter=1

'Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature. They must do what they can. Like one class of forest animals, they have nothing but a prehensile tail; climb they must or crawl. If a man found himself so rich-natured that he could enter into strict relations with the best persons and make life serene around him by the dignity and sweetness of his behavior, could he afford to circumvent the favor of the caucus and the press, and covet relations so hollow and pompous as those of a politician? Surely nobody would be a charlatan who could afford to be sincere.' - Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage


'“I believe that it is important for me to be clear from the outset that the UK government has no plans to change the law to allow the establishment of such facilities in the UK,” he said in a letter to the Holyrood public health minister, Joe FitzPatrick, according to the Scotsman. “There are, however, many areas where we can work productively together.”'
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/07/britains-minister-responsible-for-drug-policy-replaced-victoria-atkins

 

'The second and most meaningful aspect vis-a-vis Nixon's tape system has to do with the way he used it. Most tape freaks see their toys as ways to bug other people, but Nixon had the SS technician install almost every concealed bug in his system with a keen eye for its proximity to Richard Nixon.

According to Butterfield, Nixon was so obsessed with recording every move and moment of his presidency for the history books that he often seemed to be thinking of nothing else. When he walked from the White House to his office in the Executive Office Building (EOB), for instance, he would carry a small tape recorder in front of his mouth and maintain a steady conversation with it as he moved in his stiff-legged way across the lawn...And although we will never hear those tapes, the mere fact that he was constantly making them, for reasons of his own, confirms Alex Butterfield's observation that Richard Nixon was so bewitched with the fact that he really was the president that his only sense of himself in that job came from the moments he could somehow record and squirrel away in some safe place, for tomorrow night or the ages.

There is a bleeding kind of irony in this unnatural obsession of Nixon with his place in history when you realize what must have happened in his mind when he finally realized, probably sometime in those last few days of his doomed presidency, just exactly what kind of place in history was even then being carved out for him.'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'A searing, on-the-ground look at President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly campaign against suspected drug dealers and users in the Philippines, “On the President’s Orders” is told with unprecedented access to the police themselves. It offers a gripping, visually stunning window into the war on drugs — those carrying it out, and those most impacted by it.'
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/on-the-presidents-orders/


The cannabis death count..
https://twitter.com/JohnFetterman/status/1253277973635117056

 

 
'So that not the imaginary but the real patriotism which we all know, by which most people today are swayed and from which humanity suffers so severely, is not the wish for spiritual benefits for one's own people (it is impossible to desire spiritual benefits for one's own people only), but is a very definite feeling of preference for one's own people or State above all other people and States, and a consequent wish to get for that people or State the greatest advantages and power that can be got - things which are obtainable only at the expense of the advantages and power or other peoples or States.

It would therefore seem obvious that patriotism as a feeling is bad and harmful, and as a doctrine is stupid. For it is clear that if each people and each State considers itself the best of peoples and States, they all live in a gross and harmful delusion.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'Nixon was a navy man, and he should have been buried at sea. Many of his friends were seagoing people: Bebe Rebozo, Robert Vesco, William F. Buckley Jr., and some of them wanted a full naval burial.

These come in at least two styles, however, and Nixon's immediate family strongly opposed both of them. In the traditionalist style, the dead president's body would be wrapped and sewn loosely in canvas sailcloth and dumped off the stern of a frigate at least one hundred miles off the coast and at least one thousand miles south of San Diego, so the corpse would never wash up on American soil in any recognizable form.

The family opted for cremation until they were advised of the potentially onerous implications of a strictly private, unwitnessed burning of the man who was, after all, the president of the United States. Awkward questions might be raised, dark allusions to Hitler and Rasputin. People would be filing lawsuits to get their hands on the dental charts. Long court battles would be inevitable - some with liberal cranks bitching about corpus delicti and habeas corpus, and others with giant insurance companies trying not to pay off on his death benefits. Either way, an orgy of greed and duplicity was sure to follow any public hint that Nixon might have somehow faked his own death or been cryogentically transferred to fascist Chinese interests on the Central Asian mainland.

It would also play into the hands of those millions of self-stigmatized patriots like me who believe these things already.

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.'

- He Was a Crook, June 16, 1994, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'“Politicians are always lagging behind public opinion. They always wait for a parade and then run to get in front of it,” Erik Altieri said.

 Altieri said to obtain federal legalization a true, multi-racial, class, and generation coalition is needed. NORML has built strong alliances with the ACLU and NAACP, among others. They also have some unexpected allies like AARP, which advocates for seniors since clinical cannabis benefits them greatly.

“We have the American people at our back, and we’ll finally see prohibition crumble and be a relic of history,” Erik Altieri predicted.'
https://headynj.com/erik-altieri-leading-norml-to-cannabis-legalization-victories/

 

 

'The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried. We must not think that all things are lapsing into confusion if every tender protestant be not compelled to bear his part in certain social conventions; nor doubt that roads can be built, letters carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the government of force is at end. Are our methods now so excellent that all competition is hopeless? could not a nation of friends even devise better ways? On the other hand, let not the most conservative and timid fear anything from a premature surrender of the bayonet and the system of force. For, according to the order of nature, which is quite superior to our will, it stands thus; there will always be a government of force where men are selfish; and when they are pure enough to abjure the code of force they will be wise enough to see how these public ends of the post-office, of the highway, of commerce and the exchange of property, of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and science can be answered.' - Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage

 

 

'No other president in American history has been driven out of the White House in a cloud of disgrace. No other president has been forced to preside over the degrading collapse of his own administration or been forced to stand aside and watch helplessly - and also guiltily - while some of his close friends and ranking assistants are led off to jail. And finally, no president of the United States has ever been so vulnerable to criminal prosecution, so menaced by the threat of indictment and trial, crouched in the dock of a federal courtroom and so obviously headed for prison that only the sudden grant of presidential pardon from the man he appointed to succeed him could prevent his final humiliation.

These are the stinking realities that will determine Richard Nixon's place in American history...And in this ugly context, the argument that "Richard Nixon has been punished enough" takes on a different meaning. He will spend many nights out there in his study in San Clemente, listening over and over to those tapes he made for the ages and half remembering the feel of thick grass on the Rose Garden lawn adding a strange new spring to his walk, even making him talk a bit louder as he makes his own knotty, plastic kind of love to his sweet little Japanese bride, telling it over and over again that he really is The President, The Most Powerful Man in the World - and goddamn it, you better never forget that!'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Rather than calling for cannabis to be rescheduled and decriminalized, the Biden campaign should pledge to de-schedule and legalize the plant. Only by removing marijuana from the CSA [Controlled Substances Act] in a manner similar to alcohol (which is unscheduled under federal law) can the government amend federal marijuana policy in a manner that comports with state laws, public opinion, scientific consensus, and the plant’s rapidly evolving cultural status. And only via legalization can state and local regulators impose necessary controls, oversight, and best practices to the marijuana market.

This why candidate Biden should join with many of his Democratic colleagues – such as Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) — in support of HR 3884/S 2227: The Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement Act. The Act, which passed the House Judiciary Committee late last fall, removes cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act so that states, not the federal government, possess the flexibility and authority to regulate cannabis within their borders as best they see fit — without the threat of undue federal interference.'
https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/506721-bidens-marijuana-plan-is-out-of-step-with-public-opinion


'Kathmandu had become a haven for anti-war ‘peaceniks’, draft dodgers, and Vietnam veterans. White House recordings from the early 1970s reveal Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warning Nixon: “They come from Nepal to demonstrate against you because up there they can get free pot … or at least it is legal.”

Banning cannabis drove the cultivation and use of this important cash crop underground and into the hands of organised criminals with police and political protection. Nepal’s subsistence farmers were pushed deeper into poverty, and may even have sparked the Maoist revolution in later years.

Campaigners in Kathmandu now see no reason why Nepal should keep the ban when the Americans who forced it on Nepal have legalised it in 25 states for medical and commercial purposes.'
https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-grass-is-greener-in-nepal/

  

'"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." - Revelation 18.2

Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing - a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy vice-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that "I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."

I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, and I am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together. Nixon laughed when I told him about this. "Don't worry, " he said. "I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you."

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive - and he was, all the way to the end - we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back, rolling under the thrust of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.

That was Nixon's style - and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, Bubba. That's why God made daschshunds.'

- He Was a Crook, June 16, 1994, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tributes to governments founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment and a sufficient belief in the unity of things, to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable and a good neighbour, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation. What is strange too, there never was in any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the State on the principle of right and love. All those who have pretended this design have been partial reformers, and have admitted in some manner the supremacy of the bad State.' - Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage

 

 

'If only the hearts of individual men would not be troubled by the temptations which assail them every hour, and would not be frightened by the imaginary terrors that alarm them; if only men recognized in what their mighty and all conquering power lies, that peace which they have always desired - not the peace obtained by diplomatic negotiations, by visits of emperors and kings from one town to another, by banquets, speeches, fortresses, artillery, dynamite and melinite, by exhausting the people by taxation or tearing the flower of the nation from toil and corrupting it, but the peace which is secured by the free advocacy of the truth by each individual man - would long since have been established among us.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'If only free men would not rely on what has no power and is never free, that is, external force, but would trust in what is always powerful and free, that is, the truth and its expression!

If only men would boldly and clearly express the truth already manifest to them (of the brotherhood of all nations and the crime of exclusive devotion to one's own) that defunct, false, public opinion on which rests the power of governments and all the evil they produce, would slough off by itself like a dead skin and reveal that new, living, public opinion which now only awaits the shedding of the old husk that has confined it, in order to announce its demands clearly and powerfully and establish new forms of existence in conformity with the conscience of mankind.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

 

 

'Let's face it, Bubba. The main reason I'll vote for Clinton is George Bush, and it has been that way from the start...There is no way around it (for me) and no reason to apologize for it. George Bush is a dangerously failed President and a half-bright top-level Nerd who has spent the last four years avoiding grocery stores and gas stations while he tried to keep tabs on the disastrous fallout from the orgy of greed and short selling that was the "Reagan Revolution."

We still have a problem with my ability to explain why I feel so strongly about voting for Clinton - except that another four years of the Reagan-Bush band will mean the Death of Hope and the Loss of all sense of Possibility in Politics for a whole generation that desperately needs that fix and will wither on the vine without it.

That is reason enough to vote for Clinton.'

- Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, September 17, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is - Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men at all times, and even in heroes in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity, custom and fear. This gives force to the strong-that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.' - Power, Emerson The Writings of America's Sage

 

'Men have only to understand that what is given out to them as public opinion and is maintained by such complicated, strenuous, and artificial means, is not public opinion but a dead relic of what was once public opinion; they have only, above all, to believe in themselves - in the fact that what they are conscious of in the depths of their souls and what craves expression in each of them and remains unexpressed only because it runs counter to existing social opinion, is that force which transforms that world and to express which is man's vocation - they have only to believe that the truth lies not in what is said by the people around them, but in what is said by their conscience, that is, by God, - and the false and artificially maintained public opinion will instantly vanish and a true public opinion establish itself.

If only people would say what they think and refrain from saying what they do not think, all the superstitions bred by patriotism would fall away at once with all the evil feelings and acts of violence that are based upon them. The hatred and enmity of one country for another that is fanned by the governments would cease, and so would the glorification of warlike exploits, that is, of murder; and above all there would be an end of respect and subservience towards those in power and of the surrender to them of men's labour - for these things have no foundation but patriotism.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

 

'One of the most difficult problems for a journalist covering a presidential campaign is getting to know the candidates well enough to make confident judgements about them because it's just about impossible for a journalist to establish a personal relationship with any candidate who has already made the big leap from "long shot" to "serious contender." The problem becomes more and more serious as the stakes get higher, and by the time a candidate has survived enough primaries to convince himself and his staff that they will all be eating their lunches at the White House Mess for the next four years, he is long past the point of either having the time or the inclination to treat any journalist who doesn't know him personally as anything but just another face in the campaign "press corps."

There are many complex theories about the progressive stages of a presidential campaign, but for the moment let's just say there are three: Stage One is the period between the decision to run for president and the morning after the New Hampshire primary when the field is still crowded, the staff organizations are still loose and relaxed, and most candidates are still hungry for all the help they can get - especially media exposure, so they can get their names in the Gallup poll; stage two is the "winnowing out," the separating of the sheep from the goats, when the two or three survivors from the early primaries begin looking like long-distance runners with a realistic shot at the party nomination; and stage three begins whenever the national media, the public opinion polls, and Mayor Daley of Chicago decide that a candidate has picked up enough irreversible momentum to begin looking at least a probable nominee, and a possible next president.

The three stage breakdown is not rooted in any special wisdom or scientific analysis, but it fits both the 1972 and 1976 Democratic campaigns well enough to make the point that any journalist who doesn't get a pretty firm personal fix on a candidate while he's still in stage one might just as well go with his or her instincts all the way to Election Day in November, because once a candidate gets to stage two his whole lifestyle changes drastically.'

- Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '76: Third-Rate Romance, Low Rent Rendezvous, June 3, 1976, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'A timid man, listening to the alarmists in Congress and in the newspapers, and observing the profligacy of party - sectional interests urged with a fury which shuts its eyes to consequences, with a mind made up to desperate extremities, ballot in one hand and rifle in the other - might easily believe that he and his country have seen their best days, and he hardens himself the best he can against the coming ruin. But after this has been foretold with equal confidence fifty times, and the government six per cents have not declined a quarter of a mill, he discovers that the enormous elements of strength which are at play make our politics unimportant. Personal power, freedom, and the resources of nature strain the faculty of every citizen. We prosper with such vigor that like thrifty trees, which grow in spite of ice, lice, mice, and borers, so we do not suffer from the profligate swarms that fatten on the national treasury.' - Power, Emerson The Writings of America's Sage

'But yet in these apparently unimportant actions - in our indicating to the extent of our powers the unreasonableness of what we clearly see to be irrational and refraining from taking part in it - lies our great and irresistible power: the power which constitutes that unconquerable force which makes up real genuine public opinion - that opinion which with its own advance moves all humanity. Governments know this. They tremble before that force and strive in every possible way to counteract and overcome it.

They know that strength lies not in force but in the action of the mind and in the clear expression. And they fear that expression of independent thought more than an army. So they establish censorship, bribe newspapers, and seize control of the Churches and schools. But the spiritual force which moves the world eludes them. It is not in a book or a newspaper: it cannot be trapped but is always free, for it lies in the depth's of man's consciousness. This most powerful, elusive, and free force shows itself in a man's soul when he is alone and reflects on the phenomena of the world and then involuntarily expresses his thoughts to his wife, his brother, his friend, and to all whom he accounts it a sin to conceal what he considers to be the truth. No milliards of rubles, or millions of troops, or any institutions, or wars, or revolutions, can or will produce what a free man can produce by the simple expression of what he considers right, independently of what exists and what is impressed upon him.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'I came away from Little Rock with mixed feelings. Bill Clinton and I did not hit off real well, but so what? I got into politics a long time ago, and I still believe, on some days, that it can be a horrible trade...This is not an easy belief to hang on to after wallowing for thirty years in the belly of a Beast that has beaten up and broken more good men and women than Crack and Junk Bonds combined. Politics is a mean Business, and when September rolls around in a campaign, it gets mean on a level that is beyond most people's comprehension. The White House is the most powerful office in the world, and a lot of people will tell you nothing is over the line when it finally comes down to winning or losing it. Nobody is safe and Nothing is sacred when the stakes get that high. It is the ultimate Fast Lane, and the people still on their feet in September are usually the Meanest of the Mean. The last train out of any station will not be full of Nice guys.

Look at Bush. He has worked overtime to give Politics a bad name. He is a mean-spirited wimp and a career bureaucrat who has arguably committed more high crimes and misdemeanors in and around the Oval Office than Nixon would have been Impeached for if he hadn't resigned...Nixon was genetically Dishonest, and so is Bush. They both represent what Bobby Kennedy called "the darkest impulses of the American Spirit..."

And Bill Clinton does not. That is the nut of it. Clinton is a decent man and a credit to his race...Ho, ho. That's a joke, Bubba. Bush wouldn't laugh at it, and neither did Mr. Bill when I shook his hand and said it to him with a nice smile. He gave me one of those weird sleepy-eyed stares and wished me good Luck for the rest of my life.

I am now going back to the drawing board to come up with a better and more valid reason to vote for Clinton in November - which I plan to do, but my reasons are no more concrete today than they were on the flight down from Little Rock. I like him a little better, but there was nothing in what he said for the record to excite anybody except cops, money mongers, and elitist policy wonks. The rest is all a matter of blind faith and reading between the lines.'

- Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, September 17, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'NORML urges candidate Biden to join with many of his Democratic colleagues and to throw his support behind The MORE Act, HR 3884 — which would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act and once and for all allow individual states the flexibility and authority to regulate cannabis how best they see fit.

 The MORE Act would also make several other important changes. For example, it permits physicians affiliated with the Veterans Administration to make medical marijuana recommendations to qualifying veterans who reside in legal states and it incentivizes states to move ahead with expungement policies that will end the stigma and lost opportunities suffered by those with past, low-level cannabis convictions. If approved, the MORE Act also allows the Small Business Administration to support entrepreneurs and businesses as they seek to gain a foothold in this emerging industry.

 The MORE Act became the first bill in US history to end federal marijuana prohibition to be approved in the House Judiciary Committee on November, 20th, 2019 with a bipartisan vote of 24-10.'
https://norml.org/blog/2020/07/09/bidens-marijuana-plan-is-out-of-step-with-public-opinion-would-do-little-to-mitigate-the-failed-policy-of-federal-prohibition/

'No feats of heroism are needed to bring about the greatest and most important changes in the life of humanity; neither the arming of millions of men, nor the construction of new railways and machines, nor the organization of exhibitions or trade unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor dynamite outrages, nor the perfection of aerial navigation, and so forth. All that is necessary is a change of public opinion.

And for that change no effort of thought is demanded, no refutation of any existing thing, and no planning of anything new and extraordinary. All that is necessary is to cease acquiescing in the public opinion of the past, now false and already defunct and only artificially induced by governments. It is only necessary for each individual to say what he really thinks and feels or at least refrain from saying what he does not think.

If only men - even a few - would do that, the out-worn public opinion would at once and of itself fall away and a new, real, and vital opinion would manifest itself. And with this change of public opinion all that inner fabric of men's lives which oppresses and torments them would change of its own accord. One is ashamed to say how little is needed to deliver all men from the calamities which now oppress them. It is only necessary to give up lying! Only let men reject the lie which is imposed upon them; only let them stop saying what they neither think nor feel, and at once such a change of the whole structure of our life will be accomplished as the revolutionaries would not achieve in centuries even if all the power were in their hands.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'However, the conversation on police reform cannot simply start and end with these measures, and it must include a reexamination of our entire criminal justice system. We should be repealing mandatory sentencing and reducing over-policing (which includes finally legalizing adult-use marijuana)'
https://www.poconorecord.com/opinion/20200707/lt-gov-john-fetterman-discretion-and-de-escalation-are-police-officerrsquos-strongest-tools

'At that point he becomes a public figure, a serious contender, and the demands on his time and energy begin escalating to the level of madness. He wakes up every morning to face a split-second, eighteen-hour-a-day schedule of meetings, airports, speeches, press conferences, motorcades, and handshaking. Instead of rambling, off-the-cuff talks over a drink or two with reporters from small-town newspapers, he is suddenly flying all over the country in his own chartered jet full of syndicated columnists and network TV stars...Cameras and microphones follow him everywhere he goes, and instead of pleading long and earnestly for the support of fifteen amateur political activists gathered in some English professor's living room in Keene, New Hampshire, he is reading the same cliche-riddled speech - often three or four times in a single day - to vast audiences full of people who either laugh or applaud at all the wrong times and who may or may not be supporters...And all the fat cats, labour leaders, and big-time pols who couldn't find the time to return his calls when he was desperately looking for help a few months ago are ringing his phone off the hook within minutes after his arrival in whatever Boston, Miami, or Milwaukee hotel his managers have booked him into that night. But they are not calling to offer their help and support, they just want to make sure he understands that they don't plan to help or support anybody else, until they get to know him a little better.

It is a very mean game that these high-rolling, coldhearted hustlers play. The president of the United States may no longer be "the most powerful man in the world," but he is still close enough to be sure that nobody else in the world is going to cross him by accident. And anybody who looks like he might get his hands on that kind of power had better get comfortable, right from the start, with the certain knowledge that he is going to have to lean on some very mean and merciless people just to get himself elected.'

- Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '76: Third-Rate Romance, Low Rent Rendezvous, June 3, 1976, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'Trump’s remarks about the causal relationship between weed and IQ are disputed by one of his own governmental agencies, the National Institute of Drug Abuse.

“Recent results from two prospective longitudinal twin studies did not support a causal relationship between marijuana use and IQ loss,” NIDA says on its website. “No predictable difference was found between twins when one used marijuana and one did not.”'
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3bmxj/trump-says-weed-makes-you-dumb-leaked-audio-reveals

 

 

'However much the governments try to excite in people the old public opinion of the heroism of patriotism - now no longer natural to them - men of our time no longer believe in it, but believe more and more in the solidarity and brotherhood of all nations. Patriotism does not now offer men anything but a most terrible future; while the brotherhood of all the people is an ideal which becomes ever more and more intelligible and desirable to mankind. And so the transition from the old, outlived public opinion to the new one must inevitably be accomplished. That transition is as inevitable as the fall of the last dry leaves in spring and the opening out of the young ones from the swollen buds.

And the longer the transition is postponed the more insistent it becomes and the more obvious is its inevitability.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
 

 
'The former prime minister will join Acreage in November, upon the close of the RTO, the company said in a press release.

Mulroney also joins a growing list of former heads of state in the international cannabis industry.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/former-canadian-pm-mulroney-to-join-us-cannabis-company-acreage/

 

 

'Then the governor dropped the Reed on the table like it was just another half-eaten Potato scrap, brushing it blankly aside and suddenly smiling warmly at all of us, as if he had just emerged from a Pod and was happy to be among friends. "No more music," he said firmly. "Let's eat some food, I'm hungry." Then he grasped the wicker basket of French Fries with both hands and buried his face in it, making soft snorting sounds as he rooted around in the basket trying vainly to finish it off.

I was afraid, but Jann was quick to recover. "Easy, Governor, easy," he said in a suave voice. "Let me help you with that, Bill. Hell, we're all hungry." He smiled and reached out for the half-empty basket of fries, as if to share the burden - but Clinton snatched it away, clutching it to his chest and turning his back on us - a horrible thing to see.

Somewhere behind me I heard a hissing, moaning sound as Eric, our hapless editor, stood up and bolted out of the room, slamming between two startled SS agents, and then locked himself in the bathroom. I heard a croaking noise, then a rush of water.

Well, I thought. This is probably about as weird as it can get, without all of us going to jail, so why not relax and act normal - or at least try? These things happen. Buy the ticket, take the ride. Welcome to Mr. Bill's Neighborhood.'

- Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, September 17, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'Tilray Inc., the first cannabis company to list directly on a U.S. exchange, announced Thursday the formation of a 10-person advisory board including Howard Dean, a former presidential candidate and chairman of the Democratic National Committee between 2005 and 2009, and Michael Steele, head of the Republican National Committee from 2009 to 2011.

Other members of the company’s International Advisory Board include the former foreign ministers of Germany, Joschka Fischer, and Australia, Alexander Downer, Tilray said in a statement.'
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-13/pot-unites-democrats-republicans-as-ex-party-chiefs-join-tilray

 

 

'The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power. It is the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to blind the beholder. But the true genius seeks to defend us from itself. True genius will not impoverish, but will liberate, and add new senses. If a wise man should appear in our village he would create, in those who converse with him, a new consciousness of wealth, by opening their eyes to the unobserved advantages; he would establish a sense of immovable equality, calm us with assurances that we could not be cheated; as every one would discern the checks and guarantees of condition. The rich would see their mistakes and poverty, the poor their escapes and their sources.' - Uses of Great Men, Emerson, The Basic Writings of America's Sage


'Boehner, a Republican ex-Congressman from Ohio, opposed marijuana legalization while he served in the House of Representatives before stepping down towards the end of 2015. But he cited an evolution in his thinking on Wednesday, reflecting a broader shift in how the public (and politicians) view marijuana decriminalization, legalization, and research. Boehner specifically cited the potential of medical marijuana to help stave off the opioid epidemic as a rationale for his changed thinking.'
http://fortune.com/2018/04/11/john-boehner-acreage-holdings-marijuana-stocks/

 

 

'Sandy likes Mo Uddal, and so do I, for that matter...I also like Jerry Jeff Walker, the Scofflaw King of New Orleans and a lot of other people I don't necessarily believe should be president of the United States. The immense concentration of power in that office is just too goddamn heavy for anybody with good sense to turn his back on. On her back. Or its back...At least not as long as whatever lives in the White House has the power to fill vacancies in the U.S. Supreme Court, because anybody with that kind of power can use it - like Nixon did - to pack-crown the Court of Final Appeal in this country with the same kind of lame, vindictive yo-yos who recently voted to sustain the commonwealth of Virginia's antisodomy statutes...And anybody who thinks that a 6-3 vote against "sodomy" is some kind of abstract legal gibberish that doesn't affect them had better hope they never get busted for anything the Bible or any local vice-squad cop calls an "unnatural sex act." Because "unnatural" is defined by the laws of almost every state in the Union as anything but a quick and dutiful hump in the classic missionary position, for purposes of procreation only. Anything else is a felony crime, and people who commit felony crimes go to prison.

