“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”- Hunter S. Thompson

On this morning of the Iraqi elections I awoke with strange thoughts in the city of Brotherly Love. It was a weird amalgam of reflection on where I’ve been, where the country has been, and where we’re going. Where did we turn off the tracks? When did I become so political? Are we, here in the liberal blogosphere, riding a wave, are we about to help turn the tide? Or are we going to look back someday and see that we too lost our momentum and got sidetracked down a rathole? Some people are blessed with a gift for extraordinary foresight. On the morning of September 12th, 2001, Hunter S. Thompson foresaw what few of us were in any mood to comtemplate. And he foresaw it with dumbfounding clarity:

:::flip:::

“The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now – with somebody – and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.

We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once.

This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed – for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why.

He is in for a profoundly difficult job – armed as he is with no credible Military Intelligence, no witnesses and only the ghost of Bin Laden to blame for the tragedy.” -Sept. 12, 2001

Maybe we lost our way much earlier. Somehow we reached a place where a furtive series of blowjobs was enough make us lose our collective minds. Somehow extramarital fellatio became a powder keg that badly, and permanently, polarized our body politic. Even the attacks of 9/11 had limited power to unite us. The earliest sign that 9/11 would fail to repair the breach was the rise of the anti-war blogosphere. Contrary to the best efforts of the corporate media and the Democratic appeasors, there was never going to be unanimity for “a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides.” Anger and the thirst for retribution have limited half-lives, persisting longer in some minds than in others. On September 12th I was probably as angry as any Christian jihadist remains today. Hunter had a gift for taking the long view. He seems to have had this gift all his life.

There was one exact moment, in fact, when I knew for sure that Al Gore would never be President of the United States, no matter what the experts were saying— and that was when the whole Bush family suddenly appeared on TV and openly scoffed at the idea of Gore winning Florida. It was Nonsense, said the Candidate, Utter nonsense. . . Anybody who believed Bush had lost Florida was a Fool. The Media, all of them, were Liars & Dunces or treacherous whores trying to sabotage his victory. . . Here was the whole bloody Family laughing & hooting & sneering at the dumbness of the whole world on National TV. The old man was the real tip-off. The leer on his face was almost frightening. It was like looking into the eyes of a tall hyena with a living sheep in its mouth. The sheep’s fate was sealed, and so was Al Gore’s. – “The Fix is In” (November 27, 2000)

The Sixties were marked by the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK. Each loss had a profound effect on our nation, and each loss served to roll back the crest of progressive legislation. Looking back now I see another set of factors that have moved us off the path of hope embodied in Bill Clinton’s election. There was the impeachment, there was the stolen election of 2000, and there was 9/11.

The impeachment radicalized me. It got me off my couch and into political activism. Others were radicalized by Florida 2000. Still others by the decision to invade Iraq. Whatever the spark, what we seem to all share is a profound sense that we are under attack. But, we also share the sense that we are finally fighting back. We are finally making a difference. We have weapons too, now.

As 2005 draws to a close we have a lot of victories to tout and a lot to be proud of. We drove Jeff Gannon out of the White House press room. We stopped Social Security reform cold. We won the governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia. We forced the MSM to cover the Downing Street Minutes, we forced a recess appointment for John Bolton, we have kept the pressure on Plamegate, we saw Harriet Miers go down in flames. We are finally seeing momentum for a withdrawal from Iraq. And we have done much more. Prior to the emergence of the left-wing blogosphere many if not most of these achievements would not have been possible. And there is good reason to believe that our collective power is going to grow in 2006. Perhaps we can lead a revival of progressive politics in this country. Perhaps 2006 will be one long year of indictments and prosecutions of corrupt and venal Republican politicians. Or, perhaps, we have already crested. Perhaps we will look back one day and identify some moment where we reached our zenith and the tide started to roll back out. Hunter described how this happened to the Sixties generation, and how it all happened imperceptively.

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Has it been five years? Six? It seems like a lifetime. The kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle 60’s was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive, in that corner of time in the world… Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction. At any hour, you could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right. That we were winning. And that I think was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense. We didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest, of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west. And with the right kind of eyes – you can almost see the high watermark – that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Today the Iraqis go to the polls. Is this finally a turning point in our long national nightmare? Which fork in the road are we going to go down tomorrow? One thing is for sure: just as I watched the Berlin Wall fall with a profound sense of unease, I am watching events unfold in Iraq quite warily. Things are about to get a lot more complicated.