Not quite Hunter S., but a damned sight better than anything Taibbi ever penned, including the vampire squid metaphor..@swin24: "Far too many so-called elite members of my profession ... are mollycoddled hogs who are doing everything they can to fail to meet the enormity of this moment."https://t.co/bc6A8nDYHW
— emptywheel (Chicklets) (@emptywheel) August 27, 2024
Although "Boys on the Bus" did it first and better, and Thompson was infinitely more insightful and crazier, and truly outside the "media elite" (yes, we had them then, and they made the "elite" today look hod carriers). The problem with modern media criticism is it thinks it will "improve" media, or "fix it," or just push it aside so "citizen journalists" will save us.
Like Greenwald and Taibbi? Please.
Thompson knew better. No one is going to save us. No institution is going to perfect itself and then us. We do this, or it isn't done. We have to be "woke" even if James Carville thinks that's a political error. We have to care, even if there's nothing to care about. We have to be vigilant, even if there's nothing to see but peace and tranquility. Because usually that vision just means you've moved to Omelas, and you're already forgetting about the poor unfortunate in the basement. Because every system has its price. And no system will take care of us, for us. There is no parent or Big Brother here. There's only us.
Now I could tell you about the basilea tou theou, but I think you'd misunderstand me. The principle there is simple; too simple. And it's always in our hands. There is no race to the top, no struggle to see justice where it is not, or fight for equality, there. It is one simple rule: the first are last, and the last are first. You want to be first? Be last of all and servant of all. That's it. Do that; and the rest will take care of itself.
Too simple. Too easy. Too damned hard. But you want to meet "the enormity of the moment"? Our national symbol of that is G I Joe, the average American who went to Europe and saved them from Germany, who went to the Pacific and won every battle with the Japanese from our engagement at Midway to the surrender in Tokyo. The humble guy who just wanted to do what was right, and stop the enemy, and go back home. Most likely he didn't really exist. I never knew anyone who came home from war and told me who "G I Joe" was. My brother-in-law volunteered for the Army, and went to Vietnam as a Captain. He told me two things he knew five minutes after he got there: 1) it was the most beautiful country he'd ever seen; 2) we had no business being there. He did what he was sent there to do, anyway. And he came home; and eventually, we left their country to them, which we should have done in the first place.
Did that meet "the enormity of the moment"? Hell, I don't know. We heard Dr. King talk about a promissory note owed to people like him by America; all we remembered is that he had a lovely dream that seemed to take all us white people off the hook for that note, so we forgot about it and remembered the dream. Did we meet "the enormity of the moment"? Not hardly. We didn't even sanctify King until he was dead and safely buried. We buried most of what he said with him, but we sanctified him for what we wanted to remember.
"Enormity of the moment"? Who the hell ever meets that on the road, walking? Better we should tend our own garden. Better we should be last of all and servant of all. Better we should consider that we're doing, and let everyone else worry about what they're doing. If they won't, we can't worry about it for them.
God knows Hunter Thompson never did.
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