Which won't make much difference to me. I took that fatal dive off the straight and narrow path so long ago that I can't remember when I first became a felon - but I have been one ever since, and it's way too late to change now. In the eyes of The Law, my whole life has been one long and sinful felony. I have sinned repeatedly, as often as possible, and just as soon as I can get away from this goddamn Calvinist typewriter I am going to get right after it again...God knows, I hate it, but I can't help myself after all these criminal years. Like Waylon Jennings says, "The devil made me do it the first time. The second time, I done it on my own."

Right. And the third time I did it because of brain damage...And after that: well, I figured that anybody who was already doomed to a life of crime and sin might as well learn to love it.'

- Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '76: Third-Rate Romance, Low Rent Rendezvous, June 3, 1976, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
 

 

'The power of the governments rests on public opinion and possessing power they can always support the sort of public opinion they require by their whole organization, officials, law courts, schools, the Church, and even the Press. Public opinion produces power , power produces public opinion; and it seems as if there were no escape from this position.

And that would really be the case if public opinion were something fixed and unchanging and if governments could always produce the public opinion they desired. But fortunately that is not so. In the first place, public opinion is not something constant, unchanging and stagnant, but on the contrary is something continually changing and moving with the movement of mankind. And secondly, public opinion not only cannot be produced at will by governments, but is what produces governments and gives or deprives them of power.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
 

'“I am happy to join the senior management of the company,” said Barak, who has also served as defense minister. “Medical cannabis has proven potential to help and improve the lives of many patients around the world, and central Western countries have adopted and are adopting it as recognized medical treatment.”'
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-pm-ehud-barak-to-chair-medical-cannabis-firm-intercure/

 

 

'What happened next was so strange that I would have shrugged it off as one of those random, paranoid hallucinations that occur now and then, even to sane people - except that I have the whole long moment on Sony Hi8 Metal-E60 videotape, and there were also five or six witnesses who later recalled the incident with stark clarity and a creepy sense of dismay that none of them wanted to talk about or even acknowledge at the time. But it was true:

Clinton stared balefully at the reed for what seemed like a very long time, like a Chimp peering into his first Mirror...There was a sense of puzzlement on his face as he silently pondered the thing.

It was an awkward moment, Bubba. Very awkward. Nobody knew how to handle it. He seemed unhappy, almost angry as he fondled the reed distractedly, saying nothing...Then he rolled his eyes back in his head and uttered a wild quavering cry that made my blood run cold.

The others tried to pretend that it wasn't happening. We were, after all, in the South - and in some tangled way we were also the governor's guests. Or maybe he was ours. Who knows? But there was no doubt at all that somebody was drifting over the line into unacceptable madness, and I didn't think it was me. Greider was sobbing quietly, and P.J. sagged limply in his chair. Jann began jabbering frantically about "the Generation Gap." A pall of helpless craziness came over the table, a sense of unknowable Doom...'

- Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, September 17, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'The former prime minister will join Acreage in November, upon the close of the RTO, the company said in a press release.

Mulroney also joins a growing list of former heads of state in the international cannabis industry.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/former-canadian-pm-mulroney-to-join-us-cannabis-company-acreage/


Normalization...

'“Five years from now, no one will be interested in this question because we’ll all recognize we’re responsible adults, and this is far less harmful than alcohol, far less harmful than tobacco,” he said. “And we should use it responsibly, yes, because there are potential harms.” “Certainly Canadians are capable of doing this because we’ve been doing it for decades.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/canadian-lawmaker-vapes-marijuana-and-doesnt-care-what-anyone-thinks/

 

 

'There was no need for King and Kirk to warn me that the SS detail would have a collective nervous breakdown at the prospect of taking Senator Kennedy and the governor of Georgia through the streets of downtown Athens - or any other city, for that matter - to search for some notoriously criminal journalist who might be in any one of the half-dozen bars and beer parlors on the edge of the campus.

So there was nothing to do except sit there in the university cafeteria, slumped in a chair at a table right next to Dean Rusk's, and drink one tall glass after another of straight Wild Turkey until the Law Day luncheon ceremonies were finished. After my third trip out to the trunk, the SS driver apparently decided it was easier to just let me keep the car keys instead of causing a disturbance every fifteen or twenty minutes by passing them back and forth...Which made a certain kind of fatalistic sense, because I'd already had plenty of time to do just about anything I wanted to with the savage contents of his trunk, so why start worrying now? We had, after all, been together for the best part of two days, and the agents were beginning to understand that there was no need to reach for their weapons every time I started talking about the blood on Dean Rusk's hands, or how easily I could reach over and cut off his ears with my steak knife. Most Secret Service agents have led a sheltered life, and they tend to get edgy when they hear that kind of talk from a large stranger in their midst who has managed to stash an apparently endless supply of powerful whiskey right in the middle of their trunk arsenal. This is not one of your normal, everyday situations in the SS life; and especially not when this drunkard who keeps talking about taking a steak knife to the head of a former secretary of state has a red flag on his file in the Washington SS headquarters in addition to having the keys to the SS car in his pocket.

Carter was already speaking when I came back from my fourth or fifth trip out to the car. I had been careful all along to keep the slice of lemon on the rim of the glass, so it looked like all the iced-tea glasses in the room. But Jimmy King was started to get nervous about the smell. "Goddamn it, Hunter, this whole end of the room smells like a distillery," he said.

"Balls," I said. "That's blood you're smelling."'

- Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '76: Third-Rate Romance, Low Rent Rendezvous, June 3, 1976, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'For a very long time past the power of the governments over the peoples has not rested on force, as it did in the days when one people conquered another and held it in subjection by force of arms, or when the rulers had legions of janissaries, oprichniki, and armed guards amid an unarmed people. For a long time past the power of the government rested on what is called public opinion.

There is a public opinion that patriotism is a great moral sentiment, and that people should consider their own nation and State as the best in the world; and this results in a public opinion that it is right and proper to acknowledge the authority of the government and to submit to it, that it is right and proper to serve in the army and submit to its discipline, that it is right and proper to give one's earnings to the government in the form of taxes, that it is right and proper to accept the decisions of the courts, and that it is right and proper to accept as divine truth whatever the emissaries of the government deliver to us.

And once such a public opinion exists, a mighty power is established, controlling in our days milliards of money, an organized mechanism of administration, the postal service, telegraphy, telephones, disciplined armies, the law courts, the police, a submissive clergy, schools, and even newspapers; and this power maintains among the people the public opinion needed for its own maintenance.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
 

'Jefferson grew hemp both at Monticello and his other plantation, Poplar Forest, but it was primarily used (along with flax and cotton) to make clothing. Other founding fathers, including George Washington, grew hemp and Americans were legally bound to grow the plant during the colonial period and the early republic.

But there is no record of Jefferson ever smoking the plant.'
https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2019/mar/13/facebook-posts/claims-about-thomas-jefferson-and-marijuana-are-mo/

'Ye gods, I thought. What's happening here? This is not what I had in Mind. The interview had turned weird, and so had the governor...No one else seemed to notice. I was paralyzed with fear. But I was not totally brain-dead. Just as I was feeling on the brink of passing out, I remembered I had a gift for Clinton, who continued to stare at me darkly.

I reached quickly into my rumpled shirt pocket and pulled out a brand-new Vandoren tenor-saxophone reed, which had been entrusted to me by the famous photographer Fulton of Aspen, who also plays the tenor sax and had caught Clinton's act in Arsenia.

I got the governor's attention by gently waving the elegant little piece of cane back and forth in front of his eyes until he came vaguely alive and smiled at me. I explained that the reed was a gift from a fellow musician who wished him well, then I pressed it into his outstretched palm. The Secret Service boys reacted like Dobermans when I unexpectedly made uninvited physical contact with the Candidate and then gave him a small, unidentifiable object to put in his mouth, but I waved them off with a friendly smile. "Relax, boys," I said. "It's only a harmless reed - a tribute to the governor's art."'

- Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, September 17, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'In the book, released on Tuesday, Obama reminisces about her youthful transgressions, at one point writing that she and a high school boyfriend named David “fooled around and smoked pot in his car.”

She doesn’t get much further into it than that. Though she does allude to a “looser, more wild” young Barack Obama in another section. As a teen, the future president “smoked pot in the lush volcanic foothills of Oahu,” she wrote.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/michelle-obama-talks-smoking-marijuana-in-new-memoir/

 

 

'The advocates of peace by means of arbitration reason thus: two animals cannot divide their prey except by fighting: children act thus also, and so do barbarians and the barbarous nations, but rational men settle their disagreements by discussion, persuasion, and by referring the decision of the question to disinterested and reasonable people, and the nations of our day ought to act so. These arguments seem quite correct. The peoples of our time have reached a period of enlightenment and have no enmity towards one another and would settle their differences in a peaceful manner. But the argument is correct only in so far as it applies to the people alone, and only if the people are not under the sway of their governments. People in subjection to government is already an indication of the utmost irrationality. '

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


No need to feel bad about it..that's something to be proud of...smoking bhang in Parliaments worldwide is a future change I would like to see happen...

'The Kiambu governor was responding to claims made by Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko last week that thy used to hide in a toilet in parliament and smoke bhang during their days as Members of Parliament.'
https://allafrica.com/stories/201901310214.html

 

 

'So I would have chuckled along with the others if Carter had said something about running for president at the beginning of his "remarks" that day, but I would not have chuckled if he'd said it at the end...Because it was a king hell bastard of a speech, and by the time it was over he had rung every bell in the room. Nobody seemed to know exactly what to make of it, but they knew it was sure as hell not what they'd come there to hear.

I've heard hundreds of speeches by all kinds of candidates and politicians - usually against my will and for generally the same reasons I got trapped into hearing this one - but I have never heard a sustained piece of political oratory that impressed me any more than the speech Jimmy Carter made on that Saturday afternoon in May 1974. It ran about forty-five minutes, climbing through five very distinct gear changes while the audience muttered uneasily and raised their eyebrows at each other, and one of the most remarkable things about the speech is that it is such a rare piece of oratorical artwork that it remains vastly impressive, even if you don't necessarily believe that Carter was sincere and truthful in all the things he said. Viewed purely in the context of rhetorical drama and political theater, it ranks with General Douglas MacArthur's "old soldiers never die" address to the Congress in 1951 - which still stands as a masterpiece of insane bullshit if nothing else.

There were, however, a lot of people who believed every word and sign of MacArthur's speech, and they wanted to make him president - just as a lot of people who are still uncertain about Jimmy Carter would want to make him president if he could figure out some way to deliver a contemporary version of his 1974 Law Day speech on network TV...Or, hell, even the same identical speech; a national audience may be slightly puzzled by some of the references to obscure judges, grade-school teachers, and backwoods Georgia courthouses, but I think the totality of the speech would have the same impact today as it did two years ago.'

- Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '76: Third-Rate Romance, Low Rent Rendezvous, June 3, 1976, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

 
'There is still very limited awareness of the nature of the threat. This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits. It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged. When the public protests, confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of pesticide applications, it is fed little tranquilizing pills of half truth. We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can only do so when it is in full possesion of the facts. In the words of Jean Rostand, 'The obligation to endure gives us the right to know.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962

'The governments assure their peoples that they are in danger of being attacked by other nations or by foes in their midst, and that the only way to escape the danger is by slavish obedience to their governments. This is seen very plainly during revolutions and dictatorships, and it occurs always and everywhere where there is arbitrary rule. Every government explains its existence and justifies all its violence on the ground that if it were not there things would be worse. Having convinced the people that they are in danger, the governments dominate them. And when the people are dominated by governments the latter compel them to attack each other. And in this way a belief in the governments' assurance of the danger of attacks by other nations is confirmed among the peoples.

 Divide et impera.

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed.

 

Patriotism is slavery'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'So it is probably not Fair to dismiss Clinton as a Cowardly Craven Fool for feeling a touch apprehensive when his schedule set him up for an unprecedented and utterly unpredictable Lunch Forum.. It was a high-risk venture, for sure, and I had to like him for doing it.

Still, it seemed clear as we sat down for a lunch of Tamales, Tuna Fish, and French Fries with the Next President that he was not eager to be there. He behaved in a queer, distracted manner and crushed my knuckles together when we shook hands. I shouted with pain, and Jann quickly intervened, saying: "Calm down, Governor. We're on your side."

I nodded meekly and sat down in a tin chair at what was either the Head or the Foot of the table, thinking that the Candidate would naturally sit at the Other End, far out of reach of me.

But no. The creepy bastard quickly sat down right next to me, about two feet away, and fixed me with a sleepy-looking stare that made me very uneasy. His eyes had narrowed to slits, and at first I thought he was dozing off...But he appeared to be very tense, as if he were ready to pounce.'

- Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, September 17, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'Patriotism in our day is a cruel tradition from an outlived past. It is maintained only by inertia and because governments and ruling classes, feeling that their power and even their existence is bound up with it, persistently excite and maintain it among the people by cunning and by violence. Patriotism in our time resembles scaffolding which was needed for the erection of the walls of a building, and which though it now obstructs the use of the building is still not removed because its existence is profitable to certain people.

For a long time past Christian nations have not had, nor could have had, reasons for quarreling. One cannot even imagine how or why Russian and German workmen, working peacefully together on their frontiers and in their cities, should begin to quarrel with one another. Still less can one imagine enmity between a Kazan peasant supplying grain to a German, and the German who supplies him with scythes and machines. It is the same with French, German, and Italian workmen. And it is absurd even to speak of a quarrel between learned men, artists, and writers of different nationalities, absorbed in the same general interest independently of nationality and politics. But the governments cannot let the people be quiet - that is, in peaceful relations with one another - for the existence of governments lies on pacifying and adjusting their hostile relations. And so the governments provoke those hostile relations under the guise of patriotism, and then make a show of pacifying them. It is like a gypsy who, having sprinkled pepper under his horse's tail and lashed him in his stall, leads him out hanging onto his halter and pretending that he can hardly control the excited animal.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'People of the ruling classes say that with such complete conviction that patriotism is a lofty sentiment, that common folk who have not experienced it acknowledge themselves to blame for not feeling it, and try to persuade themselves that they do feel it, or at least pretend to do so.

That sentiment, in its most precise definition, is nothing but putting one's own kingdom or people before every other kingdom or people - a feeling fully expressed by the patriotic German song: Deutschland, Deutschland, uber alles, in which it is only necessary to substitute Russland, Frankreich, Italian, or any other kingdom in place of Deutschland, to obtain the clearest formula for the lofty feeling of patriotism. No doubt that feeling is very useful and desirable for governments and to the unity of the State, but one cannot help but see that it is not at all a lofty sentiment, but on the contrary a very stupid and immoral one: stupid because if each kingdom is to consider better than any other, it is evident that they will all be wrong; and immoral because it inevitably impels every man who feels it to seek advantages for his own State and people to the detriment of other States and peoples - an impulse directly contradictory to the fundamental moral law recognized by all, not to do to others what we do not wish done to us.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

 

 

'The electorate feels a need to be cleansed, reassured, and revitalized. The underdogs of yesteryear have had their day, and they blew it. The radicals and reformers of the Sixties promised peace, but they turned out to be nothing but incompetent troublemakers. Their plans that had looked so fine on paper led to chaos and disaster when hack politicians tried to implement them. The promise of civil rights turned into the nightmare of busing. The call for law and order led straight to Watergate. And the long struggle between the Hawks and Doves caused violence in the streets and a military disaster in Vietnam. Nobody won, in the end, and when the dust finally settled, "extremists" at both ends of the political spectrum were thoroughly discredited. And by the time the 1976 presidential campaign got underway, the high ground was all in the middle of the road.

Jimmy Carter understands this, and he has tailored his campaign image to fit the new mood almost perfectly...But back in May of '74 when he flew up to Athens to make his "remarks" at the Law Day ceremonies, he was not as concerned with preserving his moderate image as he is now. He was thinking more about all the trouble he'd had with judges, lawyers, lobbyists, and other minions of the Georgia establishment while he was governor - and now, with only six more months in the office, he wanted to have a few words with these people.

There was not much anger in his voice when he started talking, but halfway through the speech it was too obvious for anybody in the room to ignore. But there was no way to cut him short, and he knew it. It was the anger in his voice that first caught my attention, I think, but what sent me out to the trunk to get my tape recorder instead of another drink was the spectacle of a southern politician telling a crowd of southern judges and lawyers that "I'm not qualified to talk to you about law, because in addition to being a peanut farmer, I'm an engineer and nuclear physicist, not a lawyer...But I read a lot and I listen a lot. One of the sources of my understanding about the proper application of criminal justice and the system of equities is from Reinhold Niebuhr. The other source of my understanding about what's right and wrong in this society is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan. Listening to his records about 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll' and 'Like a Rolling Stone' and 'The Times They Are A-Changin',' I've learned to appreciate the dynamism of change in a modern society.'

- Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '76: Third-Rate Romance, Low Rent Rendezvous, June 3, 1976, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'What is called patriotism today is merely, in our day, on the one side a certain frame of mind constantly produced and supported among the people by the schools, the Church, and a venal press, for purposes required by the government; and on the other side a temporary excitement aroused in the classes of the lowest mental and moral level by special means adopted by the ruling classes and afterwards given out as the permanent will of the whole nation. The patriotism of oppressed nationalities is no exception to this. That too is unnatural in the labouring classes, and is artificially fostered in them by the upper classes.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'As it is, people are constantly hypnotized from childhood in one and the same direction by all possible means: school books, Church services, sermons, speeches, books, newspapers, poems, and monuments. Some thousands of people are brought together, forcibly or by bribery, and when they have been joined by the loafers who are always glad to see any spectacle, they begin to shout what is shouted before them to the accompaniment of cannon and bands and glitter and brilliance of all kinds, and we are told that this is the expression of the feelings of the whole nation. But in the first place these thousands or tens of thousands, who shout at such celebrations, form but a tiny ten-thousandth part of the whole population. And in the second place, of these tens of thousands of shouting and hand waving people, the greater part, if not assembled by force as is done among us in Russia, have been artfully lured there by some bait or other. Thirdly, among all those thousands there are scarcely a few dozen who know what it is all about: they would shout and wave their hats in just the same way if the very opposite of what is happening were taking place. And fourthly, the police are present who promptly silence and remove all who shout anything the government does not wish or demand - as was strenuously done during the Franco-Russian celebrations.

In France they acclaimed with similar enthusiasm Napoleon the First's war with Russia, Alexander I, against whom that war was fought, then Napoleon again, then again the allies, the Bourbons, the Orleans, the Republic, Napoleon III, and Boulanger; while in Russia they acclaim with equal enthusiasm today Peter, tomorrow Catherine, afterwards Paul, Alexander, Constantine, Nicholas, The Duke of Leuchtenberg, our brother-Slavs, the King of Prussia, the French sailors, and anyone whom the authorities wish welcomed. And the same thing takes place in England, America, Germany and Italy.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'Cazart! Yes. I see it all very clearly now. I was blind as a bat, but no longer...So let me share it with you, Bubba: the fruits of my hard-earned Wisdom. Stand back!

Bill Clinton has no Sense of Humor. He eats a lot of French Fries and laughs at the wrong times and often manifests clinical signs of Schizophrenia. But he knows a good deal when he sees one, and on that murky Friday morning we were the good deal he was looking at - the Three Stooges, direct from New York on a big jet plane to legitimize the Deal.

Don't get me wrong, Bubba. We had fun, despite our various crippling injuries and my own humiliation when Clinton denounced every thought I uttered and every question I asked, as if I were criminally insane...

The encounter took place in the back room of an artificially degraded replica of a standard-brand southern diner called Doe's Eat Place (which I will hereafter and previously refer to as Doe's Cafe, because I like cafe and I can't stand the cuteness of the other)...

The encounter was what we had come for, the Mano a Mano gig with the man we all agreed would probably be the next president - unless...Remember Willy Horton. Remember Gary Hart. Indeed. There are many rooms in the mansion, and there will always be wreckage in the Fast Lane. This is the Nineties, Bubba, and there is no such thing as Paranoia. It's all true...'

- Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, September 17, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'Such manifestations as those that have lately taken place in Toulon and Paris, which take place in Germany at receptions of the Emperor or of Bismarck, at the manouevres in Lorraine, and that are constantly repeated in Russia on every ceremonial occasion, only prove that the means existing for exciting the crowd are so powerful that the government and the ruling classes which control them can always evoke at will whatever manifestation they please. On the other hand nothing so clearly proves the absence of patriotism in the people as these intense efforts now employed by the governments and the ruling classes to arouse it artificially, and the smallness of the results obtained despite all these efforts.

If patriotic feeling were really so innate in the people, they would be left to appear freely of themselves and would not have to be worked up continually by artificial means as well as on special occasions.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
 
 
'In proof of the existence of patriotism, people usually point to manifestations of it on various ceremonial occasions: in Russia during the coronation, and after the attempt on the Tsar's life on October 17th; in France when war was declared on Prussia; in Germany when victory was celebrated; or during these Franco-Russian festivities. But one has to know how these manifestations are prepared. In Russia, for instance, during every journey made by the Tsar, men from the peasant communities and the factories are prepared to meet and welcome him.

The enthusiasm of the crowd is for the most part artificially prepared by those to whom it is necessary, and the degree of art of the organizers of that enthusiasm. That art is an old one and its specialists have consequently reached great virtuosity in preparing these ecstasies.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

 

 

'At first I wasn't sure I was hearing him right, and I looked over at Jimmy King. "What the hell did I just hear?" I asked.

King smiled and looked at Paul Kirk, who leaned across the table and whispered, "He said his top two advisers are Bob Dylan and Reinhold Niebuhr."

I nodded and got up to go outside for my tape recorder. I could tell by the rising anger in Carter's voice that we were in for an interesting ride...And by the time I got back, he was whipping on the crowd about judges who took bribes in return for reduced prison sentences, lawyers who deliberately cheated illiterate blacks, and cops who abused people's rights with something they called a "consent warrant."

"I had lunch this week with members of the Judicial Selection Committee, and they were talking about a 'consent search warrant,'" he said. "I didn't know what a consent search warrant was. They said, "Well, that's when two policemen go to a house. One of them goes to the front door and knocks on it, and the other one runs around to the back door and yells 'come in'""

The crowd got a laugh out of that one, but Carter was just warming up, and for the next twenty or thirty minutes, his voice was the only sound in the room. Kennedy was sitting just a few feet to Carter's left, listening carefully but never changing the thoughtful expression on his face as Carter railed and bitched about a system of criminal justice that allows the rich and the privileged to escape punishment for their crimes and sends poor people to prison because they can't afford to bribe the judge...'

- Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '76: Third-Rate Romance, Low Rent Rendezvous, June 3, 1976, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
 

'If it does happen that patriotism takes possession of the crowd, as has now occurred in Paris, it only happens when the masses are subjected to intensive hypnotism by the governments and ruling classes, and such patriotism is only maintained among the people as long as that hypnotic influence is maintained.

So for instance in Russia, where patriotism, in the form of love and devotion to the Faith, the Tsar, and the Fatherland, is grafted onto the Russian people with extraordinary intensity by every instrument in the hands of the government: the Church, the schools, the Press, and all kinds of ceremonies - the Russian working-class, the hundred-million Russian people, despite the undeserved reputation bestowed on them as being particularly devoted to the Faith, Tsar, and Fatherland, are the in fact the freest of all people from the deception of patriotism and from devotion to Faith, Tsar, and Fatherland. For the most part, the Russian peasant knows nothing about the Faith - that Orthodox State faith to which he is supposed to be devoted - and as soon as he recognizes it he rejects it and becomes a rationalist, that is, he adopts a belief which can neither be attacked nor defended. And towards his Tsar (in spite of incessant, intensive attempts to instill a feeling of devotion) his attitude is the same as to all authorities employing violence, that is one if not of condemnation then of complete indifference. While as to his Fatherland (unless one understands it to mean his own village or his own district) he is either completely ignorant of it or, if he knows it, he makes no distinction between it and other countries. Russians now settle quite indifferently in Russia or outside it, in Turkey or in China, just as they formerly emigrated to Austria or to Turkey.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'The working people are too much taken up with the task of earning a living for themselves and their families to be able to interest themselves in the political questions that figure as the chief motives of patriotism. The question of Russia's influence in the East, the unification of Germany, the return of France's lost provinces, of the cession of this or that part of one State to another, and so on, does not interest them - not only because they hardly ever know the conditions under which these questions arise, but because the interests of their life are quite apart from national and political interests.

To a man of the people it is always a matter of complete indifference where a frontier is drawn, to whom Constantinople may belong, whether Saxony or Brunswick shall, or shall not, be a member of the German Union, whether Australia or Matabeleland shall belong to England - or even to what government he has to pay his taxes and into which army he must send his sons. The important thing for him is to know how much tax he will have to pay, whether the army service will be a long one, whether he will have to pay for the land over many years, and whether he will get much for his work - all questions quite apart from national and political interests. That is why - despite the intensive efforts made by governments to instill a patriotism into people that is not innate in them, and to suppress the ideas of socialism that are developing in them - socialism is penetrating more and more into the masses of the people, while patriotism, with which they are so carefully inoculated by the government, not only fails to spread, but is disappearing more and more and is only maintained by the upper classes to whom it is profitable.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

 

 

'We were the Strike Force, the Rolling Stone Blue Ribbon Presidential Forum - zooming into Little Rock at six hundred miles an hour to confront Clinton and see who he really was.

