i know this is incredibly old, but it has not been answered once & i thought i might answer it, as i have been thinking things lately. yes i know how that sounds.

i have been really sick w/ a sinus infection (since beginning an endless course of "nasarel" (dont ask) i actually -believe- this is a sinus infection) since about the middle of november. & i havent been making good sense all that time. which leads me to what i was reading over the last week or so, when i was REALLY sick.

a book called "the 4 o'clock murders" by i cant remember who & hunter s. thompson (of course) his letters from the late 60s>early 70s. soon his bio will come in the mail. at any rate.

"the 4 o'clock murders" is a book about fundamentalist mormons who go even wackier than one can imagine people who have 16 wives & 61 children doing & end up killing each other, left & right, for generation after generation (even when they eventually give up fighting over who is The One Mighty & Strong & whose mantle is whose (whenever i hear the word "mantle" i think of cephalopods)) & become car thieves instead.

truck thieves. remember these are fundamentalists. how far do you have to get from fundamentalist to the very right wing evangelicals that are responsible at this point for how the country is run??

this book is recommended & so is hunter s. thompson's as my impression was, even before i began reading his letters, that he committed suicide b/c he just did not think there was any hope left in the world.

now, my therapist said (& i like my therapist) that hunter s. thompson was an unmedicated manic depressive (i agree) & that he self-medicated w/ a variety of things (i agree again, although i am not sure by any means that self-medication is any worse than, say, effexor (some day i will tell my "effexor w/drawal" story). but that does not mean that he did not think there was any hope left in the world & that he did not have any good, rational reasons for believing that.

if you read his letters he will say things that sound like they are about NOW. but this is from the =nixon= era &, of course, nixon's social programs were so far to the left of KERRY's that kerry couldnt go near bringing up anything similar. if someone as bright as hst is feeling the particular right wing squeeze during that time of real social involvement (when "moral values" meant more about feeding the poor than they did about buggery. married buggery at that. & lets not forget the pierced txt of janet jackson)-- oh hell, what did he see now.

i will give one example that i found illuminating.

The Youth Vote.

hst is writing about how yes the youth came out & voted, but the youth vote was split. he is COMPLAINING about it. he is astonished about it. he dont like it, as they say.

then i think of the email i got from michael moore (who i often like, sometimes dont. like more than not) right after i had driven back, gothlooking & therefore incapable of getting ANYone outside of a blue area to vote, from nevada after trying to work on the kerry campaign 10 days after surgery. stupid idea.

but so was michael moore's.

for The Youth Vote: yes the youth came out & voted, but the youth vote was split. & he is NOT complaining about it. he is PROUD that they voted. & we thought we had them sewn to our side.

there is something wrong w/ this picture.

today i talked to an old chilean/russian jewish communist. it was the best talk i have had w/ anyone IN YEARS b/c not only did he remind me of my dead family, he understood communism & he understood how we MUST CHANGE THE LEFT TO MAKE IT VIABLE. i cannot tell you how thrilled i was to hear that he understood (something my father would never admit, but must have known) that you CANNOT let the ignorant just take control. we were talking about allende & he said that that was one of the problems there. okay. it was also one of the problems in russia (The Problem, imneverho). & so here we are.

the reason i mention this conversation in context is b/c i think it is strangely tied in to the difference between hunter s. thompson's take on The Youth Vote & the take of michael moore. there are a couple of things here & they are hard even for me to parse. the first is that michael moore is acting not exactly ignorant, but evasive, i guess-- even to himself. he wants to believe, he wants to have hope, so he does. NOT GOOD. if there is no self (or party) criticism, there is no hope for change.

the second idea is that during the time of hunter s. thompson (Gonzo Time) it was believed, if not outright stated, that people needed to be educated --EVERYONE-- if not in colleges, then in the streets (remember, even though they made money off of it, the black panthers handing out mao's little red book in berkeley. i could get to mao & mao in america & not in a nice way, but that would be =too= convoluted, even for me). there was somehow a knowledge that giving the reins of power directly to people who had never read a book outside of highschool & believed the "checkers" speech, was not a good idea & that those very same people had to be swayed over first.

& a lot of swaying came to pass.

& then came ronald reagan & cable tv.

& then came-- what.

& then came the suicide of hunter s. thompson. & lets not forget all those aids deaths, all those drug deaths & all those other suicides.

& now we have --??

anyway, that is my political reading lately. i think now we have a government & a country that is controlled by people not exactly like, but similar to, those in "the 4 o'clock murders" (the ervil lebaron family) & that, i think, is scary.

Gibbons.