Zeitgeist 1971

Seeing as I'm still spending a fair amount of my thinking time reflecting on the election just past, I thought it might be edifying to read Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail 72.

I'll be posting some quotes from the book as I go through it, but so far have found it stunningly relevant. Witness:

He and a lot of others have worked too hard for the past three years to derail the kind of nightmare that the Nixon/ Mitchell team is ready to ram down our throats. There is not much satisfaction in beating Haynesworth & Carswell, then having to swallow a third-rate yoyo like Powell and a vengeful geek like Rehnquist. What Nixon and Mitchell have done in three years -- despite the best efforts of the sharpest and meanest young turks the Democratic opposition can call on -- is reduce the U.S. Supreme Court to the level of a piss-poor bowling team in Memphis -- and this disastrous, nazi-bent shift of the federal government's Final-Decision-making powers won't even begin to take effect until the spring of '72.

The effects of this takeover are potentially so disastrous -- in terms of personal freedom and police power -- that there is no point even speculating on the fate of some poor, misguided geek who might want to take his "Illegal Search and Seizure" case all the way up to the top.

This world is full of dangerous beasts -- but none quite as ugly and uncontrollable as a lawyer who has finally flipped off the tracks of Reason. He will run completely amok -- like a Priest into sex, or a narc-squad cop who suddenly decides to start sampling the contraband.