It is hard to know exactly what an RS cover is worth to a front-running candidate - but there was no question of the shitrain of Ugliness that could happen if the luncheon got out of hand. These drunken, brain-damaged brutes might do anything.

Which is a nice kind of reputation to have, in some towns - but not in Little Rock, when you're meeting in public with the next president in full view of the national press and fourteen Secret Service watchdogs. Nobody needs a headline like "Clinton Injured in Wild Brawl with Dope Fiends. Candidate denies Drunkenness, Cancels Bus Trip, Flees."

Well...that didn't happen. It was T.S. Elliot, I think, who wrote, "Between the idea/And the reality...Falls the Shadow."

Which turned out to be me.

I was the Shadow. Bill Clinton was not comfortable being in the same room with me. He is, after all, a career politician only a hundred or so days away from the presidency - provided he makes no mistakes before Election Day - and being involved in some kind of fracas in the back room of a downtown bar and grill would definitely be a Mistake.'

- Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, September 17, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'The sight of these two men, so different from one another - the well-fed elegant Frenchman, in a top-hat and a long overcoat that was then very fashionable, radiant with freshness and self-confidence, with his white hand, unused to work, energetically showing how the Germans must be squeezed; and the shaggy figure of Prokofy, shriveled up by constant labour, always tired but always at work despite his enormous rupture, with fingers swollen by toil, with wisps of hay in his hair, with slack home-made breeches and down-trodden bark shoes, striding along with an enormous fork of hay on his shoulder, with that step, not lazy but economical in movement, with which a working man always moves - the strong contrast presented by those two men made much clear to me then, and now, after the Toulon-Paris festivities, vividly occurs. One of them personified all those who, fed by the people's toil, afterwards use those same people for cannon-fodder, while the other personified that very cannon-fodder which feeds and protects the others who afterwards so dispose of it.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'Hence, when such patriotic demonstration as the Toulon festivities take place, people's will are bound in advance, though apparently only for the distant future, and they are pledged to the accustomed iniquities that are always the result of patriotism. And everyone who realized the significance of those festivities cannot but protest against their tacit implication. Thus when those gentlemen, the journalists, assert that every Russian sympathizes with what took place at Kronstadt and Toulon and Paris and that this alliance for life and death is confrmed by the will of the whole people, and when the Russian Minister of Education assures the French ministers that all under his command (the children, scholars, and writers of Russia) share his feelings and when the commander of the Russian squadron assures the French that all Russia will be grateful for the reception given them, and when the chief priests answer for their flocks with the assurance that the prayers of the French for the welfare of the Imperial Family are joyfully echoed in the hearts of the Tsar-loving Russian people, and when the Russian ambassador in Paris, who is regarded as the representative of the Russian people, declares, after a dish of ortolans a la soubise et logopedes glacees and with a glass of Grand Moet champagne in his hand, that all Russian hearts beat in unison with his own, which is brimming over with sudden and exceptional love for la bella France - then we who are free from that insanity consider it our sacred duty, not only for ourselves but also for tens of millions of Russians, to protest most emphatically against such a statement, and to affirm that our hearts do not beat in unison with those of these gentlemen - the journalists, ministers of education, commanders of squadrons, chief priests, and ambassadors - but on the contrary are filled with indignation and disgust at the pernicious falsehood and wrong which they, consciously or unconsciously, are spreading around by their words and deeds. Let them drink Moet as much as they please, let them write articles and make speeches, but let them do so for themselves alone. We who regard ourselves as Christians cannot allow ourselves to be bound by what these gentlemen are saying and writing.

We cannot allow it because we know what lies hidden under all these drunken ecstasies, speeches, and embraces, which do not look like a confirmation of peace as they assure us, but rather like the orgies and drunkenness criminals indulge in when preparing to co-operate in crime.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'And before we have time to look around the usual ominous and senseless proclamation will appear in the columns of the press: "We, by the grace of God autocratic Emperor of all the Russias, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, & c., &c., announce to all our faithful subjects that for the good of our beloved people entrusted to us by God we have deemed it our duty before God to send them to the slaughter. May God be with them." - and so on.

The bells will peal and long-haired men will dress themselves in gold-embroidered sacks and begin to pray on behalf of murder. The familiar, age-old, horrible businesses will recommence. The editors of newspapers will set to work to arouse hatred and murder under the guise of patriotism and will be delighted to double their sales. Manufacturers, merchants, and contractors of army-stores, will hurry about joyfully in expectation of doubled profits. Officials of all sorts will busy themselves in the hope of being able to steal more than usual. Army commanders will bustle here and there, drawing double pay and rations and hoping to receive various trinkets, ribbons, crosses, stripes, and stars, for murdering people. Idle ladies and gentlemen will fuss about, entering their names in advance for the Red Cross and getting ready to bandage those whom their husbands and brothers are setting out to kill - imagining that they will be doing a most Christian work thereby.

And hundreds of thousands of simple kindly folk, torn from their wives, mothers, and children, and with murderous weapons in their hands, will trudge wherever they may be driven, stifling the despair in their souls by songs, debauchery, and vodka. They will march, freeze, suffer from hunger, and fall ill. Some will die of disease, and some will at last come to the place where men will kill them by the thousand. And they too, without themselves knowing why, will murder thousands of others whom they had never before seen, and who had neither done nor could do them any wrong.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

 

 

'The final turn of the screw was another ugly example of crime and degradation in the legal profession, and this time Carter went right to the top. Nixon had just released his own, self-serving version of "the White House tapes," and Carter was shocked when he read the transcripts. "The Constitution charges us with a direct responsibility for determining what our government is and ought to be," he said. And then, after a long pause, he went on: "Well...I have read parts of the embarrassing transcripts, and I've seen the proud statement of a former attorney general who protected his boss, and now brags of the fact that he tiptoed through a minefield and came out...quote, clean, unquote." Another pause, and then: "You know, I can't imagine somebody like Thomas Jefferson tiptoeing through a minefield on the technicalities of the law, and then bragging about being clean afterward..."

Forty-five minutes later, on our way back to Atlanta in the governor's small plane, I told Carter I wanted a transcript of his speech.

"There is no transcript," he said.

I smiled, thinking he was putting me on. The speech had sounded like the product of five or six tortured drafts...But he showed me a page and a half of scrawled notes in his legal pad an said that was all he had.'

- Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '76: Third-Rate Romance, Low Rent Rendezvous, June 3, 1976, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
 

'The victim is always and ever the deceived, foolish, working folk - those who with blistered hands have built all those ships, fortresses, arsenals, barracks, cannon, harbours, steamers, and moles, and all these palaces, halls, platforms, and triumphal arches; who have set up and printed all these newspapers and pamphlets, and have procured and brought all these pheasants and ortolans, oysters, and wines that are consumed by the men who are fed, brought up, and kept by them, and who are deceiving them and preparing the most fearful calamities for them. It is always the same kindly, foolish folk, who stand open-mouthed like children, showing their healthy white teeth, naively delighted by dressed-up admirals and presidents with flags waving above them, and by fireworks and bands of music; and for whom, before they have time to look around, there will be neither admirals nor presidents nor flags nor bands, but only a desolate battlefield, cold, hunger, and anguish - before them murderous enemies and behind them relentless officers preventing their escape - blood, wounds, suffering, putrefying corpses, and a senseless unnecessary death.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'People may not bethink themselves, might not confess their faith in the Gospel, till the delusion of violence had reached its utmost limits as it has done in our day, but such faith has now become inevitable. Men can no longer fail to bethink themselves and confess their belief in the Gospel, when each of them is called upon not to pour oblations to pagan gods, as was the case of old, but to take part in the most horrible and cruel homicides after a preliminary announcement of the possibility and necessity of patricide. General conscription is the last stone laid on a wall with a crooked base, and will cause the collapse of the whole edifice of social violence which rests on shaky foundations.

And that edifice is collapsing not because the economic weight laid upon it by armaments is too great to be borne; not because the expected wars are too awful; and not because the calamities chanted by Ravachol are so dreadful. It is collapsing because the demand presented to men as the crown of the social structure - military conscription - is so contrary to the Christian teaching which has entered into men's consciousness, that they cannot fail to understand from these demands the whole falsity of the social structure in which they have lived and the full truth of the teaching which for nineteen hundred years has been rejected.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'I have just returned, as you know, from a top-secret Issues Conference in Little Rock with our high-riding Candidate, Bill Clinton - who is also the five-term governor of Arkansas and the only living depositor in the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh who wears a Rolling Stone T-short when he jogs past the hedges at sundown.

Ah, yes - the hedges. How little is known of them, eh? And I suspect, in fact, that the truth will never be known...I wanted to check them out, but it didn't work. My rented Chrysler convertible turning into a kind of Trojan Horse in reverse - and frankly, I was deeply frightened to stay for even one night in Little Rock, by myself, for fear of being tracked and seized and perhaps even jailed and humiliated, on instructions from some nameless Clinton factotum.

It was ugly, Bubba. We were under intense surveillance the whole time, despite our desperate efforts to act like another gang of Good Ol' Boys for Clinton...Which we were, I guess, since our eager, farseeing Editor had already decided on his formal RS endorsement for Clinton and already scheduled Big Bill for the cover...and since Clinton and his People understood this, our decision to deal mercilessly with the Candidate were pretty much neutered from the start.

We were like the Three Stooges. Clinton already had the endorsement and cover, so anything he said to us - me, P.J. O'Rourke and "Dollar Bill" Greider - was pretty much a matter of Filigree.'

- Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, September 17, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'What would be more insensate and painful than the position in which the European peoples now live, spending a great part of their wealth on preparations to annihilate their neighbours and from whom nothing divides them and with whom they live in close spiritual intercourse? What could be more terrible than that which always awaits European nations, when at any moment in an unlucky hour some madman calling himself a potentate may say something displeasing to another such madman? What could be more terrible than all these newly devised and still to be devised means of destruction: cannon, shells, bombs, rockets with smokeless powder, torpedoes and other instruments of death? Yet everybody acquiesces in this state of affairs. Tomorrow a war may begin, and men driven like cattle to the slaughter, will go where they are sent and perish unprotestingly, and destroy other men without even asking themselves why they do it. And not only will they feel no remorse about it, they will even swagger and be proud of the geegaws they are allowed to wear for their skill in killing people, and they will exalt those unhappy or wicked men who placed them in such a position, and erect monuments to them.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'Divide up what you possess with others, do not gather riches, do not exalt yourself, do not steal, do not cause suffering, do not kill anyone, do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself, was said not only nineteen hundred years ago but five thousand years ago. And there can be no doubt of the truth of this law, and but for hypocrisy it would be impossible for men - even if they themselves did not conform to it - to fail to recognize at least its necessity, and that he who does not do these things is doing wrong.

But you say that there is a public welfare for the sake of which these rules may and should be infringed: for the public good it is permissible to kill, torture, and rob. You say, as Caiaphas did, that it is better for one man to perish than the whole nation, and you sign the death sentence of a first, a second, and a third man, load your rifles against this man who is to perish for the public welfare, put him in prison, and take his possessions. You say that you do these cruel things because as a member of society and of the State you feel that it is your duty to serve them: as a landowner, judge, emperor, or military man to conform to their laws. But besides belonging to a certain State and having duties arising from that position, you belong also to eternity and to God and have duties arising from that.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'If people tell you that all this is necessary for the maintenance of the existing order of life and that this social order, with its destitution, hunger, prisons, executions, armies and wars, is necessary for society, that still more miseries will ensue were that organization infringed; all that is said only by those who profit by such an organization. Those who suffer from it - and  they are ten times as numerous - all think and say the contrary. And in the depth of your soul you yourself know it is untrue, you know that the existing organization of life has outlived its time and must inevitably be reconstructed on new principles, and that therefore there is no need to sacrifice all human feeling to maintain it.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'So never mind that review we were talking about. The book is a shitrain of old gossip and sleazy little stories that we read a long time ago and never quite believed...for good or ill.

So what if the former First Lady was a relentless fellatrix with the soul of a Pod and the style of a chicken in heat? She was, in her time, perhaps the highest and finest expression of the American Dream in action...and that is worth noting. Some people are Born to Win and others are spewed out like tadpoles. This is all ye know and all ye need to know - except that weasels speak English and God is a King Snake, and if Kitty Kelley and Nancy Reagan are what America is all about these days, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

But not here. I am glad to be rid of this book. It is like a bracing dose of ether on Monday Night in a Crack House. The very sight of it fills me with queasiness and shame. To read it and believe that it might be True is to wallow in the depths of personal and professional degradation.

Okay. That's about it, for now. Never send me a book like this again.

Thanx,
Hunter
Res ipsa loquitur.'

- The Taming of the Shrew, May 30, 1991, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'By whatever names we dignify ourselves, in whatever apparel we attire ourselves, by whatever and before whatever priest we may be smeared with oil, however many millions we possess, however many special guards are stationed along our route, however many policemen guard our wealth, however many so-called miscreant-revolutionaries and anarchists we may execute, whatever exploits we may ourselves perform, whatever States we may found, whatever fortresses and towers we may erect - from the Tower of Babel to that of Eiffel - we are always all of us confronted by two inevitable conditions of life which destroy its whole meaning. There is first of all death, which may at any moment overtake any of us, and there is the transitoriness of all that we do and that is so quickly destroyed leaving no trace. Whatever we may do - found kingdoms, build palaces and monuments, compose poems and romances - everything is transitory, and soon passes leaving no trace. And therefore, however we may conceal it from ourselves, we cannot help seeing that the meaning of our life can be neither in our personal physical existence, subject to unavoidable sufferings and inevitable death, nor in any worldly institution or organization.

Whoever you may be who read these lines, consider your position and your duties - not the position of landowner, merchant, judge, emperor, president, minister, priest, or soldiers, temporarily attributed to you by men, nor those imaginary duties imposed on you by that position - but your real position in eternity as a creature who by Someone's will has been called out of unconsciousness after an eternity of nonexistence, to which by the same will you may at any moment be recalled. Think of your duties - not your imaginary duties as a landowner to your estate, as a merchant to your capital, as an emperor, minister, official to the State - but those real duties which follow from your real position as a being called to life and endowed with reason and love.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'Hypocrisy in our time is supported by two things - pseudo-religion and pseudo-science - and has reached such colossal dimensions that were we not living in the midst of it, it would be impossible to believe, that men could reach such a degree of self-deception. They have now reached such a strange condition and their hearts are so hardened that though they have eyes they see not, and having ears they hear not, neither do they understand.

Men have long been living in antagonism with their conscience. If it were not for hypocrisy they could not continue to do so. Their present arrangement of life in opposition to their conscience only exists because it is masked by hypocrisy.

And the more the divergence between reality and men's conscience increases, the more is that hypocrisy extended. But hypocrisy has its limits. And it seems that in our day those limits have been reached.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

 

 

"I walk in the night rain until the dawn of the new day. I have devised the plan, straightened out the philosophy, and set up the organization. When I have the 1 million Brown Buffaloes on my side I will present the demands for a new nation to the U.S. Government and the United Nations...and then I'll split and write the book. I have no desire to be a politician. I don't want to lead anyone. I have no practical ego. I am not ambitious. I merely want to do what is right. Once in every century comes a man who is chosen to speak for his people. Moses, Mao, and Martin [Luther King Jr.] are examples. Who's to say that I am not such a man? In this day and age the man for all seasons needs many voices. Perhaps that is why the gods have sent me into Riverbank, Panama, San Francisco, Alpine, and Juarez. Perhaps that is why I have been taught so many trades. Who will deny that I am unique?" - Oscar Costa, The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Well...not me, old sport. Wherever you are and in whatever shape - dead or alive or even both, eh? That's one thing they can't take away from you...Which is lucky, I think, for the rest of us: because (and, yeah - let's face it, Oscar) you were not really light on your feet in this world, and you were too goddamn heavy for most of the boats you jumped into. One of my greatest regrets in life is that I was not able to introduce you to my old football buddy, Richard Nixon. The main thing he feared in his life - even worse than the Queers and Jews and Mutants - was people who might run amok; he called them "loose cannons on the deck," and he wanted them all put to sleep.

That's one graveyard we never even checked, Oscar, but why not? If your classic "doomed nigger" style of paranoia had any validity at all, you must understand that it was not just Richard Nixon who was out to get you - but all the people who thought like Nixon and all the judges and U.S. attorneys he appointed in those weird years. Were there any of Nixon's friends among all those superior court judges you subpoenaed and mocked and humiliated when you were trying to bust the grand jury selection system in L.A.? How many of those Brown Beret "bodyguards" [in the La Raza Movement] you called "brothers' were deep-cover cops or informants? I recall being seriously worried about that when we were working on that story about the killing of the Chicano journalist Ruben Salazar by an L.A. County sheriff's deputy. How many of those bomb-throwing, trigger-happy freaks who slept on mattresses in your apartment were talking to the sheriff on a chilli-hall pay phone every morning? Or maybe to the judges who kept jailing you for contempt of court, when they didn't have anything else?'

- Fear & Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird: The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat, December 15, 1977, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'Men of our time, availing themselves of the order of things maintained by violence, and at the same time protesting that they love their neigbours very much, and who do not notice that they are doing evil to their neighbours all the time, are like a man who, after a life of robbery, when at last caught with lifted knife in the act of striking a victim who is frantically crying for help, should declare that he did not know that what he was doing was unpleasant to the man he had robbed and was just about to kill. As that robber and murderer could not deny what was evident to everyone, so it would seem impossible for men of our time, living on the sufferings of the oppressed classes, to persuade themselves and others that they desire the welfare of those whom they unceasingly plunder, and that they do not know how the advantages they enjoy are obtained.We cannot now assert that we do not know of those hundred thousand men in Russia alone who are always confined in prisons and convict settlements fr the security of our tranquility and property, and that we do not know of those trials in which we ourselves take part, and which at our instigation condemn men who have made attempts to our property or security prisons, exile, or convict settlements where men no worse than those who sentence them, perish pr become corrupt.

Nor can we pretend that all that we have obtained and is maintained for us by murders and violence. We cannot pretend that we do not see the constable who with a loaded revolver walks in front of our windows defending us while we eat our appetizing dinner or see a new play at the theatre, or that we do not know of those soldiers who set off so promptly with rifles and live cartridges to where our property is in danger of being infringed.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'A single execution carried out dispassionately by prosperous and educated men with the approval and participation of Christian minister and presented as something necessary and even just, perverts and brutalizes men more than thousands of murders committed by uneducated working people under the influence of passion. An execution such as Zukhovsky proposed to arrange, which was to arouse in men a sentiment of religious emotion, would have the most depraving influence imaginable.

Every war, even the briefest, with the expenditure usual to war, the destruction of crops, the plundering, the licensed debauchery and murders, the sophisticated excuses as to its necessity and justice, the exaltation and glorification of military exploits, patriotism and devotion to the flag, the feigned solicitude for the wounded, and so on, does more to deprave people in a single year than millions of robberies, arsons, and murders committed in hundreds of years by individual men under the influence of passion.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'Lyndon LaRouche was atomized and the Deviate Reverend Jim Bakker was sent to prison for forty-five years for just dabbling in the kind of brazen, low-rent crimes that were apparently taken for granted and pursued with relentless zeal - day and night, 366 days of the year, in full view of the servants and the Secret Service - by the folks who lived in the White House.

Just folks. No different from you or me or the Mitchell brothers. And they never claimed to be anything else, really. Just Good Ol' Dutch and What's Her Name, the maniac little sex doll who squawked openly (allegedly) with Frank Sinatra on dim-lit couches in TV studios, where she went constantly to tape public-service announcements about Just Say No.

It was a very wild act in a very fast lane, and I have to admire it for the Heaviness. It is no small thing in some circles to make headlines lewd and shocking enough to bump a new Kennedy/Palm Beach rape case off the front page of the tabloids...That is Strong...That is Charles Manson country.

Remember they laughed at Thomas Edison. And don't forget that Deep Throat was a box-office hit in the same years that Nancy spent grooming her mongrel stud for the Real Derby, the biggest race of them all...and They Won!!!Twice!!!'

- The Taming of the Shrew, May 30, 1991, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'Let all the external improvements that religious and scientific people dream of be accomplished; let all men accept Christianity and all the improvements the Bellamys and Richets desire be accomplished with all possible additions and corrections, but if at the same time the hypocrisy remains that now exists, if people do not profess the truth they know but continue to feign belief in what they do not themselves believe and veneration for what they do not respect, the condition of people will not only merely remain what it is but will become worse and worse. The better men are materially provided for, the more telegraphs, telephones, books, papers and periodicals they have the more means there will be of spreading contradictory lies and hypocrisies, and the more disunited and consequently unhappy will men become, as indeed occurs now.

Let all those external alterations be realized and the position of humanity will not be bettered. But let each man according to the strength that is in him profess the truth he knows and practises in his own life - or at least cease to excuse the falsehood he supports by representing it as truth - and at once, in this very year 1893, such changes would be accomplished towards man's liberation and the establishment of truth on earth, as we dare not hope for in hundreds of years.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'In general, hypocrisy having entered into the flesh and blood of all classes in our time has reached such proportions that nothing of that kind any longer arouses indignation. Not for nothing was "hypocrisy" derived from "acting". And anyone can act, that is, play a part. Such facts as that the representatives of Christ, at divine service, bless ranks of murderers holding loaded rifles in readiness to shoot their fellow men, that ministers of all the Christian sects take part in executions as inevitably as the executioners, by their presence acknowledging murder to be compatible with Christianity (a clergyman officiated in America at the first experiment of murder by electricity), no longer occasion surprise to anyone.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

 

 

'In an era when the vice president of the United States held court in Washington to accept payoffs from his former vassals in the form of big wads of $100 bills - and when the president himself routinely held secretly tape-recorded meetings with his top aides in the Oval Office to plot illegal wiretaps, political burglaries, and other gross felonies in the name of a "silent majority," it was hard to feel anything more than a flush of high, nervous humor at the sight of some acid-bent lawyer setting fire to a judge's front yard at four o'clock in the morning.

I might even be tempted to justify a thing like that - but of course it would be wrong...And my attorney was Not a Crook, and, to the best of my knowledge, his mother was just as much a "saint" as Richard Nixon's.

Indeed. And now - as an almost perfect tribute to every icepick ever wielded in the name of Justice - I want to enter into the permanent record, at this point, as a strange but unchallenged fact that Oscar Z. Acosta was never disbarred from the practice of law in the state of California - and ex-president Richard Nixon was.

There are some things, apparently, that not even lawyers will tolerate, and in a naturally unjust world where the image of "Justice" is honored for being blind, even a blind pig will find an acorn once in a while.

Or maybe not - because Oscar was eventually hurt far worse by professional ostracism than Nixon was hurt by disbarment. The Great Banshee screamed for both of them at almost the same time - for entirely different reasons, but with ominously similar results.'

- Fear & Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird: The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat, December 15, 1977, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'The ruling classes, having no longer any reasonable justification for the advantageous position they hold, are obliged, in order to keep these positions, to repress their higher rational capacities and their love for their fellow-men, and to hypnotize themselves into the belief that their exceptional positions are necessary. And the lower classes, crushed by toil and intentionally stupefied, live in a continual condition of hypnotization, deliberately and incessantly induced by people of the upper classes.

Only in this way can one explain the amazing contradiction that fills our life, and of which a striking example was presented by those kindly and mild acquaintances whom I met on the 9th of September, who with quiet minds were going to commit the most cruel, senseless, and vile crimes. Had conscience not been stifled in some way in those men, not one of them could have done a one-hundredth part of what they were preparing to do, and very likely will do.'
 
 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'In just the same way the judges who wrongfully awarded the wood to the landowner, did so only because they considered themselves to be not ordinary men like everybody else and therefore bound to be guided in everything by truth alone, but, under the intoxication of power, imagined themselves to be guardians of official justice and incapable of error. And while under the intoxicating influence of servility they imagined themselves to be men bound to execute certain rules written down in a certain book, called laws. And all the participants in the affair - from the highest representative of authority who signed the report, the marshal of nobility who presided at the recruiting sessions, and the priest who deluded the conscripts, to the lowest soldier now preparing to shoot his fellow-men - under the influence of power or servility considered themselves to be, and represented themselves to others as being, not what they really are but something quite different. They all did what they did, and prepare to do what they still have to do, only because they seem to themselves and to others to be not what they are in reality - men faced with the question whether they ought or ought not to take part in wicked actions which their conscience condemns - but different, conventional characters: one an anointed Tsar, a special being destined to watch over the welfare of a hundred million people; another the representative of the nobility; another a priest who has received special grace by his ordination; another a soldier bound by his oath unreflectingly to do all that he is commanded to do. All these people could only, and can only, act as they do under the influence of intoxication by power or servility, resulting from their imagined positions.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'But not only do all men involved in the State organization throw the responsibility for their acts on one another - the soldier on the nobleman or merchant who is his officer, and the officer on the nobleman who occupies the post of Governor, and the Governor on the gentleman or son of an official who holds the post of minister, and the minister on the member of the royal family who occupies the position of the Tsar, and the Tsar again on all those officials, nobles, merchants, and peasants - not only do people free themselves in this way from the sense of responsibility for their actions, but they also lose their moral consciousness of responsibility because, being involved in a State organization, they so unceasingly, strenuously, and persistently assure themselves and one another that they are not all equal, but different among themselves "as one star differeth from another", that they begin to really believe this. Thus some are persuaded that they are not simple people like other folk but are special beings who ought to be specially honoured. And it is instilled into others by all possible means that they are inferior creatures, and should therefore uncomplainingly submit to what those above them dictate.

