I was reminded of Hunter S. Thompson’s eulogy for Nixon when reading DKos member Stephen Dreyfus’ diary about Trump this morning:
If you mention Nixon’s name in my earshot, we must include Hunter S. Thompson’s eulogy of him.
The full-text is locked up by The Atlantic (it originally appeared in Rolling Stone), but for those who can’t access the whole thing, here are some choice snippets:
It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive -- and he was, all the way to the end -- we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.
That was Nixon's style -- and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds ...
It is fitting that Richard Nixon's final gesture to the American people was a clearly illegal series of 21 105-mm howitzer blasts that shattered the peace of a residential neighborhood and permanently disturbed many children.
If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.
I find Thompson to be a true inspiration for how to express appropriate contempt for those that act in a manner deserving of our contempt.
My take on the correct attitude for us to express towards all those complicit in elevating the fascist cabal in Washington is found in this diary, and it seems all the more true today as when I wrote it over two months ago:
No guilt. No compunction. Mock, demean and denigrate. Because they are *Murderous Clowns*. (Oct. 8, 2020)
No one benefits when any of us ‘take the higher road’ with fascists.
We do not stake out for ourselves any higher moral ground, nor do we serve any useful purpose in combatting the atrocities they commit each and every day. Because of their choices, the harm they have caused through their conscious choices, their actions, their complicity in mass suffering and death (in many ways, not just the reckless endangerment of contagion), they are due no consideration, no patience, no good will…
Using the harshest derogatory and scatological terms to refer to people who have shown themselves utterly beneath our contempt is not ‘stooping to their level’.
Putting children in cages and performing hysterectomies on captive vulnerable migrant women would be stooping to their level.
Knowingly causing the preventable illness of millions, and deaths of hundreds of thousands, and showing disdain for those trying to save lives would be stooping to their level.
Decimating all of our democratic institutions would be stooping to their level…
If we truly wish to protect our democracy, we must focus on those that represent the greatest threat to it— rank and file GOP voters:
Covering your eyes and ears to what is happening may be a comfort to you.
Maybe you really believe taking a conciliatory approach to those that embrace crimes against humanity will win an election here or there. (You’re wrong about that, and if this week hasn’t made that clear to you, I’m not sure what would.)
But taking a conciliatory approach to those that embrace crimes against humanity— rank and file GOP voters, who voted in greater numbers than in 2016, have made calls for violence, and calls for the arrest of those who act as political obstacles— moves us further down the path in which crimes against humanity warrant a shrug of the shoulders, and aren’t the main concern of those who consider themselves on the left…
Ignoring it means it will keep happening.
Pretending the people who have brought us to this point are not responsible for bringing us to this point, are not who they publicly declare themselves to be, serves only to ensure it will keep happening.