It Doesn’t End

Friday, 8 November 2024

Hunter S. Thompson, writing in September 1972, a little over one month ahead of Nixon’s landslide reelection:

The polls also 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 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?

If every damn word of that doesn’t ring true to you today, you’re deaf. I have quoted this same passage once before, in the opposite context (or at least the opposite mood) — the day after Barack Obama’s election victory 16 years ago. I wrote then:

It ends here, today.

I love this country.

That first sentence sounds hopelessly naive today. I don’t blame my younger self for having written it though. That 2008 Obama win was euphoric. It remains our nation’s high-water mark. Until that day there remained large swaths not merely of the American electorate as a whole, but of Democrats and liberals, who believed they’d never live to see this nation elect a black man as president. But that happened. Barack Obama was elected, then reelected four years later, and left office and remains today a popular leader. Obama’s win in 2008 (365-173) was far larger than Trump’s win this year (312-226), measured either by Electoral College results or the popular vote. Obama’s 2012 reelection against Mitt Romney (332-206) was a larger win than Trump’s now.

The lesson is that it never ends.

But my god, look at the results Thompson was writing about in 1972. Richard Nixon won the Electoral College 520-17 and the popular vote by 23 percent. He won 49 of 50 states. “Jesus!” indeed. This now is not that. This is bad and dangerous and dark, but while Trump’s win was brutally clear, it was still a very close, deeply divided election. Barack Obama ran in 2008 opposing gay marriage. The Democrat. That was only 16 years ago. The iPhone was already out. Progress hasn’t stopped, but it’s never easy, and never without backlash.

It doesn’t end. Keep the faith.