This inequality, this exaltation of some and degradation of others, is the chief cause of men's capacity to ignore the irrationality and cruelty and wickedness of the existing order, as well as the deception practised by some and suffered by others.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

 

 

'Let's give Nancy all the credit she deserves. The Democrats have lost five out of the last six presidential elections, so maybe they can learn something from this book instead of just giggling about it. Kitty Dukakis, among others, might have put this evil handbook to good use if it had been available back in 1988. But, alas...

If politics is the art of controlling your environment, Nancy is a master politician and probably a lot more fun to live with and work and travel with than ever suspected. She has been the Best That She Can Be, and she has come a Very Long Way for a Size 2 Anorexic Dwarf. Jesus! What is she'd looked like Marilyn Monroe?

She (allegedly) had the morals of a slut on acid and behaved like a beast while the president was stoned day and night, and all that time she was talking about remodelling the White House in the style of Dolley Madison or Grandma Moses, she was acting like Linda Lovelace and Christine Keeler and Madame Defarge all at once.

They turned the whole East Wing of the White House into a Cave of Orgies and a dope den worse than anything in Singapore...It was horrible...and the press never noticed. They called him John Wayne, but he was weirder than Caligula, and the weirder he got, the more the voters loved him and the more respect he got from Ted Koppel.'

- The Taming of the Shrew, May 30, 1991, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'A judge, a policeman, a governor, or an officer, can keep his position just the same under Boulanger, Pugachev, Catherine, or a republic. But should the existing order which secures him his advantageous position collapse, he would certainly lose that position. And so these people are none of them alarmed as to who will be at the head of the organization of violence - they can adapt themselves to anyone. They only fear the abolition of the organization itself, and that is the reason - though sometimes an unconscious one - why they maintain it.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'Often when I see not only the levies of recruits, the military exercises and the manoeuvres, but also the policemen with loaded revolvers and the sentries with rifles and fixed bayonets, when for whole days at a time I hear (as I do in the Khamovniki where I live) the whistling and rattle of bullets as they hit the target; and when I see in the city (where any attempt at violence in self-defence is suppressed, where the sale of drugs and ammunition is prohibited, and where rapid driving and treatment by an unlicenced doctor is forbidden) thousands of disciplined men trained to murder and subject to one man's will, I ask myself: How can people who value their safety quietly allow and put up with this? Apart from its harmfulness and immorality, nothing can be more dangerous. What are men - I do not speak of Christians, ministers of religion, humanitarians, and moralists, but simply men who value their own lives, safety, and welfare - what are they thinking about? For this organization will act in the same way in whomsoever's hands it may be. Today, let us say, the power is in the hands of a tolerable ruler, but tomorrow it may be seized by a Biron, an Elizabeth, a Catherine, a Pugachev, a Napoleon I or a Napoleon III. And the man in whose hands the power lies may be tolerable today but tomorrow may become a beast or he may be succeeded by a mad or crazy heir - like the King of Bavaria, or our Paul I.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'Except that Richard Nixon got rich from his crimes, and Oscar Acosta got killed. The wheels of Justice grind small and queer in this life, and if they seem occasionally unbalanced or even stupid and capricious in their grinding, my own midnight guess is that they were probably fixed from the start. And any judge who can safely slide into full-pension retirement without having to look back on anything worse in the way of criminal vengeance than a few scorched lawns is a man who got off easy.

There is, after all, considerable work and risk - and even a certain art - to the torching of a half-acre lawn without also destroying the house or exploding every car in the driveway. It would be a lot easier to simply make a funeral pyre of the whole place and leave the lawn for dilettantes.

That's how Oscar viewed arson - anything worth doing is worth doing well - and I'd watched enough of his fiery work to know he was right. If he was a King-Hell Pyromaniac, he was also a gut politician and occasionally a very skilled artist in the style and tone of his teachings.'

- Fear & Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird: The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat, December 15, 1977, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'All the injustice and cruelties customary in present-day life have become habitual only because there are men always ready to carry out these injustices and cruelties. If it were not for them there would not only be no one to wreak violence on those immense masses of oppressed people, but those who issued the orders would never venture to do so, and would not even dare to dream of the sentences they now confidently pass.

Were it not for these men ready to torture or kill anyone they are commanded to, no one would dare to claim what is confidently claimed by all the non-working landowners, namely that land surrounded by men who are suffering for lack of land, is the property of a man who does not work on it, or that stores of grain collected by trickery ought to be preserved untouched in the midst of a population dying of hunger, because the merchant wants to make a profit. But for the existence of these people, ready at the will of the authorities to torture and kill anyone they are told to, it could never enter the head of a landowner to deprive the peasants of a wood they had grown, or of the officials to consider it proper to receive salaries taken from the famishing people for oppressing them, not to mention executing, imprisoning, or evicting people for exposing falsehood and preaching the truth. In fact all this is demanded and done only because the authorities are all fully convinced that they have always at hand servile people ready to carry out all their demands by means of tortures and killings.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'Both those in authority and their subordinates, though they explain the motives of their conduct differently, agree that they act as they do because the existing order is just the order that must and should exist at the present time, and that to support it is therefore each man's sacred duty.

On this acceptance of the necessity and therefore the immutability of the existing order rests also the argument by which those who take part in governmental violence always justify themselves. They say that as the existing order is immutable, the refusal of some one individual to fulfill the duties laid upon him has no real influence on things, but only means that his place will be taken by someone else who may do worse than he; that is, exercise more cruelty and do more harm to the victims.

It is this conviction that the existing order is a necessary and therefore immutable order, to support which is the sacred duty of every man, that makes it possible for good men, of high principles in private life, to take part with more or less untroubled conscience in affairs such as that committed in Orel, and that which the men in the Tula train were going to perpetrate.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'The condition of Christian humanity, with its fortresses, cannon, dynamite, rifles, torpedoes, prisons, gallows, churches, factories, custom-house and palaces, is really terrible. But neither the fortresses nor the cannon nor the rifles will attack anyone of themselves, the prisons will not of themselves lock anyone up, the gallows will not of themselves hang anyone, nor will the churches delude anyone or the custom-houses hold anyone back, and the palaces and factories do not build themselves or maintain themselves. All this is done by people. And if they once understand that there is no necessity for all these things, these things will disappear.

And men already begin to understand. If they do not all understand, the leaders among them do - those whom the rest will follow. And what the leaders have once understood they cannot possibly cease to understand. And what the leaders have understood the rest of mankind not only can, but inevitably must, understand too.

So that the prediction that a time will come when men will be taught of God, will cease to learn war any more, and will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks (which translated into our own tongue means that all the prisons, fortresses, barracks, palaces, and churches, will remain empty, and that all the gallows, guns and cannon will remain unused), is no longer a dream but a definite new form of life, to which humanity is approaching with ever-increasing rapidity.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

 

 

'There are some things, Jann, that we know in our hearts, are Ugly, and this book is one of them. It is old swill in a new bottle, a squalid take from a squalid time that unfortunately seems to be ours. There is something weird about any calendar that has the Year of the Weasel happening thirteen times in a row.

Anyway, thanx for the review copy of Kelly's book on Nancy. It was good for a few laughs, but not many. And there is meaning in it, for sure, but not much. It is an ugly, mean little package that made me feel cheap for just reading it or even holding the thing in my hands.

This book is a monument to everything low and mean in the human spirit. It is a marketing triumph for that dingbat from Simon and Schuster, but it is far too wrong and repugnant to keep around the house, and last night I had to get rid of it. My friend Simon Luckett took it away and jammed it into a garbage compactor, along with a case of old beer bottles. He was shocked and deeply embarrassed when he opened the book to page 14 and saw the Nancy Davis Reagan family tree, which shows that both he and Nancy are descended from the same family of Lucketts that left Maryland and fled westward around the turn of the century, when the family name came under a cloud of scandal. "My mama never talked about it," he said, "but she always left the room whenever that woman appeared on the TV set...Good Lord, I hope she never sees this book." He seized it off the table and stood up to leave. "Don't worry," he muttered. "I'll put it where it belongs."

- The Taming of the Shrew, May 30, 1991, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'This is what ought to happen wherever violence is used. The officer feels dull. He has nothing to do. He has been put, poor fellow, in a position in which he has to give orders. He is shut off from all rational human existence. He can only look on and give orders, give orders and look on, though nobody needs either his orders or his attention. All our unfortunate rulers, ministers, members of parliament, governors, generals, officers, archbishops, bishops, priests, and even rich men, already find themselves partly, and soon will find themselves completely, in that position. They can do nothing but give orders, and so they make a fuss and send their subordinates about, as that officer sent the gendarme, to interfere with people. And as the people they interfere with ask them not to interfere, they imagine themselves to be quite indispensable men.

But a time is approaching and draws near when it will become perfectly evident to everyone that these people are of no use at all but are merely a hindrance, and those whom they interfere with will say amiably and quietly, like the man in the peasant's coat: "Don't interfere with us, please!" And then all these emissaries, and those who send them, will have to follow the good advice, that is, cease to ride about with an arm akimbo hindering people, and get off their horses, doff their uniforms, listen to what is being said, and join with others in real human work.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'When all this becomes quite evident to everybody it will be natural for men to ask themselves: "Why should we feed and maintain all these kings, emperors, presidents, and members of various chambers and ministries, since nothing comes of their meetings and talks? Would it not be better, as some humorist has said, to make an India-rubber queen?

And what do we want armies for with their general, and their bands, and cavalry, and drums? What are they wanted for when there is no war and no one wants to conquer anybody? And even if there were a war, other nations would not let us profit by it, and the army will not fire on its own people.

And what are the judges and lawyers for, who in civil cases decide nothing according to justice, and in criminal affairs themselves recognize the uselessness of punishments?

And what are the tax-gatherers for, who exact taxes reluctantly while what is really needed is easily collected without them?

And what is the use of the clergy, who have long since ceased to believe in what they have to preach?

And what use is capital in private hands, if it can be useful only after becoming public property?"

And once they ask themselves these questions, men cannot fail to conclude that they ought not to support all these institutions which have become useless.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'Those who do violence (that is, those who take part in government) and those who profit by violence (that is, the rich) no longer represent as used to be the case the flower of our society and the ideal of all human well-being and grandeur towards which all the violated used formerly to strive. Now very often the oppressed do not strive to gain the position of the oppressors or try to imitate them. On the contrary, users of violence often voluntarily renounce the advantages of their position, choose the condition of the oppressed, and try to resemble them in the simplicity of their life.

Not to speak of the now openly despised duties and occupations - such as those of spies, agents of the secret police, usurers, and publicans - a large number of professions held by users of violence, which used to be considered honourable (such as those of police officials, courtiers, officers of the law, administrative functionaries, the clergy, the military, the monopolists and bankers) are no longer accounted honourable by everyone, but are even condemned by a certain much respected section of people. There are already people who voluntarily abandon these positions which were once accounted irreproachable, and prefer less advantageous positions not connected with violence.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

 

 

'The decision was anticlimatic. Leon Spinks, a twenty-four-year-old brawler from St. Louis with only seven professional bouts on his record, was the new heavyweight boxing champion of the world. And the roar of the pro-Spinks crowd was the clearest message of all: that uppity nigger from Louisville had finally got what was coming to him. For fifteen years he had mocked everything they all thought they stood for: changing his name, dodging the draft, beating the best they could hurl at him...But now, thank God, they were seeing him finally go down.

Six presidents had lived in the White House in the time of Muhammad Ali. Dwight Eisenhower was still rapping golf balls around the Oval Office when Cassius Clay Jr. won a gold medal for the U.S. as a light-heavyweight in the 1960 Olympics and then turned pro and won his first fight for money against a journeyman heavyweight named Tunney Hunsaker in Louisville on October 29 of that same year.

Less than four years later and almost three months to the day after John Fitzgerald Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Cassius Clay - the "Louisville Lip" by then - made a permanent enemy of every "boxing expert" in the Western world by beating World Heavyweight Champion Sonny Liston, the meanest of the mean, so badly that Liston refused to come out of his corner for the seventh round.

That was fourteen years ago. Jesus! And it seems like fourteen months.'

- Last Tango in Vegas: Fear and Loathing in the Near Room and the Far Room, May 4 and May 18, 1978, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'And therefore the transformation of human life (through which those in power will renounce power and there will be none anxious to seize it) will not come about solely by all men consciously and separately assimilating a Christian conception of life, but will come when a Christian public opinion so definite and comprehensive as to reach everybody has arisen and subdued the whole inert mass which is not able to attain the truth by its own intuition and is therefore always swayed by public opinion.

Such public opinion does not need hundreds and thousands of years for its formation and growth, for it possesses an infectious quality of acting on people and attracting collective masses with great rapidity.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays


'Having learnt by experience, under the operation of Christian influence, the vanity of all that is gained by violence, men, sometimes in a single generation, sometimes after several generations, lose the vices which arouse a passion for power and riches, and becoming less cruel cease to retain their position, are pushed from power by others less Christian and more wicked, and return to a stratum of society lower in position but higher in morality, thereby raising the average Christian consciousness in men generally. But immediately after them, worse, coarser, less Christian elements of society rise to the top; they again are subjected to the same processes as their predecessors, and again in one or more generations, having learnt the vanity of what is gained by violence and having come under the influence of Christianity, go back again amongst those subject to violence and are again replaced by new users of violence less coarse than the former, but coarser than the ones they oppress. So that although power remains externally the same, yet with each change of those who hold it there is a constant increase in the number of men who have been brought by experience to the necessity of assimilating the Christian conception of life, and with each change (though it is still the coarsest, most cruel, and least Christian men who obtain power) they are less coarse and cruel and more Christian than their predecessors.

The worst elements of society are attracted by and obtain power. Power moulds them, making them better and softening them, and returns them to the community.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

 
'Quite independently of any man's opinion as to whether chicks are mature enough for him to drive the mother-hen away from the nest and let them come out of their shells, the question will be indisputably settled by the birds themselves when, unable any longer to find room enough in the shells, they begin to peck with their beaks and come out of their own accord.

It is the same in regard to whether the time has or has not come to do away with governmental authority and substitute a new type of society. If, through the growth of a higher consciousness, men no longer comply with the demands of the State, if they no longer find sufficient room in it and at the same time no longer need its protection, then the question whether they have matured sufficiently to discard the State form of life is decided from quite a different side - just as in the case of chicks that break out of their shells into which no power on earth can make them return - by the men themselves who have outgrown the State and whom no power on earth can replace in it.'

 - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'When he came booming into a bar called the Daisy Duck in Aspen and announced he was the trouble we'd all been waiting for, he was definitely into the politics of confrontation - and on all fronts: in the bars or the courts or the streets, if necessary.

Oscar was not into serious street fighting, but he was hell on wheels in a bar brawl. Any combination of a two-hundred-fifty- pound Mexican and LSD-25 is a potentially terminal menace for anything it can reach - but when the alleged Mexican is in fact a profoundly angry Chicano lawyer with no fear at all of anything that walks on less than three legs and a de-facto suicidal conviction that we will die at the age of thirty-three - just like Jesus Christ - you have a serious piece of work on your hands. Especially if the bastard is already thirty-three and a half years old with a head full of Sandoz acid, a loaded .357 Magnum in his belt, a hatchet-wielding Chicano bodyguard at his elbow at all times, and a disconcerting habit of projectile-vomiting geysers of pure red blood off the front porch every thirty or forty minutes, or whenever his malignant ulcer can't handle any more raw tequila.

This was the Brown Buffalo in the full crazed flower of his prime - a man, indeed, for all seasons. And it was somewhere in the middle of his thirty-third year, in fact, when he came out to Colorado - with his faithful bodyguard, Frank - to rest for a while after his grueling campaign for sheriff of Los Angeles County, which he lost by a million or so votes. But in defeat, Oscar had managed to create an instant political base for himself in the vast Chicano barrio of East Los Angeles - where even the most conservative of the old-line "Mexican-Americans" were suddenly calling themselves "Chicanos" and getting their first taste of tear gas at "La Raza" demonstrations, which Oscar was quickly learning to use as a fire-and-brimstone forum to feature himself as the main spokesman for a mushrooming "Brown Power" movement that the LAPD called more dangerous than the Black Panthers.

Which was probably true, at that time - but in retrospect it sounds a bit different than it did back in 1969 when the sheriff was sending out fifteen or twenty helicopter sorties a night to scan the rooftops and backyards of the barrio with huge sweeping searchlights that drove Oscar and his people into fits of blind rage every time they got nailed in a pool of blazing white light with a joint in one hand and a machete in the other'

- Fear & Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird: The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat, December 15, 1977, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'Those were the salad days of early summer, before the fateful Supreme Court decision, when Nixon's Goebbels - ex-White House "communications director" Ken Clawson - was creating a false dawn over the White House by momentarily halting Nixon's yearlong slide in the public opinion polls with a daily drumbeat of heavy, headline-grabbing attacks on "professional Nixon haters" in the press, and "unprincipled, knee-jerk liberals in Congress." At that point in time, most of Nixon's traditional allies were beginning to hear the death shrieks of the banshee floating over the White House lawns at night, and even Billy Graham had deserted him. So Clawson, in a stroke of cheap genius, put a sybaritic Jesuit priest and a mentally retarded rabbi on the payroll and sent them forth to do battle with the forces of Evil.

Father John McLaughlin, the Jesuit, reveled joyfully in his role as "Nixon's priest" for a month or so, but his star faded fast when it was learned he was pulling down more than $25,000 a year for his efforts and living in a luxury apartment at the Watergate. His superiors in the church were horrified, but Father John McLaughlin gave them the back of his hand and, instead, merely cranked up his speechmaking act. In the end, however, not even Clawson could live with the insistent rumor that the Good Jesuit Father was planning to marry his girlfriend. This was too much, they say, for the rigid sensibilities of General Haig, the White House Chief of Staff, whose brother was a legitimate priest in Baltimore. McLaughlin disappeared very suddenly, after six giddy weeks on the national stage, and nothing has been heard of him since.

But Clawson was ready for that. No sooner had the priest been deep-sixed than he unveiled another holy man - the Rabbi Baruch Korff, a genuine dingbat with barely enough sense to tie his own shoes, but who eagerly lent his name and his flakey presence to anything Clawson aimes him at. Under the banner of something called the "National Citizens Committee for Fairness to the Presidency," he organized "rallies, dinner parties, and press conferences all over the country. One of his main backers was Hamilton Fish Sr., a notorious fascist and the father of New York Congressman Hamilton Fish Jr., one of the Republican swing votes on the House Judiciary Committee who quietly voted for impeachment.'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

You see, I haven't much to say to most of my German correspondents. Certain things are very much the same as at the end of the First World War, and besides, I have grown older and more suspicious. Just as today all my German friends are united in their condemnation of Hitler, so then, in the early days of the German Republic, they were united in condemning militarism, war, and violence. They all fraternized, a little late but very effusively, with us opponents of the war; Gandhi and Rolland were revered almost as saints. The slogan of the day was 'Nie wieder Krieg!' ('No more war!'). But only a few years later Hitler was able to risk his Munich Putsch. Accordingly, I cannot take very seriously the present unanimity in condemning Hitler; to my mind it offers not the slightest guarantee of a political change of heart, or even of a political insight. I do, however, take seriously, very seriously, the change of heart, the purification and maturity of those individuals who amid the vast affliction, the burning martyrdom of these years, have found the way inward, the way to the heart of the world, who have learned to look into the timeless reality of life. Those Awakened Ones have sensed and experienced and suffered the great mystery very much as I experienced it in the bitter years after 1914, except that they have done so under far greater pressure, amid more cruel sufferings, and undoubtedly countless men have collapsed and succumbed on the way to this experience and this awakening, before they could mature.

- A Letter to Germany, 1946, If The War Goes On, Herman Hesse

'Joe Edwards, a twenty-nine-year-old head, lawyer, and bike-racer from Texas, looked like he might, in the waning hours of Election Day in November 1969, be the next mayor of Aspen, Colorado.

The retiring mayor, Dr. Robert 'Buggsy' Barnard, had been broadcasting vicious radio warnings for the previous forty-eight hours, raving about long prison terms for vote-fraud and threatening vicious harassment by "phalanxes of poll-watchers" for any strange or freaky-looking scum who might dare to show up at the polls. We checked the laws and found Barnard's radio warnings were a violation of the "voter-intimidation" statutes, so I called the district attorney and tried to have the mayor arrested at once...but the DA said "Leave me out of it: police your own election."

Which we did, with finely organized teams of poll watchers: two inside each polling place at all times, with six more just outside in vans or trucks full of beef, coffee, propaganda, checklists and bound xerox copies of all Colorado voting laws.'

- The Battle of Aspen: Freak Power in the Rockies, October 1, 1970, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'We are talking about political-action formats: if the Magic Christian concept is one then the Kennedy-McCarthy format has to qualify as another...particularly as the National Democratic Party is already working desperately to make it work again in 1972, when the Demos' only hope of unseating Nixon will again be some shrewd establishment candidate on the brink of menopause who will suddenly start dropping acid in late '71 and then hit the rock-festival trail in the summer of '72. He will doff his shirt at every opportunity and his wife will burn her bra...and millions will vote for him, against Nixon.

Or, will they? There is still another format, and this is the one we stumbled on in Aspen. Why not challenge the establishment with a candidate they've never heard of? Who has never been primed and pepped or greased for public office? And whose lifestyle is already so weird that the idea of "conversion" would never occur to him?

In other words, why not run an honest freak and turn him loose, on their turf, to show up all the "normal" candidates for the worthless losers they are and have always been? Why defer to the bastards? Why assume they're intelligent? Why believe they won't crack and fold in a crunch?...

This is the essence of what some people call "the Aspen technique" in politics: neither opting out of the system, nor working within it...but calling its bluff, by using its strength to turn it back on itself...and by always assuming that the people in power are not smart. By the end of the Edwards campaign, I was convinced, despite my lifelong bias to the contrary, that the Law was actually on our side. Not the cops, or the judges or the politicians - but the actual Law itself, as printed in the dull and musty lawbooks that we constantly had to consult because we had no other choice.'

- The Battle of Aspen: Freak Power in the Rockies, October 1, 1970, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'But at the time it seemed necessary to come up with a candidate whose Strange Tastes and Para-Legal Behavior were absolutely beyond question...a man whose candidacy would torture the outer limits of political gall, whose name would strike fear and shock in the heart of every burgher, and whose massive unsuitability for the job would cause even the most apolitical drug-child in the town's most degenerate commune to shout, "Yes! I must vote for that man!"

Joe Edwards didn't quite fill that bill. He was a bit too straight for the acid-people, and a little too strange for the liberals - but he was the only candidate that was marginally acceptable to both ends of our untrued coalition spectrum. And twenty-four hours after our first jangled phone talk about "running for mayor," he said, "Fuck it, why not?"'

- The Battle of Aspen: Freak Power in the Rockies, October 1, 1970, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'The only other serious error that I feel any need to explain or deal with at this time has to do with a statement about Nixon. What I wrote was: "There is still no doubt in my mind that he could never pass for human..."

But somebody cut the word "never." El Ropo denies it, but our relationship has never been the same. He says the printer did it. Which is understandable, I guess; it's a fairly heavy statement either way.

Is Nixon "human"? Probably so, in the technical sense. He is not a fish or a fowl. There is no real argument about that. Most juries would accept, prima facie, the idea that the President of the United States is a mammal.

He is surely not an Insect; and not of the lizard family. But "human" is something else. A mammal is not necessarily human. Rodents are mammals. An extremely intelligent Bayou Rat called "Honeyrunner" was once elected to the city council in DeFunial Springs, Florida. Nobody called him "human," but they say he did okay on the job.

It would take a really sick and traitorous mind to compare the President of the United States to a Bayou Rat, regardless of intelligence. So maybe El Ropo was right. By almost any standard of responsible journalism the President must be referred to as "human." It is one of those ugly realities - like the Amnesty Question - that we will all have to face & accept.'

- Memos to RS staff from HST, The Campaign Trail: '72, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

After the Old Testament came a New Testament; Christ was possible, the partial emancipation of the Jews was possible, mankind produced Goethe, Mozart, and Dostoevsky. At all times there has been a minority of men of good will, who believed in the future and obeyed laws that are inscribed in no secular legal code. And during the horrible war, thousands of men acted in accordance with unwritten laws; soldiers treated enemies with mercy and respect, while others suffered imprisonment and torture because they staunchly rejected the duty of murdering and hating.

In order to esteem such men and deeds at their full worth, in order to overcome our doubts in the progress of man from animal to human being, we must live in faith. We must learn to value ideas as highly as bullets or gold pieces, to love possibilities and cultivate them in ourselves; we must gain intimations of the future and of the future in our own hearts.

