Tuesday, July 19, 2016

The Crest of a High and Beautiful Wave


"There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda...  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. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...

"So now, less than five years later, you can 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-water mark --


-- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas


The Republican Party has officially nominated a proudly pathological liar and racist con man to carry the banner of the Party of Lincoln.

Republican National Convention: It’s official, Trump is the GOP nominee
In the end, all the huffing and puffing of ghouls like Bill Kristol and all the damp hand-wringing of moon-faced dissemblers like Michael Gerson and David Brooks could not stop their Republican Party from assuming the final form towards which it has been inexorably marching for 30 years.

The rough beast they all worked so hard and were paid so well to conjure into the world, it's hour come round at last, has finally slouched into the Quicken Loans Arena to be born.

And starting tomorrow, he gets national security briefings.  

And so it goes.

8 comments:

Jimbo said...

Actually, as a commenter at Yastreblyansky's House pointed out, today's GOP really began with the Compromise of 1877 and, with the exception of TR and a bit of Taft, the GOP has been the party forever seeking domestic "enemies" to persecute: Chinese, leftie workers and, of course, trade unions, Communists at State and in Hollywood, hippies, African-Americans, Native-Americans, Hispanics and women exercising their reproductive rights. They are, above all, the party of divide and conquer and hard to see that will ever change. They haven't been the Party of Lincoln for nearly 140 years. They should abandon that moniker and acknowledge that they are merely the Party of Reagan. Hell, my guess is that 90% of the party actually hates Abe Lincoln.

bluicebank said...

I shall now crib from Arthur Koestler to write The Donald's epitaph:

"It was a mistake in the system; perhaps it lay in the precept which until now he had held to be uncontestable, in whose name he had sacrificed others and was himself being sacrificed: in the precept, that the end justifies the means."
-- Darkness At Noon

Marc McKenzie said...

And yet, Driftglass...there are those who still howl either 1) both parties are the same or 2) Hillary is worse than Trump.

I need a drink.

Unknown said...

GOP must be very proud. They have nominated the most profoundly ignorant nominee ever to run for president.

Unknown said...

The gears turn another click. The wheel spins a little faster.

Brad in Dallas said...

Jerry B I don't know if that was a 13 Ghosts reference but it did generate a spine tingle.

Neo Tuxedo said...

It was either 13 Ghosts or Rowan North.

The Kraken said...

TR and Taft were still attacking domestic enemies, just the right ones for a change. Monopoly and for profit corporations are the biggest enemies of democracy after all.