I think it was sometime in September 1972 when Hunter S. Thompson realized that George McGovern wasn’t just going to lose to Richard Nixon, but get absolutely crushed. Even after Kent State, after Jackson State, after the bombing of Cambodia, after the first revelations of Watergate, the American people were going to reelect the bastard, and reelect him emphatically. It was in this gloomy mood that Thompson wrote the following.
“America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.”
I often felt the same way during the Bush years. I get that feeling when I read that fifty-four percent of regular churchgoers support torturing people under certain circumstances despite the fact that Ronald Reagan made no exceptions when he sent the Convention Against Torture to the Senate for ratification.
We’re a violent culture that is armed to the teeth and has few qualms about crushing anyone that makes us uncomfortable or the least bit nervous. That’s what makes it so critical that we have good leadership.