The 'practical' man, who is always right in committee meetings, is invariably wrong outside his committees. Ideals and faith in the future are always right. They are the one source from which the world draws strength. And anyone who disposes of humanitarian ideas as idle talk and fuzzy thinking or of strivings for the future as literature is still a gorilla and has a long way to go before becoming a man.

- Thou Shalt Not Kill, 1919, If The War Goes On, Herman Hesse


'About five years ago Tom Wicker wrote a column in the New York Times that focused - for reasons I no longer remember - on a whole wasps' nest of ominous flaws that he (Wicker) had only recently discovered in the character of Richard Milhous Nixon.

Wicker was shocked. He called up the memory of Conrad's "Lord Jim," and said that he'd always thought Richard Nixon was "one of us."

This is an impossible concept to explain to anybody who hasn't brooded over the Meaning & Truth of "Lord Jim." But to anybody who has, the idea that one of the most eminent journalistic gurus in the nation could ever have thought that "Richard Nixon was one of us" is genuinely unsettling.

Conrad's "one of us" idea was a sort of primitive version of today's far-flung belief that a very few people in this world radiate an almost unnaturally "good kaharma"(sp?)[sic] - and that only the ones who can radiate on this special level are capable of recognizing it in others. A sort of Aristocracy of Instinct...

Did Tom Wicker once see this special inner glow in Richard Nixon? He has come along way since he wrote that thing, five years ago, but...well, what can you say? Wicker appears to be one of those fast-learning types. He is one of the few big-league journalists in America who still sees his job as a means of furthering his education. Which keeps him interesting...but it makes me a little nervous to know that Wicker might still be nursing some secret flash about Nixon being one of the world's special laid-back fireball truthseekers...while I still can't decide if the bugger is even human.'

- Memos to RS staff from HST, The Campaign Trail: '72, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'The only people who seen genuinely interested in the '72 elections are the actual participants - the various candidates, their paid staff people, the thousands of journalists, cameramen & other media-connected hustlers who will spend most of this year humping the campaign along...and of course all the sponsors, called "fat cats" in the language of New-Politics, who stand to gain hugely for at least the next four years if they can muscle their man down the homestretch just a hair ahead of the others.

The fat-cat action is still one of the most dramatic aspects of a presidential campaign, but even in this colourful era the tension is leaking away - primarily because most of the really serious fat cats figured out, a few years back, that they could beat the whole rap - along with the onus of going down the tube with some desperate loser - by "helping" two candidates, instead of just one.

A good example of this, in 1972, will probably be Mrs. Rella Factor - widow of "Jake the Barber" and the largest single contributor to Hubert Humphrey's campaign in '68. She didn't get hell of a lot of return for her investment last time around. But this year, using the new method, she can buy the total friendship of two, three, perhaps even four presidential candidates, for the same price...by splitting up the nut, discreetly as possible, between Hubert, Nixon, and maybe - just for the natural randy hell of it - a chunk to Gene McCarthy, who appears to be cranking up a genuinely weird campaign this time.'

- The Campaign Trail: The Million-Pound Shithammer, February 3, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'I nodded. The argument was familiar. I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it. How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame but "regrettably necessary" hold actions? And how many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the forty million I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?

I have been through three presidential elections now, but it has been twelve years since I could look at a ballot and see a name I wanted to vote for. In 1964 I refused to vote at all, and in '68 I spent half a morning in a county courthouse getting an absentees ballot so I could vote, out of spite, for Dick Gregory.

Now, with another of these big bogus showdowns looming down on us, I can already pick up the stench of another bummer. I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing, this year, is Beating Nixon. But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960 - and as far as I can tell, we've gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same.'

- The Campaign Trail: The Million-Pound Shithammer, February 3, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'In other words, the weight of the evidence filtering down from the high brainrooms of both the New York Times, and the Washington Post seems to say we're all fucked. Muskie is a bonehead who steals his best lines from old Nixon speeches. McGovern is doomed because everybody who knows him has so much respect for the man that they can't bring themselves to degrade the poor bastard by making him run for president...John Lindsay is a dunce, Gene McCarthy is crazy, Humphrey is doomed and useless, Jackson should have stayed in bed...and, well, that just about wraps up the trip, right?

Not entirely, but I feel The Fear coming on, and the only cure for that is to chew up a fat black wad of blood-opium about the size of a young meatball and then call a cab for a fast run down to that strip of X-film houses on 14th Street...peel back the brain, let the opium take hold, and get locked into serious pornography.

As for politics, I think Art Buchwald said it all last month in his "Fan letter to Nixon."

"I always wanted to get into politics, but I was never light enough to make the team."

- The Campaign Trail: The Million-Pound Shithammer, February 3, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

I wish that one of these days in a quiet moment you would read a parable of Jesus, a line of Goethe, or a saying of Lao-tzu.

That moment might be infinitely important to the world. You might find inner liberation. Your eyes and ears might suddenly be opened. For many years, Herr Minister, your eyes and ears have been attuned to theoretical aims rather than reality; they have long been accustomed - necessarily so! - to close themselves to much of what constitutes reality, to disregard it, to deny its existence. Do you know what I mean? Yes, you know. But perhaps the voice of a great poet, the voice of the Bible, the eternal voice of humanity that speaks clearly to us from art, would give you the power of true sight and hearing. What things you would see and hear! Nothing more about labour shortage and the price of coal, nothing more about tonnages and alliances, loans, troop levies, and all the rest of what you have hitherto regarded as the sole reality. Instead, you would see the earth, our patient old earth, so littered with the dead and dying, so ravaged and shattered, so charred and desecrated. You would see soldiers lying for days in no-man's-land, unable with their mutilated hands to shoo the flies from their mortal wounds. You would hear the voices of the wounded, the screams of the mad, the accusing pliants of mothers and fathers, sweethearts and sisters, the people's cry of hunger.

If your ears should be opened once more to all these things that you have sedulously avoided hearing for months and years, then perhaps you would re-examine your aims, your ideals and theories, with a new mind and attempt to weigh their true worth against the misery of a single month, a single day, of war. - To A Cabinet Minister, August 1917, If The War Goes On, Herman Hesse


'It was a very weird trip, probably one of the weirdest things I've ever done, and especially weird because both Nixon and I enjoyed it. We had a good talk, and when we got to the airport, I stood around the Learjet with Dick and the others, chatting in a very relaxed way about how successful his swing through New Hampshire had been...and as he climbed into the plane it seemed only natural to thank him for the ride and shake hands...

But suddenly I was seized from behind and jerked away from the plane. Good God, I thought as I reeled backwards, here we go..."Watch out!" somebody was shouting. "Get the cigarette!" A hand lashed out of the darkness to snatch the cigarette out of my mouth, then other hands kept me from falling and I recognized the voice of Nick Ruwe, Nixon's chief advance man for New Hampshire, saying, "Goddamn it, Hunter, you almost blew up the plane!"

I shrugged. He was right. I'd been leaning over the fuel tank with a burning butt in my mouth. Nixon smiled and reached out to shake hands again, while Ruwe muttered darkly and the others stared down the asphalt.'

- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in New Hampshire, March 2, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Actually the reason was very different: I was the only one in the press corps, that evening, who claimed to be as seriously addicted to pro football as Nixon himself. I was also the only out-front, openly hostile Peace Freak, the only one wearing old Levi's and a ski jacket, the only one (no, there was one other) who'd smoked grass on Nixon's big Greyhound press bus, and certainly the only one who had habitually referred to the candidate as "the Dingbat."

So I still had to credit the bastard for having the balls to choose me - out of fifteen or twenty straight/heavy press types who'd been pleading for two or three weeks for even a five-minute interview - as the one who should share the backseat with him on this Final Ride through New Hampshire.

But there was, of course, a catch. I had to agree to talk about nothing except football. "We want the boss to relax," Ray Price told me, "but he can't relax if you start yelling about Vietnam, race riots, or drugs. He wants to ride with somebody who can talk football." He cast a baleful eye at the dozen or so reporters waiting around the press bus, then shook his head sadly. "I checked around," he said. "But the others are hopeless - so I guess you're it."

"Wonderful," I said. "Let's do it."

- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in New Hampshire, March 2, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'We had a fine time. I enjoyed it - which put me a bit off balance because I'd figured Nixon didn't know anymore about football than he did about ending the war in Vietnam. He had made a lot of allusions to football on the stump, but it never occurred to me that he actually knew anything more about football than he knew about the Grateful Dead.

But I was wrong. Whatever else might be said about Nixon - and there is still no doubt in my mind that he could [never] pass for Human - he is a goddamn stone fanatic on every facet of pro football. At one point in our conversation, when I was feeling a bit pressed for leverage, I mentioned a down & out pass - in the waning moments of a Super Bowl mismatch between Green Bay and Oakland - to an obscure, second-string Oakland receiver named Bill Miller that had stuck in my mind because of its pinpoint style & precision.

He hesitated for a moment, lost in thought, then he whacked me on the thigh and laughed: "That's right, by God! The Miami boy!"

- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in New Hampshire, March 2, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'I shrugged, feeling a little sad because I could tell by the general vibrations that things were not really "okay." I was tempted to take her into Manchester with me, but I knew that would only compound the problems for both of us...checking into the Wayfarer at three thirty, then up again at seven for a quick breakfast and then into the press bus for a long day of watching McGovern shake hands with people at factory gates.

Could she handle the madness? Probably not. And even if she could why do it? A political campaign is a very narrow ritual, where anything weird is unwelcome. I am trouble enough by myself; they would never tolerate me showing up with a nervous blonde nymphet who thought politics was some kind of game played by old people, like bridge.

No, it would never do. But on my way into Manchester, driving like a werewolf, it never occurred to me that maybe I was not quite as sane as I'd always thought I was. There is something seriously bent, when you think on it, in the notion that a man with good sense would race out of his peaceful home and fly off in a frenzy like some kind of electrified turkey buzzard to spend three or four days being carried around the foulest sections of New England like a piece of meat, to watch another man who says he wants to be president, embarrassing a lot of people by making them shake his hand outside factory gates at sunrise.'

- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in New Hampshire, March 2, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'The first official quietly beckoned Zaphod in. The large dim yellow lights glowed about twenty feet from them. 'The reason,' he said quietly, 'why everything else in this ship is, I maintain, safe, is that no one is really crazy enough to use them. No one. At least no one that crazy would ever get near them. Anyone that mad or dangerous rings very deep alarm bells. People may be stupid, but they're not that stupid.' 'By-products,' hissed Zaphod again - he had to hiss in order that his voice shouldn't be heard to tremble - 'of what?' 'Er, Designer People.' 'What?' 'The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation were awarded a huge research grant to design and produce synthetic personalities to order. The results were uniformly disastrous. All the "people" and "personalities" turned out to be amalgams of characteristics which simply could not coexist in naturally occurring life forms. Most of them were just poor pathetic misfits, but some were deeply, deeply dangerous. Dangerous because they didn't ring alarm bells in other people. They could walk through situations the way that ghosts walk through walls, because no one spotted the danger. The most dangerous of all were three identical ones - they were put in this hold, to be blasted, with this ship, right out of this universe. They are not evil, in fact they are rather simple and charming. But they are the most dangerous creatures that lived because there is nothing they will not do if allowed, and nothing they will not be allowed to do...' - Young Zaphod Plays It Safe, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams

Ronald Reagan, when Douglas Adams wrote this. Richard Nixon before that. Today many clones have been produced - Modi, Xi, Trump, Johnson, Putin...


'A lot of blood has gone under the bridge since then, and we have learned a hell of a lot about the realities of Politics in America. Even the politicians have learned - but, as usual, the politicians are usually much slower than the people they want to lead.

This is an ugly portent for the twenty-five million or so new voters between eighteen and twenty-five who may or may not vote in 1972. And many of them probably will vote. The ones who go to the polls in '72 will be the most committed, the most idealistic, the "best minds of my generation," as Ginsberg said it fourteen years ago in "Howl." There is not much doubt that the hustlers behind the "Youth Vote" will get a lot of people out to the polls in '72. If you give twenty-five million people a new toy, the odds are pretty good that a lot of them will try it at least once.

But what about the next time? Who is going to explain, in 1976, that all the people who felt they got burned in '72 should "try again" for another bogus challenger? Four years from now there will be two entire generations - between the ages of twenty-two and forty - who will not give a hoot in hell about any election, and their apathy will be rooted in personal experience. Four years from now it will be very difficult to convince anybody who has gone from Johnson-Goldwater to Humphrey-Nixon to Nixon-Muskie that there is any possible reason for getting involved in another bullshit election.'

- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in New Hampshire, March 2, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'But things are different in Washington. It's not that everybody you talk to is aggressively hostile to any idea that might faze their well-ordered lifestyles; they'd just rather not think about it. And there is no sense of life in the Underculture.

On the national/reality spectrum, Washington's Doper/Left/Rock/Radical community is somewhere between Toledo and Biloxi. "Getting it on" in Washington means killing a pint of Four Roses and then arguing about Foreign Aid, over chicken wings, with somebody's drunk congressman.

The latest craze on the local highlife front is mixing up six or eight aspirins in a fresh Coca-Cola and doing it all at once. Far more government people are into this stuff than will ever admit to it. What seems like mass paranoia, in Washington, is really just a sprawling, hyper-tense boredom - and the people who actually live and thrive here, in the great web of government, are the first ones to tell you, on the basis of long experience, that the name or even the party affiliation of the next president won't make any difference at all, except on the surface.

The leaves change, they say, but the roots stay the same. So just lie back and live with it. '

- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in New Hampshire, March 2, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Meanwhile I am hunkered down in Washington - waiting for the next plane to anywhere and wondering what in the name of sweet Jesus ever brought me here in the first place. This is not what us journalists call a "happy beat."

At first I thought it was me; that I was missing all the action because I wasn't plugged in. But then I started reading the press wizards who are plugged in, and it didn't take long to figure out that most of them were just filling space because the contracts said they had to write a certain amount of words every week.

At that point I tried talking to some of the people that even the wizards said were "right on top of things." But they all seemed very depressed, not only about the '72 election, but about the whole, long-range future of politics and democracy in America.

Which is not exactly the kind of question we really need to come to grips with right now. The nut of the problem is that covering this presidential campaign is so fucking dull that it is barely tolerable...and the only thing worse than going out on the campaign trail and getting hauled around in a booze frenzy from one speech to another is having to come back to Washington and write about it.'

- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in New Hampshire, March 2, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'Zaphod approached the two remaining tanks. A quick glance showed him that each contained an identical floating body. He examined one more carefully. The body, that of an elderly man, was floating in a thick yellow liquid. The man was kindly looking, with lots of pleasant laugh lines round his face. His hair seemed unnaturally thick and dark for someone of his age, and his right hand seemed continually to be weaving forward and back, up and down, as if shaking hands with an endless succession of unseen ghosts. He smiled genially, babbled and burbled like a half-sleeping baby, and occasionally seemed to rock very slightly with little tremors of laughter, as if he had just told himself a joke he hadn't heard before, or didn't remember properly. Waving, smiling, chortling, with little yellow bubbles beading on his lips, he seemed to inhabit a distant world of simple dreams.
Another terse message suddenly came through his helmet headset. The planet toward which the escape capsule had headed had already been identified. It was in Galactic Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha.
Zaphod found a small speaker by the tank, and turned it on. The man in the yellow liquid was babbling gently about a shining city on a hill.
He also heard the Official from the Safety and Civil Reassurance Administration issue instructions to the effect that the missing escape capsule contained a 'Reagan' and that the planet in ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha must be made 'perfectly safe.''

- Young Zaphod Plays It Safe, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams


'Both the Washington Star and Women's Wear Daily reported essentially the same tale: a genuinely savage person had boarded the train in West Palm Beach, using a fraudulent press pass, then ran amok in the lounge car - getting in "several fistfights" and finally "heckling the Senator unmercifully" when the train pulled up into Miami and Muskie went out on the caboose platform to deliver what was supposed to have been the climatic speech of his triumphant whistle-stop tour.

It was at this point - according to press reports both published & otherwise - that my alleged friend, calling himself "Peter Sheridan," cranked up his act to a level that caused Senator Muskie to "cut short his remarks."

When the "Sunshine Special" pulled into the station at Miami, "Sheridan" reeled of the train and took a position on the tracks just below Muskie's caboose platform, where he spent the next half hour giving the senator a hellish amount of grief - along with Jerry Rubin, who also showed up at the station to ask Muskie what had caused him to change his mind about supporting the War in Vietnam.'

- The Campaign Trail: The Banshee Screams in Florida, April 13, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'When Rubin showed up at the train station that Saturday afternoon to hassle Muskie, the senator from Maine was apparently the only person in the crowd who didn't know who he was. His response to Rubin's heckling was, "Shut up, young man - I'm talking."

"You're not a damn bit different from Nixon," Rubin shouted back.

And it was at this point, according to compiled press reports and a firsthand account by Monte Chitty of the University of Florida Alligator, that Muskie seemed to lose his balance and fall back from the rail.

What happened, according to Chitty, was that "the Boohoo reached up from the track and got hold of Muskie's pants leg - waving an empty glass through the bars around the caboose platform with his other hand and screaming: 'Get your lying ass back inside and make me another drink, you worthless old fart!'"

"It was really embarrassing," Chitty told me later on the phone. "The Boohoo kept reaching up and grabbing Muskie's legs, yelling for more gin...Muskie tried to ignore him, but the Boohoo kept after him and after awhile it got so bad that even Rubin backed off. He was acting just like he did the night before - only six times worse."

"The Boohoo," of course, was the same vicious drunkard who had terrorized the Muskie train all the way from Palm Beach, and he was still wearing a press badge that said "Hunter S. Thompson - Rolling Stone."

- The Campaign Trail: The Banshee Screams in Florida, April 13, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'It took awhile, but they finally collected a crowd. Then one of Muskie's college-type staffers took charge. He told the Black Irishman what to play, cued the other staff people, then launched into nineteen straight choruses of Big Ed's newest campaign song: "He's got the whole state of Florida...In his hands..."

I left at that point. The scene was pure Nixon - so much like a pep rally at a Young Republican Club that I was reminded of a conversation that I'd earlier had with a reporter from Atlanta. "You know," he said, "its taken me half the goddamn day to figure out what it is that bothers me about these people." He nodded toward a group of clean-cut young Muskie staffers at the other end of the car. "I've covered a lot of Democratic campaigns," he continued, "but I've never felt out of place before - never personally uncomfortable with the people."

"I know what you mean," I said.

'Sure," he said. "It's obvious - and I've finally figured out why." He chuckled and glanced at the Muskie people again. "You know what it is?" he said. "It's because these people act like goddamn Republicans! That's the problem. It took me a while, but I finally figured it out."

- The Campaign Trail: The Banshee Screams in Florida, April 13, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'The first official quietly beckoned Zaphod in. The large dim yellow lights glowed about twenty feet from them.
'The reason,' he said quietly, 'why everything else in this ship is, I maintain, safe, is that no one is really crazy enough to use them. No one. At least no one that crazy would ever get near them. Anyone that mad or dangerous rings very deep alarm bells. People may be stupid, but they're not that stupid.'
'By-products,' hissed Zaphod again - he had to hiss in order that his voice shouldn't be heard to tremble - 'of what?'
'Er, Designer People.'
'What?'
'The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation were awarded a huge research grant to design and produce synthetic personalities to order. The results were uniformly disastrous. All the "people" and "personalities" turned out to be amalgams of characteristics which simply could not coexist in naturally occurring life forms. Most of them were just poor pathetic misfits, but some were deeply, deeply dangerous. Dangerous because they didn't ring alarm bells in other people. They could walk through situations the way that ghosts walk through walls, because no one spotted the danger.
The most dangerous of all were three identical ones - they were put in this hold, to be blasted, with this ship, right out of this universe. They are not evil, in fact they are rather simple and charming. But they are the most dangerous creatures that lived because there is nothing they will not do if allowed, and nothing they will not be allowed to do...'

- Young Zaphod Plays It Safe, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams


'A candidate like Lindsay or McGovern might be able to raise serious hell in a deadlocked convention, but the odds are better than ever that Hubert will peddle his ass to almost anybody who wants a chunk of it, then arrive in Miami with the nomination sewed up and Nixon waiting to pounce on him the instant he comes out of his scumbag.

Another Nixon-Humphrey horror would almost certainly cause a "Fourth Party" uprising and guarantee Nixon's reelection - which might bring the hounds of hell down on a lot of people for the next four very long years.

But personally I think I'd be inclined to take that risk. Hubert Humphrey is a treacherous, gutless old ward-heeler who should be put in a goddamn bottle and sent out with the Japanese Current. The idea of Humphrey running for president again makes a mockery of a lot of things that it would take me too long to explain or even list here. And Hubert Humphrey wouldn't understand what I was talking about anyway. He was a swine in '68 and he's worse now. If the Democratic Party nominates Humphrey again in '72, the party will get exactly what it deserves.'

- The Campaign Trail: The Banshee Screams in Florida, April 13, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'I stared at him, trying to get my brain back in focus. Conversation ceased at every table within ten feet of us, but the only one that really concerned me was a knot of four Secret Service men who suddenly shifted into Deadly Pounce position at their table just behind Mankiewicz and whoever else was eating with him.

I had come down the aisle very fast, in my normal fashion, not thinking about much of anything except what I wanted to ask Mankiewicz - but his loud accusation about me having "the nerve to show up" gave me a definite jolt. Which might have passed in a flash if I hadn't realized, at almost the same instant, that four thugs with wires in their ears were so alarmed at my high-speed appearance that they were about to beat me into a coma on pure instinct, and ask questions later.

This was my first confrontation with the Secret Service. They had not been around in any of the other primaries, until Wisconsin, and I was not accustomed to working in a situation where any sudden move around a candidate could mean a broken arm. Their orders are to protect the candidate, period, and they are trained like high-strung guard dogs to reach with Total Force at the first sign of danger. Never hesitate. First crack the wrist, then go for the floating rib...and if the "assassin" turns out to be just an oddly dressed journalist: well, that's what the SS boys call "tough titty." Memories of Sirhan Sirhan are still fresh, and there is no reliable profile on potential assassins...so everybody is suspect, including journalists.'

- The Campaign Trail: More Late News from Bleak House, May 11, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Muskie has always taken pride in his ability to deal with hecklers, he has often challenged them, calling them up to the stage in front of big crowds and then forcing the poor bastards to debate with him in a blaze of TV lights.

But there was none of that in Florida. When the Boohoo began grabbing at his legs and screaming for more gin, Big Ed went all to pieces...which gave rise to speculation, among reporters familiar with his campaign style in '68 and '70, that Muskie was not himself. It was noted, among other things, that he had developed a tendency to roll his eyes during TV interviews, that his thought-patterns had become strangely fragmented, and that not even his closest advisors could predict when he might suddenly spiral off into babbling rages, or neo-comatose funks.

In retrospect, however, it is easy to see why Muskie fell apart on the caboose platform in the Miami train station. There he was - far gone in a bad ibogaine frenzy - suddenly shoved out in a rainstorm to face a sullen crowd and some kind of snarling lunatic going for his legs while he tried to explain why he was "the only Democrat who can beat Nixon."

It is entirely conceivable - given the known effects of ibogaine - that Muskie's brain was almost paralyzed by hallucinations at the time, that he looked out at that crowd and saw gila monsters instead of people, and that his mind snapped completely when he suddenly felt something large and apparently vicious clawing at his legs.

We can only speculate on this, because those in a position to know have flatly refused to comment on rumors concerning the senator's disastrous experiments with ibogaine. I tried to find the Brazilian doctor on election night in Milwaukee, but by the time the polls closed he was long gone. One of the hired bimbos in Muskee's Holiday Inn headquarters said a man with fresh welts on his head had been dragged out the side door and put on a bus to Chicago, but we were never able to confirm this.'

- The Campaign Trail: More Late News from Bleak House, May 11, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Humphrey's addiction with Wallot has not stirred any controversy, so far. He has always campaigned like a rat in heat, and the only difference now is that he is able to do it eighteen hours a day instead of ten. The main change in his public style, since '68, is that he no longer seems aware that his gibberish is not taken seriously by anyone except Labor Leaders and middle-class Blacks.

At least half the reporters assigned to the Humphrey campaign are convinced that he's senile. When he ran for president four years ago he was a hack and a fool, but at least he was consistent.

Now he talks like an eighty-year old woman who just discovered speed. He will call a press conference to announce that if elected he will "have all our boys out of Vietnam within ninety days" - then rush across town, weeping and jabbering the whole way, to appear on a network TV show and make a fist-shaking emotional appeal for every good American to stand behind the president and "applaud" his recent decision to resume heavy bombing in North Vietnam.

Humphrey will go into a Black neighborhood in Milwaukee and drench the streets with tears while deploring "the enduring tragedy" that life in Nixon's America has visited on "these beautiful little children" - and then act hurt and dismayed when a reporter who covered his Florida campaign reminds him that "In Miami you were talking just a shade to the Left of George Wallace and somewhere to the Right of Mussolini"'

- The Campaign Trail: More Late News from Bleak House, May 11, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Total candor with the press - or anyone else, for that matter - is not one of the traits most presidential candidates find entirely desirable in their key staff people. Skilled professional liars are as much in demand in politics as they are in the advertising business...and the main function of any candidate's press secretary is to make sure that the press gets nothing but Upbeat news. There is no point, after all, in calling a press conference to announce that nobody on the staff will be paid this month because three or four of your largest financial backers just called to say they are pulling out and abandoning all hope of victory.

