In his book Hell's Angels, Hunter Thompson's ethic of total retaliation foreshadowed Trumpism.
Hunter Thompson's journalistic brilliance has fascinated me since I first heard of him almost 40 years ago. The linked article will have me digging through my stacks for my copy of Hell's Angels.
Here is a brief excerpt from Susan McWilliams' article in "The Nation" on Thompson's penetrating and prophetic insights that foreshadowed Trumpism:
"Thompson finally gets stomped by < the Hell's Angels >. For some offense he doesn’t understand (and which he probably didn’t commit), Thompson gets punched, bloodied, kicked in the face and in the ribs, spat at and pissed on. He limps off to a hospital in the dead of night, alone and afraid. Only in that moment does Thompson realize that as a journalist (and therefore a member of the elite), he could not possibly be a true friend of the Angels. Wear leather and ride a motorcycle though he might, Thompson stood on the side of intellectual and cultural authority. And that finally made him, despite his months of good-timing with the Angels, subject to their retaliatory impulses. The ethic of retaliation is total, Thompson comes to realize. There is nothing partial about it. It ends with violence."
The parallels between Thompson's view of the Angels as virtually powerless, anti-intellectual outcasts shunned by the elitist intelligentsia and today's Trump supporters are eerily accurate. In light of Trump's apparent victory, McWilliams' article is an intriguing read. Check it out at: http://bit.ly/2hSE3jT
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