When something like this happens, you quickly lock all the doors and send your press secretary out to start whispering, off the record, that your opponent's California campaign coordinator just called to ask for a job.

This kind of devious bullshit is standard procedure in most campaigns. Everybody is presumed to understand it - even the reporters who can't keep a straight face while they're jotting it all down for page one of the early edition: "Sen. Mace Denies Pullout Rumors; Predicts Total Victory in All States."

- The Campaign Trail: More Late News from Bleak House, May 11, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'Arthur Dent had been in some hell-holes in his life, but he had never before seen a spaceport which had a sign saying, 'Even travelling despondently is better than arriving here.' To welcome visitors the arrivals hall featured a picture of the President of NowWhat, smiling. It was the only picture anybody could find of him, and it had been taken shortly after he had shot himself so although the photo had been retouched as well as could be managed the smile it wore was rather a ghastly one. The side of his head had been drawn back in in crayon. No replacement had been found for the photograph because no replacement had been found for the President. There was only one ambition which anyone on the planet ever had, and that was to leave.'

- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams


'McGOVERN AND FRIEND

"Sen. George McGovern (D-SD), shown here campaigning in Nebraska where he has spent 23 hours a day for the past six days denying charges by local Humphrey operatives that he favors the legalization of Marijuana, pauses between denials to shake hands for photographers with his "old friend" Hunter S. Thompson, the notorious National Correspondent for Rolling Stone who was recently identified by Newsweek magazine as a vicious drunkard and known abuser of hard drugs."

A thing like that would have finished him here in Nebraska. No more of that "Hi, sheriff" bullshit; I am now the resident puff adder...and the problem is very real. In Ohio, which McGovern eventually lost by a slim nineteen-thousand-vote margin, his handlers figure perhaps ten thousand of those were directly attributable to his public association with Warren Beatty, who once told a reporter somewhere that he favored legalizing grass. This was picked up by the worthless asshole Sen. Henry Jackson (D.Wash.) and turned into a major issue.

So it fairly boggles the mind to think what Humphrey's people might do with a photo of McGovern shaking hands with a person who once ran for Sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket, with a platform embracing the use and frequent enjoyment of Mescaline by the sheriff and all his deputies at any hour of the day or night that seemed Right.'

- The Campaign Trail: Crank-Time on the Low Road, June 8, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'The logical bargainee, as it were, is Hubert Humphrey, who has been running a sort of left-handed, stupid-coy flirtation with Wallace ever since the Florida primary, where he did everything possible to co-opt Wallace's position on busing without actually agreeing with it. Humphrey even went so far as to agree, momentarily, with Nixon on busing - blurting out "Oh, thank goodness!" when he heard of Nixon's proposal for a "moratorium," which amounted to a presidential edict to suspend all busing until the White House could figure out some way to circumvent the U.S. Supreme Court.

When somebody called Hubert's attention to this aspect of the problem and reminded him that he had always been a staunch foe of racial segregation, he quickly changed his mind and rushed up to Wisconsin to nail down the black vote by denouncing Wallace as a racist demagogue, and Nixon as a cynical opportunist for saying almost exactly the same things about busing that Humphrey himself had been saying in Florida.

There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible, and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey really is until you've followed him around for a while on the campaign trail. The double-standard realities of campaign journalism, however, make it difficult for even the best of the "straight/objective" reporters to write what they actually think and feel about a candidate.'

- The Campaign Trail: Crank-Time on the Low Road, June 8, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'I am growing extremely weary of writing constantly about politics. My brain has become a steam-vat; my body is turning to wax and bad flab; impotence looms, my fingernails are growing at a fantastic rate of speed - they are turning into claws, my standard-size clippers will no longer cut the growth, so now I carry a set of huge toenail clippers and sneak off every night around dusk, regardless of where I am - in any city, hamlet, or plastic hotel room along the campaign trail - to chop another quarter inch or so off of all ten fingers.

People are beginning to notice, I think, but fuck them. I am beginning to notice some of their problems, too. Drug dependence is out in the open now: some people are getting heavy into downers - reds, Quaaludes, Tuinals - and others are gobbling speed, booze, Maalox, and other strange medications with fearsome regularity. The 1972 presidential campaign is beginning to feel more and more like the second day of a Hells Angels Labor Day picnic.

And we are only halfway home: five more months...the moment I finish this goddamn thing, I have to rush up to New York for the June 20 primary, then back to Washington to get everything packed for the move to Colorado...and after that to Miami for the Democratic Convention, which is shaping up very fast these days as one of the most brutal and degrading animal acts of our time.'

- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in California: Traditional Politics with a Vengeance, July 6, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'I rode a factory-demo Honda for a while, just to get the feel of being back on a serious road-runner again...and it seemed just fine: very quick, very powerful, very easy in the hands, one-touch electric starter. A very civilized machine, in all, and I might even be tempted to buy one if I didn't have the same gut distaste for Hondas that the American Honda management has for Rolling Stone. They don't like the image. "You meet the nicest people on a Honda," they say - but according to a letter from the American Honda to the Rolling Stone ad manager, none of these nicest people have much stomach for a magazine like this one.

Which is probably just as well; because if you're a safe, happy, nice young Republican, you probably don't want to read about things like dope, rock music, and politics anyway. You want to stick with Time, and for weekend recreation do a bit of the laid-back street-cruising on your big fast Honda 750...maybe burn a Sportster or a Triumph here & there, just for the fun of it: but nothing serious, because when you start that kind of thing you don't meet many nice people.'

- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in California: Traditional Politics with a Vengeance, July 6, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'If I were running for president I would hire Mankiewicz to run my campaign, but as a journalist I wouldn't shed a tear if I picked up tomorrow's paper and saw where nine thugs had caught poor Frank in an alley near the Capitol and cut off both of his big toes, making it permanently impossible for him to keep his balance for more than five or six feet in any direction.

The image is horrible: Mankiewicz gets a phone call from Houston, saying the Texas delegation is on the verge of selling out to a Humphrey-Wallace coalition...he slams down the phone and lunges out of his cubicle in "McGovern for President" headquarters, bouncing off the door-jamb and then grabbing the Coke machine in order to stay upright - then lunging again into Rick Stearns' office to demand a detailed breakdown of the sex-lives and bad debts of every member of the Texas delegation...then trying to catch his breath, gasping for air from the terrible exertion, then finally lunging back down the hall to his own cubicle.

It is very hard to walk straight with the big toes gone; the effect is sort of like taking the keel off a sailboat - it becomes impossibly top-heavy, wallowing crazily in the swells, not even the sea-anchor will hold it upright...and the only way a man can walk straight with no big toes is to use a very complex tripod mechanism, five or six retractable aluminium rods strapped to each arm, moving around like a spider instead of a person.

Ah...this seems to be getting heavy. Very harsh and demented language. I have tried to suppress these feelings for more than a week, but every time I sit down at a typewriter they foam to the surface. So it is probably better - if for no other reason than to get past this ugly hang-up and into the rest of the article - to just blow it all out and take the weight off my spleen, as it were, with a brief explanation.'

- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in California: Traditional Politics with a Vengeance, July 6, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

' 'War?' he said.
'Yes!' Number Two gazed contemptuously at Ford Prefect.
'On the next continent?'
'Yes! Total warfare! The war to end all wars!'
'But there's no one even living there yet!'
Ah, interesting, thought the crowd, nice point.
Number Two's gaze hovered undisturbed. In this respect his eyes were like a couple of mosquitoes that hover purposefully three inches from your nose and refuse to be deflected by arm thrashes, fly swats or rolled newspapers.
'I know that,' he said, 'but there will be one day! So we have left an open-ended ultimatum.'
'What?'
'And blown up a few military installations.'
The captain leaned forward out of his bath.
'Military installations, Number Two?' he said
For a moment the eyes wavered.
'Yes, sir, well, potential military installations. All right...trees.'
The moment of uncertainty passed - his eyes flicked like whips over his audience.
'And,' he roared, 'we interrogated a gazelle!'
He flipped his Kill-O-Zap smartly under his arm and marched off through the pandemonium that had now erupted throughout the ecstatic crowd. A few steps was all he managed before he was caught up and carried shoulder high for a lap of honour round the clearing.'

- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams


'Later in the week I tried the bastard again, but it stalled on a ramp leading up to the Hollywood Freeway and I almost broke my hand when I exploded in a stupid, screaming rage and punched the gas tank. After that, I locked it up and left it in the hotel parking lot - where it sat for many days with a "McGovern for President" tag on the handlebars.

George never mentioned it, and when I suggested to Gary Hart that the senator might like to take the machine out for a quick test-ride and some photos for the national press, I got almost exactly the same reaction that Mankiewicz laid on me in Florida when I suggested that McGovern could pick up a million or so votes by inviting the wire-service photographers to come out and snap him lounging around on the beach with a can of beer in his hand and wearing my Grateful Dead T-shirt.

Looking back on it, I think that was the moment when my relationship with Mankiewicz turned sour. Twenty-four hours earlier I had showed up at his house in Washington with what John Prine calls "an illegal smile" on my face - and the morning after that visit he found himself sitting next to me on the plane to Florida and listening to some lunatic spiel about how his man should commit political suicide by irreparably identifying himself as the candidate of the Beachbums, Weirdos, and Boozers.'

- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in California: Traditional Politics with a Vengeance, July 6, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'That was six months ago. But things are different now - and in the strange calm of those first few days after the votes were counted in California, I began to see that George McGovern had scrambled my own carefully laid plans along with all the others - except his - and that I was suddenly facing the very distinct possibility that I might have to drag myself into a voting booth this November and actually pull the lever for the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. O'Brien's party. That same gang of corrupt and genocidal bastards who not only burned me for six white sharkskin suits eight years ago in South Dakota and chased me through the streets of Chicago with clubs & tear gas in August of '68, but also forced me to choose for five years between going to prison or chipping in 20 percent of my income to pay for napalm bombs to be dropped on people who never threatened me with anything, and who put my friends in jail for refusing to fight an undeclared war in Asia that even Mayor Daley was now opposed to...

Ah...careful, careful: that trip has been done. No point getting off on another violent tangent. And besides, now that the Republicans are running The War, the Democrats are against it...or at least some of them are against it, including such recent converts as Ed Muskie and Hubert Humphrey. But it is also worth noting that the only Democrat to survive the hellish six-month gauntlet of presidential primaries is also the only genuine anti-war candidate.

Six months ago McGovern was dismissed by the press and the pols as a "one-issue candidate." And to a certain extent they were right. He has branched out a bit since then, but The War in Vietnam is still the only issue in McGovern's jumbled arsenal that he never has to explain, defend, or modify. All he has to do is start talking about Vietnam, and the crowd begins cheering and clapping.'

- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in California: Traditional Politics with a Vengeance, July 6, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'At this point the number of officially "uncommitted" delegates was still hovering around 450, but there had already been some small-scale defections to McGovern, and the others were getting nervous. The whole purpose of getting yourself elected as an Uncommitted delegate is to be able to arrive at the Convention with bargaining power. Ideology has nothing to do with it.

If you're a lawyer from St. Louis, for instance, and you manage to get yourself elected as an Uncommitted delegate from Missouri, you will hustle down to Miami and start scouting around for somebody to make a deal with...which won't take long, because every candidate still in the running for anything at all will have dozens of his own personal fixers roaming around the hotel bars and buttonholing Uncommitted delegates to find out what they want.

If your price is a lifetime appointment as a judge in the U.S. Circuit Court, your only hope is to deal with a candidate who is so close to that magic 1,509 figure that he can no longer function in public because of uncontrollable drooling. If he is stuck around 1400, you will probably not have much luck getting that bench appointment...but if he's already up to 1,499 he won't hesitate to offer you the first opening on the U.S. Supreme Court...and if you can catch him peaked at 1,505 or so, you can squeeze him for almost anything you want.

The game will get heavy sometimes. You don't want to go around putting the squeeze on people unless you're absolutely clean. No skeletons in the closet, no secret vices...because if your vote is important and your price is high, the Fixer-Man will have already checked you out by the time he offers to buy you a drink. If you've bribed a traffic court clerk two years ago to bury a drunk driving charge, the Fixer might suddenly confront you with a photostat of the citation you thought had been burned.

When that happens, you're fucked. Your price just went down to zero, and you are no longer an Uncommitted delegate.

There are several other versions of the Reverse-Squeeze: the fake hit-and-run; glassine bags found in your hotel room by your maid; grabbed off the street by phoney cops for statutory rape of a teenage girl you never say before...'

- The Campaign Trail: In the Eye of the Hurricane, July 20, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Every once in a while you might hit on something with real style, like this one: on Monday afternoon, the first day of the convention, you - the ambitious young lawyer from St. Louis with no skeletons in the closet and no secret vices worth worrying about - are spending the afternoon by the pool of the Playboy Plaza, soaking up the sun and gin/tonics, when you hear somebody calling your name. You look up and you see a smiling, rotund chap about thirty-five years old coming at you, ready to shake hands.

"Hi there, Virgil," he says. "My name's J.D. Squane. I work for Senator Bilbo and we'd sure like to count your vote. How about it?"

You smile, but say nothing - waiting for Squane to continue. He will want to know your price.

But Squane is staring out to sea, squinting at something on the horizon...then he suddenly turns back to you and starts talking very fast about how he always wanted to be a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi, nut politics got in the way..."And now, goddamn it, we must get these last few votes..."

- The Campaign Trail: In the Eye of the Hurricane, July 20, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'You smile again, itching to get serious, But Squane suddenly yells at somebody across the pool, then turns back to you and says: "Jesus, Virgil, I'm really sorry about this, but I have to run. That guy over there is delivering my new Jensen Interceptor." He grins and extends his hand again. Then" Say, maybe we can talk later on, eh? What room are you in?"

"1909."

He nods. "How about seven, for dinner? Are you free?"

"Sure."

"Wonderful," he replies. "We can take my new Jensen for a run up to Palm Beach...It's one of my favorite towns."

"Mine too," you say. "I've heard a lot about it."

He nods. "I spent some time there last February...but we had a bad act, dropped about twenty-five grand."

Jesus! Jensen Interceptor, twenty-five grand...Squane is definitely big-time.

"See you at seven," he says, moving away.'

- The Campaign Trail: In the Eye of the Hurricane, July 20, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'The knock come at 7:02 - but instead of Squane it's a beautiful silver-haired young girl who says J.D. sent her to pick you up. "He's having a business dinner with the senator and he'll join us later at the Crab House."

"Wonderful, wonderful - shall we have a drink?"

She nods. "Sure, but not here. We'll drive over to North Miami and pick up my girlfriend...but let's smoke this before we go."

"Jesus! That looks like a cigar!"

"It is!" she laughs. "And it'll make us both crazy."

- The Campaign Trail: In the Eye of the Hurricane, July 20, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Many hours later. 4.30 AM. Soaking wet, falling into the lobby, begging for help: no wallet, no money, no ID. Blood on both hands and one shoe missing, dragged up to the room by two bellboys...

Breakfast at noon the next day, half-sick in the coffee shop - waiting for a Western Union money-order from the wife in St. Louis. Very spotty memories from last night.

"Hi there, Virgil."

J.D. Squane, still grinning. "Where were you last night, Virgil? I came by right on the dot, but you weren't in."

"I got mugged - by your girlfriend."

"Oh? Too bad. I wanted to nail down that ugly little vote of yours."

"Ugly? Wait a minute...That girl you sent; we went someplace to meet you."

"Bullshit! You double-crossed me, Virgil! If we weren't on the same team I might be tempted to lean on you."

Rising anger now, painful throbbing in your head. "Fuck you, Squane! I'm on nobody's team! If you want my vote you know damn well how to get it - and that goddamn dope-addict girlfriend of yours didn't help any."

- The Campaign Trail: In the Eye of the Hurricane, July 20, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Squane smiles heavily. "Tell me, Virgil - what was it you wanted for that vote of yours? A seat on the federal bench?"

"You're goddamn fuckin'-A right! You got me in bad trouble last night, J.D. When I got back here, my wallet was gone and there was blood on my hands."

"I know. You beat the shit out of her."

"What?"

"Look at these photographs, Virgil. It's some of the most disgusting stuff I've ever seen."

"Photographs?"

Squane hands them across the table.

"Oh my god!"

"Yeah, that's what I said, Virgil."

"No! This can't be me! I never saw that girl! Christ, she's only a child!"

"That's why the pictures are so disgusting, Virgil. You're lucky we didn't take them straight to the cops and have you locked up." Pounding the table with his fist. "That's rape, Virgil! That's sodomy! With a child!"'

- The Campaign Trail: In the Eye of the Hurricane, July 20, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'"No!"

"Yes, Virgil - and now you're going to pay for it."

"How? What are you talking about?"

Squane smiling again. "Votes, my friend. Yours and five others. Six votes for six negatives. Are you ready?"

Tears of rage in the eyes now. "You evil sonofabitch! You're blckmailing me!"

"Ridiculous, Virgil. Ridiculous. I'm talking about coalition politics."

"I don't even know six delegates. Not personally, anyway. And besides, they all want something."

Squane shakes his head. "Don't tell me about it, Virgil. I'd rather not hear. Just bring me six names off this list by noon tomorrow. If they all vote right, you'll never hear another word about what happened last night."

"What if I can't?"

Squane smiles, then shakes his head sadly. "Your life will take a turn for the worse, Virgil."

- The Campaign Trail: In the Eye of the Hurricane, July 20, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Ah, bad craziness...a scene like that could run on forever. Sick dialogue comes easy after five months on the campaign trail. A sense of humor is not considered mandatory for those who want to get heavy into presidential politics. Junkies don't laugh much, their gig is too serious - and the political junkie is not much different on that score than a smack junkie.

The high is very real in both worlds, for those who are into it - but anybody who has ever tried to live with a smack junkie will tell you it can't be done without coming to grips with the spike and shooting up yourself.

Politics is no different. There is a fantastic adrenaline high that comes with total involvement in almost any kind of fast-moving political campaign - especially when you're running against big odds and starting to feel like a winner.

As far as I know, I am the only journalist covering the '72 presidential campaign who has done any time on the other side of that gap - both as a candidate and a backroom pol, on the local level - and despite all the obvious differences between running on the Freak Power ticket for sheriff of Aspen and running as a well-behaved Democrat for President of the United States, the roots are surprisingly similar...and whatever real differences exist are hardly worth talking about, compared to the massive, unbridgeable gap between the cranked-up reality of living day after day in the vortex of a rolling campaign - and the fiendish ratbastard tedium of covering that same campaign, as a journalist, from the outside looking in.

For the same reason that nobody who has never come to grips with the spike can ever understand how far away it really is across that gap to the place where the smack junkie lives...there is no way for even the best and most talented journalist to know what is really going on inside a political campaign unless he has been there himself. '

- The Campaign Trail: In the Eye of the Hurricane, July 20, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem, 'Ode To A Small Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning' four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been 'disappointed' by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England in the destruction of the planet Earth.'

- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams


'The "ABM Movement" (Anybody but McGovern) was a coalition of desperate losers, thrown together at the last moment by Big Labor chief George Meany and his axe-man, Al Barkan. Hubert Humphrey was pressed into service as the front man of ABM, and he quickly signed up the others: Big Ed, Scoop Jackson, Terry Sanford, Shirley Chisholm - all the heavies.

The ABM movement came together, officially, sometime in the middle of the week just before the convention, when it finally became apparent that massive fraud, treachery, or violence was the only way to prevent McGovern from getting the nomination...and what followed, once this fact was accepted by all parties involved, will hopefully go down in history as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the Democratic process.

It was like a scene from the final hours of the Roman Empire: everywhere you looked, some prominent politician was degrading himself in public. By noon on Sunday both Humphrey and Muskie were so desperate that they came out of their holes and appeared - trailing a mob of photographers and TV crews - in the lobby of the Fontainbleu, the nexus hotel about five hundred yards down the beach from the Doral, racing back and forth from one caucus or press conference to another, trying to make any deal available - on any terms - that might possibly buy enough votes to deny McGovern a first-ballot victory.'

- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in Miami: Old Bulls Meet the Butcher, August 17, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'He stared at me, not grasping it.

I hesitated, trying to put it all in a quick little capsule. "Okay," I said finally, "the reason Nixon put Agnew and the Goldwater freaks in charge of the party this year is that he knows they can't win in '76 - but it was a good short-term trade, they have to stay with him this year, which will probably be worth a point or two in November - and that's important to Nixon, because he thinks it's going to be close: fuck the polls. They always follow reality instead of predicting it...But the real reason he turned the party over to the Agnew-Goldwater wing is that he knows most of the old-line Democrats who just got stomped by McGovern for the nomination wouldn't mind seeing George get taken out in '72 if they know they can get back in the saddle if they're willing to wait four years."

Bobo laughed, understanding it instantly. Pimps and hustlers have a fine instinct for politics. "What you're saying is that Nixon just cashed his whole check," he said. "He doesn't give a flying fuck what happens once he gets reelected - because once he wins, it's all over for him anyway, right? He can't run again..."

"Yeah," I said, pausing to twist the top off one of the ale bottles I'd been pulling out of the bag. "But the thing you want to understand is that Nixon has such a fine understanding of the way politicians think that he knew people like Daley and Meany and Ted Kennedy would go along with him - because it's in their interest now to have Nixon get his second term, in exchange for a guaranteed Democratic victory in 1976."

"Goddamn," he said. "That's beautiful! They're gonna trade him four years now for eight years later, right? Give Nixon his last trip in '72, then Kennedy moves in for eight years in '76...Jesus, that's so rotten I really have to admire it." He chuckled. "Boy, I thought I was cynical!"

"That's not cynical," I said. "That's pure, nut-cutting politics...And I advise you to stay out of it; you're too sensitive."

- The Campaign Trail: More Fear and Loathing in Miami: Nixon Bites the Bomb, September 28, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'The game had already started, but there was no score. I dumped the ale bottles in the Styrofoam cooler, then opened one and sat down to watch the action and brood on Nixon's treachery. But first I concentrated on the game for a while. It is hard to understand how someone else thinks unless you can get on their wavelength: get in tune with their patterns, their pace, their connections...and since Nixon is a known football addict, I decided to get my head totally into the rhythm of this exhibition game between the Rams and Kansas City before attempting the jump into politics.

Very few people understand this kind of logic. I learned it from a Brazilian psychiatrist in the Mato Grasso in 1963. He called it "Rhythm Logic," in English, because he said I would never be able to pronounce it in the original Jibaro. I tried it once or twice, but the Jibaro language was too much for me - and it didn't make much difference anyway. I seemed to have an instinct for Rhythm Logic, however, so I picked it up very quickly. But I have never been able to explain it, except in terms of music, and typewriters are totally useless when it comes to that kind of translation.

In any case, by the end of the first quarter I felt ready. By means of intense concentration on every detail of the football game, I was able to "derail" my own inner brain waves and re-pattern them temporarily to the inner brain wave rhythms of a serious football fanatic. The next step was to bring my "borrowed" rhythms into focus on a subject quite different from football - such as presidential elections.

In the third and final step, I merely concentrated on a pre-selected problem involving presidential politics, and attempted to solve it subjectively...although the word "subjectively", at this point, had a very different true meaning. Because I was no longer reasoning in the rhythm of my own inner brain waves, but in the rhythms of the football addict.'

- The Campaign Trail: More Fear and Loathing in Miami: Nixon Bites the Bomb, September 28, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude to a nation. They have no genius or talent for comparatively humble questions of taxation and finance, commerce, and manufactures, and agriculture. If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among nations. For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation? '

- Civil Disobedience, Henry D Thoreau, Selected Writings on Nature and Liberty.


'At that point it became almost unbearably clear to me that Richard Nixon has in fact sold the Republican Party down the tube in Miami. Consciously, perhaps, but never quite verbally. Because the rhythm of his own inner brain waves convinced his conscious mind that in fact he had no choice. Given the safe assumption that the most important objective in Richard Nixon's life today is minimizing the risk of losing the 1972 election to George McGovern, simple logic decreed that he should bend all his energies to that end, at all costs. All other objectives would have to be subjugated to Number One.

By halftime, with the Rams trailing by six, I had a firm scientific basis for the paranoid gibberish I had uttered, an hour or so earlier, while standing in the hotel driveway and talking with Bobo the night-pimp. At the time, not wanting to seem ignorant or confused, I had answered the question with the first wisdom capsule that popped into my mind...But now it made perfect sense, thanks to Rhythm Logic, and all that remained were two or three secondary questions, none of them serious.'

- The Campaign Trail: More Fear and Loathing in Miami: Nixon Bites the Bomb, September 28, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'The pervasive sense of gloom among the press/media crowd in Miami was only slightly less obvious than the gungho, breast-beating arrogance of the Nixon delegates themselves. That was the real story of the convention: the strident, loutish confidence of the whole GOP machinery, from top to bottom. Looking back at that week, one of my clearest memories is that maddening "FOUR MORE YEARS!" chant from the Nixon Youth gallery in the convention hall. NBC's John Chancellor compared the Nixon Youth cheering section to the Chicago "sewer workers" who were herded into the Stockyards convention hall in Chicago four years ago to cheer for Mayor Daley. The Nixon Youth people were not happy with Chancellor for making the remark on camera. They complained very bitterly about it, saying it was just another example of the "knee-jerk liberal" thinking that dominates the media.

But the truth is that Chancellor was absolutely right. Due to a strange set of circumstances, I spent two very tense hours in the middle of that Nixon Youth mob on Tuesday night, and it gave me an opportunity to speak at considerable length with quite a few of them...

What happened, in a nut, was that I got lost in a maze of hallways in the back reaches of the convention hall on Tuesday night about an hour or so before the roll-call vote on Nixon's chances of winning the GOP nomination again this year...I had just come off the convention floor, after the Secret Service lads chased me away from the First Family box when I was trying to hear what Charleton Heston was saying to Nelson Rockefeller, and in the nervous wake of an experience like that, I felt a great thirst rising...so I tried to take a shortcut to the Railroad Lounge, where free beer is available for the press; but I blew it somewhere along the way, ending up in a big room jammed with Nixon Youth workers, getting themselves ready for a "spontaneous demonstration" at the moment of climax out there on the floor...I was just idling around in the hallway, trying to go north for a beer, when I got swept up in a fast-moving mob of about two thousand people heading south at good speed, so instead of fighting the tide, I just let myself be carried along to wherever they were going...'

- The Campaign Trail: More Fear and Loathing in Miami: Nixon Bites the Bomb, September 28, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Which turned out to be the "Ready Room," in a far corner of the hall, where a dozen people wearing red hats and looking like small-town football coaches were yelling into bullhorns and trying to whip this herd of screaming sheep into shape for the "spontaneous" demonstration, scheduled for 10:33 PM.

It was a very disciplined scene. The red-hatted men with the bullhorns did all the talking. Huge green plastic "refuse" sacks full of helium balloons were distributed, along with handfuls of New Year's Eve party noisemakers and hundreds of bug cardboard signs that said things like "Nixon Now!"..."Four More Years!"..."No Compromise!"

Most of the signs were freshly printed. They looked exactly like the "We Love Mayor Daley" signs that Daley distributed to his sewer-workers in Chicago in 1968: red and blue ink on a white background...but a few, here and there, were hand-lettered, and mine happened to be one of these. It said, "Garbage Men Demand Equal Time." I had several choices, but this one seemed right for the occasion.'

- The Campaign Trail: More Fear and Loathing in Miami: Nixon Bites the Bomb, September 28, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Indeed. I was ready for some good, clean fun at that point, and by the time we got the signal to start moving I was seized by a giddy conviction that we were all about to participate in a spectacle that would go down in history.

They herded us out of the Ready Room and called a ragged kind of cadence while we double-timed it across the wet grass under the guava trees in back of the hall, and finally went through a well-guarded access door held open for us by Secret Service men just as the balloons were released from the ceiling...it was wonderful; I waved happily to the SS man as I raced past him with the herd and then onto the floor. The hall was so full of balloons that I couldn't see anything at first, but then I spotted Chancellor up there in the booth and I let the bastard have it. First I help up my "Garbage Men Demand Equal Time" sign at him. Then, when I was sure he'd noticed the sign, I tucked it under my arm and ripped off my hat, clutching it in the same fist I was shaking angrily at the NBC booth and screaming at the top of my lungs: "You evil scumsucker! You're through! You limp-wristed Nazi moron!"

I went deep into the foulest backwaters of my vocabulary for that trip, working myself into a flat-out screeching hate-frenzy for five or six minutes and drawing smiles of approval from some of my fellow-demonstrators. They were dutifully chanting the slogans that had been assigned to them in the Ready Room - but I was really into it, and I could see that my zeal impressed them.'

- The Campaign Trail: More Fear and Loathing in Miami: Nixon Bites the Bomb, September 28, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'I know that most men think differently from myself; but those whose lives are by profession devoted to the study of these or kindred subjects content me as little as any. Statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak of moving society, but have no resting place without it. They may be men of a certain experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency. Webster never goes behind government, and so cannot speak with authority about it. His words are wisdom to those legislators who contemplate no essential reform in the existing government; but for thinkers, and those who legislate for all time, he never once glances at the subject. I know of those whose serene and wise speculations on this theme would soon reveal the limit of his mind's range and hospitality. Yet, compared with the cheap professions of most reformers, and the still cheaper wisdom and eloquence of politicians in general, his are almost the only sensible and valuable words, and we thank Heaven for him. Comparatively, he is always strong, original, and, above all, practical. Still, his utility is not wisdom but prudence. The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency. Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrongdoing. He well deserves to be called, as he has been called, the Defender of the Constitution. There are really no blows to be given by him but defensive ones. He is not a leader but a follower. His leaders are the men of '87. "I have never made an effort," he says, "and never propose to make an effort; I have never countenanced an effort, and never mean to countenance an effort, to disturb the arrangement as originally made, by which the various States came into the Union." Still thinking of the sanction which the Constitution gives to slavery, he says, "because it was part of the original compact, let it stand." Notwithstanding his special acuteness and ability, he is unable to take a fact out of its merely political relations and behold it as it lies absolutely to be disposed of by the intellect - what, for instance, it behooves a man to do here in America today with regard to slavery - but ventures, or is driven, to make some such desperate answer as the following, while professing to speak absolutely and as a private man - from which what new and singular code of social duties might be inferred? "The manner," says he, "in which the government of those States where slavery exists are to regulate it is for their own consideration, under their responsibility, to their constituents, to the general laws of propriety, humanity, and justice, and to God. Associations formed elsewhere, springing from a feeling of humanity, or other cause, have nothing whatever to do with it. They have never received any encouragement from me, and they never will."

- Civil Disobedience, Henry D Thoreau, Selected Writings on Nature and Liberty.


'I went up to my room and thought for a while, sitting with my back to the typewriter and staring out the window at the big ocean-going yachts and luxury boats tied across the street at the piers along Indian Creek. Last week they'd been crawling with people, and many cocktail parties. Every time the Fontainebleu lobby started buzzing with rumors about another crowd of demonstrators bearing down on the hotel from the direction of Flamingo Park, the boats along Collins Avenue would fill up with laughing Republican delegates wearing striped blazers and cocktail dresses. There was no better place, they said, for watching the street action. As the demonstrators approached the front entrance to the hotel, they found themselves walking a gauntlet of riot-equipped police on one side, and martini-sipping GOP delegates on the other.

One yacht - the Wild Rose, out of Houston - rumbled back and forth, just offshore, at every demonstration. From the middle of Collins Avenue, you could see the guests lounging in deck chairs, observing the action through high-powered field glasses, and reaching around from time to time to accept a fresh drink from crewmen wearing white serving jackets with gold epaulets.

The scene on the foredeck of the Wild Rose was so gross, so flagrantly decadent, that it was hard to avoid comparing it with the kind of bloodthirsty arrogance associated normally with the last days of the Roman Empire: here was a crowd of rich Texans, floating around on a $100,000 yacht in front of a palatial Miami Beach hotel, giggling with excitement at the prospect of watching their hired gladiators brutalize a mob of howling, half-naked Christians. I half expected them to start whooping for blood and giving the thumbs-down signal.'

- The Campaign Trail: More Fear and Loathing in Miami: Nixon Bites the Bomb, September 28, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'"Hear me, people: We have now to deal with another race - small and feeble with our fathers first met them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough they have a mind to till the soil and the love of possession is a disease with them. These people have made many rules which the rich may break but the poor may not. They take their tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule." - Chief Sitting Bull, speaking at the Powder River Conference in 1877.

If George McGovern had a speechwriter half as eloquent as Sitting Bull, he would be home free today - instead of 22 points behind and racing around the country with both feet in his mouth. The Powder River Conference ended ninety-five years ago, but the old chief's baleful analysis of the White Man's rape of the American continent was just as accurate then as it would be today if he came back from the dead and said it for the microphones on prime-time TV. The ugle fallout from the American Dream has been coming down on us at a pretty consistent rate since Sitting Bull's time - and the only real difference now, with Election Day '72 only a few weeks away, is that we seem to be on the verge of ratifying the fallout and forgetting the Dream itself.

Sitting Bull made no distinctions between Democrats and Republicans - which was probably just as well, in 1877 or any other year - but it's also true that Sitting Bull never knew the degradation of traveling on Richard Nixon's press plane, he never had the bilious pleasure of dealing with Ron Ziegler, and he never met John Mitchell, Nixon's king fixer.

If the old Sioux Chief had ever done these things, I think - despite his angry contempt at the White Man and everything he stands for - he'd be working overtime for George McGovern today'

- The Campaign Trail: The Fat City Blues, October 26, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'That was one project. The other was to somehow pass through the fine eye of the White House security camel and go out on the campaign trail with Richard Nixon, to watch him waltz in - if only to get the drift of his thinking, to watch his moves, his eyes. It is a nervous thing to consider: not just four more years of Nixon, but Nixon's last four years in politics - completely unshackled, for the first time in his life, from the need to worry about who might or might not vote for him the next time around.

If he wins in November, he will finally be free to do whatever he wants...or maybe "wants" is too strong a word for right now. It conjures up images of Papa Doc, Batista, Somoza; jails full of bewildered "political prisoners" and the constant cold-sweat fear of jackboots suddenly kicking your door off its hinges at four in the morning.

There is no point in kidding ourselves about what Richard Nixon really wants for America. When he stands at his White House window and looks out at an anti-war demonstration, he doesn't see "dissenters," he sees criminals. Dangerous parasites, preparing to strike at the heart of the Great American System that put him where he is today.'

- The Campaign Trail: The Fat City Blues, October 26, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

 

'I hear of a convention to be held in Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors and men who are politicians by profession; but, I think, what is it to any independent, intelligent, and respectable man what decision they may come to? Shall we not have the advantage of his wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? Can we not count upon some independent votes? Are there not many individuals in the country who do not attend conventions? But no; I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected as the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought. O for a man who is a man and, as my neighbour says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault; the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one. Does not America offer any inducement for men to settle here? The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow - one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness and a manifest lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance; whose first and chief concern, on coming into the world, is to see that the alms-houses are in good repair and, before yet he has lawfully donned the virile garb, to collect a fund for the support of the widows and orphans that may be; who, in short, ventures to live only by the aid of the mutual insurance company, which has promised to bury him decently.' 

 

- Civil Disobedience, Henry D Thoreau, Selected Writings on Nature and Liberty.


'There may not be much difference between Democrats and Republicans; I have made the argument myself - with considerable venom, as I recall - over the past ten months...But only a blind geek or a waterhead would miss the difference between McGovern and Richard Nixon. Granted, they are both white men; and both are politicians - but the similarity ends right there, and from that point on the difference is so vast that anybody who can't see it deserves what happens to them if Nixon gets reelected due to apathy, stupidity, and laziness on the part of potential McGovern voters.

The tragedy of this campaign is that McGovern and his staff wizards have not been able to dramatize what is really at stake on November 7. We are not looking at just another dim rerun of the '68 Nixon-Humphrey trip, or the LBJ-Goldwater fiasco in '64. Those were both useless drills. I voted for Dick Gregory in '68, and for "No" in '64...but this one is different, and since McGovern is so maddeningly inept with the kind of words he needs to make people understand what he's up to, it will save a lot of time here - and strain on my own weary head, to remember Bobby Kennedy's ultimate characterization of Richard Nixon, in a speech at Vanderbilt University in the spring of '68, not long before he was murdered.

"Richard Nixon," he said, "represents the dark side of the American spirit."

I don't remember what else he said that day. I guess I could look it up in the New York Times speech morgue, but why bother? That one line says it all.'

- The Campaign Trail: The Fat City Blues, October 26, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Anybody who doubts it should go out and catch the president's act, the next time he swoops into the local airport. Watch the big silver-and-blue custom-built 707 come booming down the runway and roll up in front of the small but well-disciplined crowd of Nixon Youth cheerleaders singing the "Nixon Now" song, waving their freshly painted red-white-and-blue "Re-Elect the President" signs and then pausing, in perfect unison, before intimidating every TV crew on the runway with the stylish "Four More Years!" chant.

Watch the president emerge from the belly of the plane, holding hands with the aging Barbie doll known as his wife, and ooze down the rolling VIP stairway while the 105th Division Rolling Thunder Women & Children Classic Napalm U.S. Army Parade Band whips the crowd higher and higher with a big-beat rendition of "God Save the Freaks."

See the generals strut down from the plane behind the president. Take a long look at the grinning "local dignitaries" who are ushered out, by armed guards, to greet him. See the White House press corps over there about two hundred yards away, herded into that small corral behind heavy ropes stretched around red-white-and-blue painted oil drums. Why are they smiling?'

- The Campaign Trail: The Fat City Blues, October 26, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'But I don't think that's it. The real reason, I suspect, is the problem of coming to grips with the idea that Richard Nixon will almost certainly be reelected for another four years as president of the United States. If the current polls are reliable - and even if they aren't, the sheer size of the margin makes the numbers themselves unimportant - Nixon will be reelected by a huge majority of Americans who feel he is not only more honest and more trustworthy than George McGovern, but also more likely to end the war in Vietnam.

The polls indicate that Nixon will get a comfortable majority of the Youth Vote. And that he might carry all fifty states.

Well...maybe so. 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 really 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?'

- The Campaign Trail: The Fat City Blues, October 26, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

 

'After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority [governments] are permitted, and for a long period continue, is not because they are most likely to be in the right nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? - in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must a citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is that you may see a file of soldiers: colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their will, aye, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines at the service of some unscrupulous man in power?' 

 

- Civil Disobedience, Henry D Thoreau, Selected Writings on Nature and Liberty.


'That is the one grim truth of this election most likely to come back and haunt us: the options were clearly defined, and all the major candidates except Nixon were publicly grilled, by experts, who demanded to know where they stood on every issue from Gun Control and Abortion to the Ad Valorem Tax. By mid-September both candidates had staked out their own separate turfs, and if not everybody could tell you what each candidate stood for, specifically, almost everyone likely to vote in November understood that Richard Nixon and George McGovern were two very different men: not only in the context of politics, but also their personalities, temperaments, guiding principles, and even their basic lifestyles...

There is almost a yin/yang clarity in the difference between the two men; a contrast so stark that it would be hard to find any two better models, in the national politics arena, for the legendary duality - the congenital Split Personality and polarized instincts - that almost everybody except Americans has long since taken for granted as the key to the National Character. This was not what Richard Nixon had in mind last August that the 1972 presidential election would offer voters "the clearest choice of this century," but on a level he will never understand he was probably right...and it is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie doll president, with his Barbie doll wife and his box of Barbie doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts, on nights when the moon comes too close...'

- Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls..., November 9, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'At the stroke of midnight in Washington, a drooling red-eyed beast with the legs of a man and the head of a giant hyena crawls out of the bedroom window in the South Wing of the White House and leaps fifty feet down to the lawn...pauses briefly to strangle the chow watchdog, then races off into the darkness...toward the Watergate, snarling with lust, loping through the alleys behind Pennsylvania Avenue and trying desperately to remember which one of those four hundred iron balconies is the one outside Martha Mitchell's apartment...

Ah...nightmares, nightmares. But I was only kidding. The president of the United States would never act that weird. At least not during football season. But how would the voters react if they knew the president of the United States was presiding over "a complex, far-reaching, and sinister operation on the part of White House aides and the Nixon campaign organization...involving sabotage, forgery, theft of confidential files, surveillance of Democratic candidates and their families, and persistent efforts to lay the basis for potential blackmail and intimidation."

Well, that ugly description of Nixon's staff operations comes from a New York Times editorial on Thursday, October 12. But neither Nixon nor anyone else felt it would have much effect on his steady 2-1 lead over McGovern in all the national polls. Four days later the Times/Yankelovich poll showed Nixon ahead by an incredible 20 points (57 percent to 37 percent, with 16 percent undecided) over the man Bobby Kennedy described as "the most decent man in the Senate."

"Ominous" is not quite the right word for a situation when one of the most consistently unpopular politicians in American history suddenly skyrockets to Folk Hero status while his closest advisors are being caught almost daily in Nazi-style gigs that would have embarrassed Adolph Eichmann.

How long will it be before "demented extremists" in Germany, or in Japan, start calling up a Nation of Pigs? How would Nixon react? "No comment"? And how would the popularity polls react if he just came right out and admitted it?'

- Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls..., November 9, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'There is no joy in Woody Creek tonight - at least not in the twisted bowels of this sinkhole of political iniquity called the Owl Farm - because, two thousand miles away in the swampy heat of Washington D.C., my old football buddy, Dick Nixon, is lashing around in bad trouble...The vultures are coming home to roost - like he always feared they would, in the end - and it hurts me in a way nobody would publish if I properly described it, to know that I can't be with him on the sweaty ramparts today, stomping those dirty bastards like Davy Crockett bashing spics off the walls of the Alamo.

Fine music on my radio as dawn comes up on the Rockies...But suddenly the news ends and ABC (American Entertainment Network) News interrupts: Martha Mitchell is demanding that "Mister President" either resigns or be impeached, for reasons her addled tongue can only hint at...and Charles "Tex" Colson, the president's erstwhile counsel, is denying all statements & sworn testimony, by anybody, linking him to burglaries, fire-bombings, wire-tappings, perjuries, payoffs, and other routine felonies in connection with his job at the White House...and President Nixon is relaxing, as it were, in his personal beach-front mansion at San Clemente, California, surrounded by the scuzzy remnants of his once imperial guard...Indeed, you can almost hear the rattle of martini-cups along the airwaves as Gerald Warren - Ron Zeigler's doomed replacement - cranks another hastily rewritten paragraph (Amendment No. 67 to Paragraph No. 13 of President Nixon's original statement denying everything)...into the overheated Dex machine to the White House, for immediate release to the national media...and the White House pressroom is boiling with guilt-crazed journalists, ready to pounce on any new statement like a pack of wild African dogs, to atone for all the things they knew but never wrote when Nixon was riding high...'

- Memo from the Sports Desk & Rude Notes from a Decompression Chamber in Miami, August 2, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'"The Dex machine." Jesus! Learning that Nixon and his people use this - instead of the smaller, quicker, more versatile (and portable) Mojo Wire - was almost the final insult: coming on the heels of the Gross Sense of Injury I felt when I saw that my name was not included on the infamous "Enemies of the White House" list.

I would almost have preferred a vindictive tax audit to that kind of crippling exclusion. Christ! What kind of waterheads compiled that list? How can I show my face in the Jerome Bar when word finally reaches Aspen that I wasn't on it?

Fortunately, the list was drawn up in the summer of '71 - which partially explains why my name was missing. It wasn't until the autumn of '72 that I began referring to the president, in nationally circulated print, as a Cheapjack Punk and a Lust-Maddened Werewolf, whose very existence was (and remains) a bad cancer on the American political tradition. Every ad that the publishers prepared for my book on the 1972 campaign led off with a savage slur on all that Richard Nixon ever hoped to represent or stand for. The man is a walking embarrassment to the human race - and especially, as Bobby Kennedy once noted, to that high, optimistic potential that fueled men like Jefferson and Madison, and which Abe Lincoln once described as "the last, best hope of man."

There is slim satisfaction in the knowledge that my exclusion from the (1971) list of "White House Enemies" has more to do with timing and Ron Zeigler's refusal to read Rolling Stone than with the validity of all the things I said and written about that evil bastard.'

- Memo from the Sports Desk & Rude Notes from a Decompression Chamber in Miami, August 2, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'I was, after all, the only accredited journalist covering the 1972 presidential campaign to compare Nixon with Adolph Hitler...I was the only one to describe him as a congenital thug, a fixer with the personal principles of a used-car salesman. And when these distasteful excesses were privately censured by the docile White House press corps, I compounded my flirtation with Bad Taste by describing the White House correspondents as a gang of lame whores & sheep without the balls to even argue with Ron Zeigler - who kept them all dancing to Nixon's bogus tune until it became suddenly fashionable to see him for the hired liar he was and has been all along.

The nut of my complaint here - in addition to being left off The List - is rooted in a powerful resentment at not being recognized (not even by Zeigler) for the insults I heaped on Nixon before he was laid low. This is a matter of journalistic ethics - or perhaps even "sportsmanship" - and I take a certain pride in knowing that I kicked Nixon before he went down. Not afterward - though I plan to do that, too, as soon as possible.

And I felt no more guilt about it than I would about setting a rat trap in my kitchen, if it ever seemed necessary - and certainly no more guilt than I know Nixon would feel about hiring some thug like Gordon Liddy to set me up for a felony charge, if my name turned up on his List.

When they update the bugger, I plan to be on it. My attorney is even now preparing my tax records, with an eye to confrontation. When the next list of "White House Enemies" comes out, I want to be on it. My son will never forgive me - ten years from now - if I fail to clear my name and get grouped, for the record, with those whom Richard Milhous Nixon considered dangerous.'

- Memo from the Sports Desk & Rude Notes from a Decompression Chamber in Miami, August 2, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'I watched the whole thing myself, but not without problems. It reminded me of Last Exit to Brooklyn - the rape of a bent whore - but I also knew Dr. Thompson was watching the show in Miami, and that it would fill him with venom and craziness. Whatever small hope we might have had of keeping him away from Washington during this crisis was burned to a cinder by the Wallace-Ehrlichman show. It had the effect of reinforcing Thompson's conviction that Nixon had cashed his cheque - and that possibility alone is enough to lure him to Washington for the death-watch.

My own prognosis is less drastic, at this point in time [sic], but it's also a fact that I've never been able to share The Doktor's obsessive political visions - for good or ill. My job has to do with nuts & bolts, not terminal vengeance. And it also occurs to me that there is nothing in the Watergate revelations, thus far, to convince anyone but a stone partisan fanatic that we will all be better off when it's finished. As I see it, we have already reaped the real benefits of this spectacle - the almost accidental castration of dehumanized power-mongers like Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Tom Charles Huston, that vicious young jackal of a lawyer from Indianapolis that Nixon put in charge of the Special Domestic Intelligence operation.

Dumping thugs like these out of power for the next three years gives us all new room to breathe, for a while - which is just about all we can hope for, given the nature of the entrenched (Democratic) opposition. Nixon himself is no problem, now that all his ranking thugs have been neutralized. Just imagine what those bastards might have done, given three more years on their own terms.'

- Memo from the Sports Desk & Rude Notes from a Decompression Chamber in Miami, August 2, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Even a casual reading of White House memorandums in re: Domestic Subversives & Other White House Enemies (Bill Cosby, James Reston, Paul Newman, Joe Namath, et al.) is enough to queer the faith of any American less liberal than Mussolini. Here is a paragraph from one of his (September 21, 1970) memos to Harry "Bob" Haldeman:

"What we cannot do in a courtroom via criminal prosecutions to curtail the activities of some of these groups, IRS [the Internal Revenue Service] could do by administrative action. Moreover, valuable intelligence-type information could be turned up by IRS as a result of their field audits..."

Dr. Thompson - if he were with us & certifiably de-pressurized at this point in time - could offer some firsthand testimony about how the IRS and the Treasury Department were used, back in 1970, to work muscle on Ideological Enemies like himself...and if Thompson's account might be shrugged off as "biased," we can always compel the testimony of Aspen police chief Dick Richey, whose office safe still holds an illegal sawed-off shotgun belonging to a U.S. Treasury Department undercover agent from Denver who fucked up in his efforts to convince Dr. Thompson that he should find a quick reason for dropping out of electoral politics. The incident came up the other afternoon at the Jerome Bar in Aspen, when Steve Levine, a young reporter from Denver, observed that "Thompson was one of the original victims of the Watergate syndrome - but nobody recognized it then; they called it paranoia."

- Memo from the Sports Desk & Rude Notes from a Decompression Chamber in Miami, August 2, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Jesus, where will it end? Yesterday I turned on my TV set - hungry for some decent upbeat news - and here was an ex-Army Air Force colonel with nineteen years in the CIA under his belt admitting that he had willfully turned himself into a common low-life burglar because he thought the attorney general and the president of the U.S. had more or less ordered him to. Ex-colonel McCord felt that he had a duty to roam around the country burglarizing offices and ransacking private personal files - because the security of the U.S.A. was at stake.

Indeed, we were in serious trouble last year - and for five or six years before that, if you believe the muck those two vicious and irresponsible young punks at the Washington Post have raked up.

"Impeachment" is an ugly word, they say. Newsweek columnist Shana Alexander says "all but the vulture-hearted want to believe him ignorant." A week earlier, Ms. Alexander wrote a "love letter" to Martha Mitchell: "You are in the best tradition of American womanhood, defending your country, your flag...but most of all, defending your man."

Well...shucks. I can hardly choke back the tears...and where does that leave Pat Nixon, who apparently went on a world cruise under a different name the day after McCord pulled the plug and wrote that devastating letter to Judge Sirica.'

- Memo from the Sports Desk & Rude Notes from a Decompression Chamber in Miami, August 2, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then. Humphrey's voice just belched out of my radio, demanding that we get to the bottom of this Watergate mess, but meanwhile we have to make sure the Ruskies understand that we all stand firmly behind the president.

Right. As far behind him as possible, if GOP standard-bearers like B. Goldwater and Hugh Scott are any measure of the party's allegiance to the frightened unprincipled little shyster they were calling - when they nominated him for re-canonization ten months ago in Miami - "one of the greatest presidents in American History." We all want those tapes for posterity because we won't hear their likes again - from Scott, Goldwater, Duke Wayne, Martha, Sammy Davis, Senator Percy, or anyone else. Not even George Meany will join a foursome with Richard Nixon these days. The hallowed halls of the White House no longer echo to the happy sound of bouncing golf balls. Or footballs either, for that matter...of any other kind.

The hard-nosed super-executives Nixon chose to run this country for us turned on each other like rats in a slumfire when the first signs of trouble appeared. What we have seen in the past few weeks is the incredible spectacle of a president of the United States either firing or being hastily abandoned by all of his hired hands and cronies - all the people who put him where he is today, in fact, and now that they're gone he seems helpless. Some of his closest "friends" and advisers are headed for prison, his once-helpless Democratic Congress is verging on mutiny, the threat of impeachment looms closer every day, and his coveted "place in history" is even now being etched out in acid by eager Harvard historians.'

- Memo from the Sports Desk & Rude Notes from a Decompression Chamber in Miami, August 2, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Six months ago Richard Nixon was Zeus himself, calling firebombs and shitrains down on friend and foe alike - the most powerful man in the world, for a while - but all that is gone now, and nothing he can do will ever bring a hint of it back. Richard Nixon's seventh crisis will be his last. He will go down with Harding and Grant as one of America's classically rotten presidents.

Which is exactly what he deserves - and if saying that makes me "one of the vulture-hearted," by Ms. Alexander's lights...well...I think I can live with it. My grandmother was one of those stunned old ladies who cried when the Duke of Windsor quit the Big Throne to marry an American commoner back in 1936. She didn't know the Duke or anything about him. But she knew - along with millions of other old ladies and closet monarchists - that a Once and Future King had a duty to keep up the act. She wept for her lost illusions - for the same reason Stewart Alsop and Shana Alexander will weep tomorrow if President Richard M. Nixon is impeached and put on trial by the U.S. Senate.

Our congressmen will do everything possible to avoid it, because most of them have a deep and visceral sympathy, however denied and reluctant, for the "tragic circumstances" that led Richard Nixon to what even Evans and Novak call "the brink of ruin." The loyal opposition has not distinguished itself in the course of this long-running nightmare. Even Nixon's oldest enemies are lying low, leaving the dirty work to hired lawyers and faceless investigators. Senators Kennedy, McGovern, and Fulbright are strangely silent, while Humphrey babbles nonsense and Muskie hoards his energy for beating back personal attacks by Strom Thurmond. The only politicians talking publicly about the dire implications of the Watergate iceberg are those who can't avoid it - the four carefully selected eunuch/Democrats on the Senate Select Investigating Committee and a handful of panicked Republicans up for reelection in 1974.'

- Memo from the Sports Desk & Rude Notes from a Decompression Chamber in Miami, August 2, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'There was not a hell of a lot of room for a gonzo journalist to operate in that high-tuned atmosphere. For the first time in memory, the Washington press corps was working close to the peak of its awesome but normally dormant potential. The Washington Post has a half dozen of the best reporters in America working every tangent of the Watergate story like wild-eyed junkies set adrift, with no warning, to find their next connection. The New York Times, badly blitzed on the story at first, called in hot rods from its bureau all over the country to overcome the Post's early lead. Both Time's and Newsweek's Washington bureaus began scrambling feverishly to find new angles, new connections, new leaks, and leads in this story that was unravelling so fast that nobody could stay on top of it...And especially not the three (or four) TV networks, whose whole machinery was geared up to visual/action stories rather than skillfully planted tips from faceless lawyers who called on private phones and then refused to say anything at all in front of the cameras.

The only standard-brand visual "action' in the Watergate story happened at the very beginning - when the burglars were caught in the act by a squad of plain-clothes policemen with drawn guns - and that happened so fast that there was not even a still photographer on hand, much less a TV camera.

The network news moguls are not hungry for stories involving weeks of dreary investigation and minimum camera possibilities - particularly at a time when every ranking TV correspondent in the country was assigned to one aspect or another of a presidential campaign that was still boiling feverishly when the Watergate break-in occurred on June 17. The Miami conventions and the Eagleton fiasco kept the Watergate story backstage all that summer. Both the networks and the press had their "first teams" out on the campaign trail until long after the initial indictments - Liddy, Hunt, McCord, et a. - on September 15. And by Election Day in November, the Watergate story seemed like old news.'

- Fear and Loathing at the Watergate: Mr. Nixon Has Cashed His Check, September 27, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'By the end of the evening, when the two dozen bitter-enders had forced McGovern to break out his own private stock - ignoring the departure of the caterers and the dousing of the patio lights - the bulk of the conversation was focused on which one or ones of the Secret Service men assigned to protect McGovern had been reporting daily to Jeb Magruder at CREEP (the Committee for the Re-election of the President), and which one of the ten or twelve journalists who had access to the innards of George's strategy had been on CREEP's payroll at $1,500 a month. This journalist - still publicly unknown and un-denounced - was referred to in White House memos as "Chapman's Friend," a mysterious designation that puzzled the whole Washington press corps until one of the presidents beleagured ex-aides explained privately that "Chapman" is a name Nixon used, from time to time, in the good old days when he was able to travel around obscure Holiday Inns under phony names...

R. Chapman, Pepsi-Cola salesman, New York City...with a handful of friends carrying walkie-talkies and wearing white leather shoulder-holsters...But what the hell? Just send a case of Pepsi up to the suite, my man, and don't ask questions; your reward will come later - call the White House and ask for Howard Hunt or Jim McCord; they'll take care of you.

Right. Or maybe Tex Colson, who is slowly and surely emerging as the guiding light behind Nixon's whole arsenal of illegal, immoral, and unethical "black advance" or "dirty tricks" department. It was Colson who once remarked that "he would walk over his grandmother for Richard Nixon"...and it was Colson who hired head "plumber" Egil "Bud" Krogh, who in 1969 to Daniel X. Friedman, chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of Chicago: "Anyone who opposes us, we'll destroy. As a matter of fact, anyone who doesn't support us, we'll destroy."

Colson, the only one of Nixon's top command to so far evade Watergate's legal noose, is the man who once told White House cop Jack Caulfield to put a firebomb in the offices of the staid/liberal Brookings Institution, in order to either steal or destroy some documents he considered incriminating. Colson now says that he was "only joking" about the firebomb plan, but Caulfield took it so seriously that he went to the White House counsel John Dean and said he refused to work with Colson any longer, because he was "crazy."'

- Fear and Loathing at the Watergate: Mr. Nixon Has Cashed His Check, September 27, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'The axis of Nixon's new and perhaps final strategy began to surface with the first mention of "the tapes," and it has developed with the inevitability of either desperation or inspired strategy ever since. The key question is whether the "constitutional crisis" Nixon seems determined to bring down on himself by forcing the Tape Issue all the way to the Supreme Court is a crisis that was genuinely forced on him by accident - or whether it is a masterpiece of legal cynicism that bubbled up at some midnight hour many weeks ago from the depths of attorney John Wilson's legendary legal mind.

The conventional press wisdom - backed by what would normally be considered "good evidence," or at least reliable leaks from the Ervin committee - holds that the existence of the presidential tapes & the fact that Nixon has been systematically bugging every conversation he has had with anybody, in any of his offices, ever since he got elected, was a secret that was only unearthed by luck, shrewdness, and high-powered sleuth-work. According to unofficial but consistently reliable sources, Alex Butterfield - current head of the Federal Aviation Administration and former "chief for internal security" at the White House - was privately interviewed "more or less on a hunch" by Ervin committee investigators, and during the course of this interview talked himself into such an untenable position while trying to explain the verbatim-accuracy of some Oval Office logs that he finally caved in and spilled the whole story about Nixon's taping apparatus.

According to one of the investigators who conducted the private interview - in the ground-floor bowels of the Ervin committee's "boiler room" in the Old Senate Office Building - Butterfield couldn't explain why the logs of Nixon's conversations in his own office were so precise that they included pauses, digressions, half sentences, and even personal speech patterns.

"When I finally asked him if maybe these logs had been transcribed from tapes," said the investigator, "he sort of slumped back in his chair and said, 'I wish you hadn't asked me that.' And then he told us the whole thing."'

- Fear and Loathing at the Watergate: Mr. Nixon Has Cashed His Check, September 27, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'"In the wake of Watergate may come more honest and thorough campaign reform than in the aftermath of a successful presidential campaign which stood for such reform. I suspect that after viewing the abuses of the past, voters in the future will insist on full and open debate between the candidates and on frequent, no-holds-barred press conferences for all candidates, and especially the President.

And I suspect the Congress will respond to the fact that Watergate happened with legislation to assure that Watergate never happens again. Today the prospects for further restrictions in private campaign financing, full disclosure of the personal finances of the candidate, and public finance of all federal campaigns seems to me better than ever - and even better than if a new Democratic administration had urged such steps in early 1973. We did urge them in 1972, but it took the Nixon landslide and the Watergate expose to make the point.

I believe there were great gains that came from the defeat in 1972. We proved a campaign could be honestly financed. We reaffirmed that a campaign could be open in its conduct and decent in its motivation. We made the Democratic party a place for people as well as politicians. And perhaps in losing we gained the greatest victory of all - that Americans now percieve, far better than a new President could have persuaded them, what is precious about our principles and what we must do to preserve them. The nation now sees itself through the prism of Watergate and the Nixon landslide; at last, perhaps, we see through a glass clearly.

Because of all this, it is possible that by 1976, the 200th anniversary of America's birth, there will be a true rebirth of patriotism; that we will not only know our ideals but live them; that democracy may once again become a conviction we keep and not just a description we apply to ourselves. And if the McGovern campaign advanced that hope, even in defeat, then, as I said on election night last November. 'Every minute and every hour and every bone-crushing effort...was worth the entire sacrifice.'"

- George McGovern in the Washington Post, August 12, 1973.

- Fear and Loathing at the Watergate: Mr. Nixon Has Cashed His Check, September 27, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'The sense of deja vu is almost frightening; here is McGovern speaking sharply against the system, once again, in response to questions from CBS's Connie Chung and Marty Nolan from the Boston Globe, two of the most ever-present reporters on the '72 campaign trail...and McGovern, brought back from the dead by a political miracle of sorts, is hitting the first gong of doom for the man who made him a landslide loser nine months ago. "When that [judicial] process is complete and the Supreme Court rules that the president must turn over the tapes - and he refuses to do so - I think the Congress will have no course but to seriously consider impeachment."

Cazart! The fat is approaching the fire - very slowly, and in very cautious hands, but there is no ignoring the general drift of things. Sometime between now and the end of 1973, Richard Nixon may have to bite that bullet he's talked about for so long. Seven is a lucky number for gamblers, but not for fixers, and Nixon's seventh crisis is beginning to put his first six in very deep shade. Even the most conservative betting in Washington these days has Nixon either resigning or being impeached by the autumn of '74 - if not for reasons directly connected with the "Watergate scandal," then because of his inability to explain how he paid for his beach-mansion at San Clemente, or why Vice President Agnew - along with most of Nixon's original White House command staff - is under indictment for felonies ranging from extortion and perjury to burglary and obstruction of justice.

Another good bet running around in Washington - running at odds between two and three to one, these days - is that Nixon will crack both physically and mentally under all this pressure, and develop a serious psychosomatic illness of some kind; maybe another bad case of pneumonia.'

- Fear and Loathing at the Watergate: Mr. Nixon Has Cashed His Check, September 27, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'This is not so wild a vision as it might sound - not even in the context of my own known taste for fantasy and savage bias in politics. Richard Nixon, a career politician who has rarely failed to crack under genuine pressure, is under more pressure now than most of us will ever understand. His whole life is turning to shit, just as he reached the pinnacle...and every once in a while, caving in to a weakness that blooms in the cool, thinking hours around dawn, I have to admit that I feel a touch of irrational sympathy for the bastard. Not as The President: a broken little bully who would sacrifice us all to save himself - if he still had the choice - but the same kind of sympathy I might feel, momentarily, for a vicious cheap-shot linebacker whose long career comes to a sudden end one Sunday afternoon when some rookie flanker shatters both his knees with a savage crackback block.

Cheap-shot artists don't last very long in pro football. To cripple another person intentionally is to violate the same kind of code as the legendary "honor among thieves."

More linebackers than thieves believe this, but when it comes to politics - to a twenty-eight-year career of cheap shots, lies, and thievery - there is no man in America who should understand what is happening to him now better than Richard Milhous Nixon. He is a living monument to the old army rule that says: "The only real crime is getting caught."'

- Fear and Loathing at the Watergate: Mr. Nixon Has Cashed His Check, September 27, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'This is not the first time that Richard Nixon has been caught. After his failed campaign for the governorship of California in 1962 he was formally convicted - along with H. R. Haldeman, Maurice Stans, Murray Chotiner, Herb Klein, and Herb Kalmbach for exactly the same kind of crudely illegal campaign tactics that he stands accused of today.

But this time, in the language of the sergeants who keep military traditions alive, "he got caught every which way"...and "his ass went into the blades."

Not many people have written in the English language better than a Polack with a twisted sense of humor who called himself Joseph Conrad. And if he were with us today, I think he'd be getting a fine boot out of this Watergate story. Mr. Kurtz, in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, did his thing.

Mr. Nixon also did his thing.

And now, just as surely as Kurtz, "Mistah Nixon, he dead."

- Fear and Loathing at the Watergate: Mr. Nixon Has Cashed His Check, September 27, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Indeed. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. John Mitchell said that - shortly before he quit his job and left Washington at ninety miles an hour in a chauffeur-driven limousine.

I have never felt close to John Mitchell, but on that rotten morning in Houston, I came as close as I ever will; because he was, after all, a pro...and so, alas, was I. Or At least I had a fistful of press badges that said I was.

And it was this bedrock sense of professionalism, I think, that quickly solved my problem...which, until that moment when I recalled the foul spectre of John Mitchell, had seemed to require a frantic decision between either delivering my sermon or writing my lead, in the place of an impossibly short time.

When the going get weird, the weird turn pro.

Who said that?'

- Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl, February 28, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'There is a definite, perverse kind of pleasure in beating the "smart money" - in sports, politics, or anything else - and the formula for doing it seems dangerously simple: take the highest odds you can get against the conventional wisdom - but never bet against your own instinct or the prevailing karma.

Moments after the game, standing in the sawdust-floored circus tent where the players were being led in, one by one, for mass interviews with the sporting press, I was approached by Larry Merchant, author of a recently published book called The National Football Library, a shrewd layman's analysis about how to beat the bookies by betting on pro football games. I was just finishing a long talk with Dolphins owner Joe Robbie about the relationship between national politics, pro football, and the cruel fate of our mutual friend George McGovern, when Merchant tapped me on my shoulder with one hand and handed me a $50 bill with the other. He said nothing at all. I had given him Minnesota with six and a half. The final spread was seventeen.

I smiled and stuck the bill in my wallet. Joe Robbie seemed not to notice. Gambling on the outcome of games is strictly verboten among owners, players, coaches, and all other employees of the National Football League, and being seen in public in the presence of an obvious gambling transaction makes these people very uncomfortable. The only thing worse than being seen with a known gambler is finding yourself in the white-light glare of a network TV camera in the company of an infamous drug abuser...and here was the owner of the winning Super Bowl team, moments after accepting the Lombardi Trophy in front of three hundred cameras, talking with obvious enthusiasm - about the likelihood of President Nixon's impeachment - to a person long-since identified by the NFL security watchdogs as both a gambler and a drug freak.'

- Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl, February 28, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Most sportswriters are so blank on the subject of drugs that you can only talk to them about it at your own risk - which is easy enough, for me, because I get a boot out of seeing their eyes bulge; but it can be disastrous to a professional football player who makes the casual mistake of assuming that a sportswriter knows what he's talking about when he uses a word like "crank." Any professional athlete who talks to a sportswriter about "drugs" - even with the best and most constructive intentions - is taking a very heavy risk. There is a definite element of hysteria about drugs of any kind in pro football today, and a casual remark - even a meaningless remark - across the table in a friendly hometown bar can lead, very quickly, to a seat in the witness chair in front of a congressional committee.

Ah...drugs, that word again. It was a hard word to avoid in NFL circles last year - like the "missile gap" in the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon election, or "law and order" in 1968.

Nineteen seventy-three was a pretty dull press-year for congressmen. The Senate's Watergate Committee had managed, somehow, to preempt most of the ink and air-time...and one of the few congressmen who managed to lash his own special gig past that barrier was an apparently senile sixty-seven-year-old ex-sheriff and football coach from West Virginia named Harley Staggers.

Somewhere in the spastic interim between John Dean and "Bob" Haldeman, Congressman Staggers managed to collar some story-starved sportswriter from the New York Times long enough to announce that his committee - the House Subcommittee on Investigations - had stumbled on such a king-hell wasps' nest of evidence in the course of their probe into "the use of drugs by athletes" that the committee was prepared - or almost prepared, pending further evidence - to come to grips with their natural human duty and offer up a law, very soon, that would require individual urinalysis tests on all professional athletes and especially pro football players.'

- Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl, February 28, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'If I followed my better instincts right now, I would put this typewriter in the Volvo and drive to the home of the nearest politician - any politician - and hurl the goddamn machine through his front window...flush the bugger out with an act of lunatic violence. then soak him down with Mace and run him naked down Main Street in Aspen with a bell around his neck and black lumps all over his body from the jolts of a high-powered "Bull-Buster" cattle prod.

But old age has either mellowed me or broken my spirit to the point where I will probably not do that - at least not today, because that blundering dupe in the White House has just plunged me into a deep and vicious hole.

About five hours after I'd sent the final draft of a massive article on The Demise of Richard Nixon off on the Mojo Wire and into the cold maw of the typesetter in San Francisco, Gerald Ford called a press conference in Washington to announce that he had just granted a "full, free, and absolute" presidential pardon, covering any and all crimes Richard Nixon may or may not have committed during the entire five and a half years of his presidency.'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'Ford sprung his decision with no advance warning at 10:40 on a peaceful Sunday morning in Washington, after emerging from a church service with such a powerful desire to dispense mercy that he rushed back to the White House - a short hump across Lafayette Park - and summoned a weary Sunday-morning skeleton crew of correspondents and cameramen to inform them, speaking in curiously zombielike tones, that he could no longer tolerate the idea of ex-president Nixon suffering his grief-crazed solitude out there on the beach in San Clemente, and that his conscience now compelled him to end both the suffering of Nixon and the national angst it was causing by means of a presidential edict of such king-sized breadth and scope as to scourge the poison of "Watergate" from our national consciousness forever.

Or at least that's how it sounded to me as I was jolted out of a sweat-soaked coma on Sunday morning by a frantic telephone call from Dick Tuck. "Ford pardoned the bastard!" he screamed. "I warned you, didn't I? I buried him twice, and he came back from the dead both times...Now he's done it again; he's running around loose on some private golf course in Palm Desert."

I fell back on the bed, moaning heavily. No, I thought. I didn't hear that. Ford had gone out of his way, during his first White House press conference, to impress both the White House press corps and the national TV audience with his carefully considered refusal to interfere in any way with Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski's legal duty to proceed on the basis of evidence and "prosecute any and all individuals." Given the context of the question, Ford's reply was widely interpreted as a signal to Jaworski that the former president should not be given any special treatment...And it also meshed with Ford's answer to a question in the course of his confirmation hearings in the Senate a few months earlier, when he's said, "I don't think the public would stand for it," when asked if an appointed vice president would have the power to pardon the president who'd appointed him, if the president were removed from office under criminal circumstances.'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'I recalled these things Ford had said, but I was not sure I'd heard Dick Tuck correctly - or if I'd really heard him at all. I held my right hand in front of my eyes, trying to remember if I'd eaten anything the night before to cause hallucinations. If so, my hand would appear to be transparent, and I would be able to see all the bones and blood vessels very clearly.

But my hand was not transparent. I moaned again, bringing Sandy in from the kitchen to find out what was wrong. "Did Tuck just call?" I asked.

She nodded: "He was almost hysterical. Ford just gave Nixon a full pardon."

I sat up quickly, groping around the bed for something to smash. "No!" I shouted. "That's impossible!"

She shook her head. "I heard it on the radio, too."

I stared at my hands again, feeling anger behind my eyes and noise coming up in my throat: "That stupid, lying bastard! Jesus! Who votes for these treacherous scumbags! You can't even trust the dumb ones! Look at Ford! He's too goddamn stupid to arrange a deal like that! Hell, he's almost too stupid to lie."

Sandy shrugged. "He gave Nixon all the tapes, too."'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'After five and a half years of watching a gang of fascist thugs treating the White House and the whole machinery of the federal government like a conquered empire to be used like the spoils of war for any purpose that served either the needs or whims of the victors, the prospect of some harmless, half-bright jock like Ford running a cautious, caretaker-style government for two or even six years was almost a welcome relief.

Not even the ominous sight of Vice President Nelson Rockefeller hovering a heartbeat away from the presidency had much effect on my head.

After more than ten years of civil war with the White House and all the swine who either lived or worked there, I was ready to give the benefit of the doubt to almost any president who acted half human and had enough sense not to walk around in public wearing a swastika armband.'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'there is a weird, unsettled, painfully incomplete quality about the whole thing. All over Washington tonight is the stench of a massive psychic battle that nobody really won. Richard Nixon has been broken, whipped, and castrated all at once, but even for me there is no real crank or elation in having been a front-row spectator at the final scenes, the Deathwatch, the first time in American history that a president has been chased out of the White House and cast down in the ditch with all the other geeks and common criminals...

Looking back on the final few months of his presidency, it is easy to see that Nixon was doomed all along - or at least from that moment when Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox first decided to force a showdown on the "executive privilege" question by sending a U.S. marshal over to the White House with a subpoena for some of the Oval Office tapes.

Nixon naturally defied the subpoena, but not even the crazed firing of Cox, [Elliot] Richardson, and [William] Ruckleshaus could make it go away. And when Jaworski challenged Nixon's right to defy the subpoena in the U.S. Supreme Court, the wheels of doom began rolling. And from that point on, it was clear to all the principals except Nixon himself that the Unthinkable was suddenly inevitable; it was only a matter of time...And it was just about then that Richard Nixon began losing his grip on reality.'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'Within hours after Jaworski and Nixon's "Watergate lawyer" James St. Clair had argued the case in a special session of the court, I talked to Pat Buchanan and was surprised to hear that Nixon and his wizards in the White House were confident that the verdict would be five to three in their favor. Even Buchanan, who thinks rationally about 79 percent of the time, apparently believed - less than two weeks before the court ruled unanimously against Nixon - that five of the judges who would have ruled on that question would see no legal objection to ratifying Nixon's demented idea that anything discussed in the president's official office - even a patently criminal conspiracy - was the president's personal property, if he chose to record it on his personal tape-recording machinery.

The possibility that even some of the justices The Boss himself had appointed to the court might not cheerfully endorse a concept of presidential immunity that mocked both the U.S. Constitution and the Magna Carta had apparently been considered for a moment and then written off as too farfetched and crazy even to worry about by all of Nixon's personal strategists.

It is still a little difficult to believe, in fact, that some of the closest advisers to the president of a constitutional democracy in the year nineteen-hundred and seventy-four might actually expect the highest court in any constitutional democracy to crank up what is possibly the most discredited precedent in the history of Anglo-American jurisprudence - the "divine right of kings" - in order to legalize the notion that a president of the United States or any other would-be democracy is above and beyond "the law."

That Nixon and his personal gestapo actually believed this could happen is a measure of the insanity quotient of the people Nixon took down in the bunker with him when he knew the time had come to get serious.'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'But even as they raved, you could hear a hollow kind of paranoid uncertainty in their voices, as if they could already feel the ebb tide sucking around their ankles - just as Nixon must have felt it when he walked alone on the beach in San Clemente a few weeks earlier, trudging slowly along in the surf with his pantlegs rolled up while he waited in angry solitude for the results of the Supreme Court vote on his claim of "executive privilege." That rush of sucking water around his ankles must have almost pulled him out to sea when Ziegler called down from the big dune in front of La Casa Pacifica: "Mister President! Mister President! We just got the news! The vote was unanimous - eight to zero."

Nixon whoops with delight: he stops in his water-filled tracks and hurls out both arms in the twin-victory sign. "Wonderful!" he shouts. "I knew we'd win it, Ron! Even without that clown Renchburg [Rehnquist]. It wasn't for nothing that I appointed those other dumb farts to the court!"

Ziegler stares down at him, at this doomed scarecrow of a president down there on the edge of the surf. Why is he grinning? Why does he seem so happy at this terrible news?

"No!" Ziegler shouts. "That is not what I meant. That is not what I meant at all!" He hesitates, choking back a sob. "The vote was eight to zero, Mister President - against you."

"What?" the scarecrow on the beach goes limp. His arms collapse, his hands flap crazily around the pockets of his wet pants. "Those dirty bastards!" he screams. "We'll break their balls!"

"Yes sir!" Ziegler shouts. "They'll wish they'd never been born!" He jerks a notebook out of his inside coat pocket and jots: "Break their balls."'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson