on the Monday before the election we did Kansas and both coasts. It’s a grueling trip, but that insane kind of zipping from place to place.

There’s an excitement and pace to the presidential campaign that definitely keeps you wired. Is following a campaign a desirable pursuit for a journalist, or do you just become a part of the sausage you’re describing being made? Oh yes, there is a wealth of parallels to be drawn between the Nixon administration and that of our current plutocrat POTUS.Ģ. involving sabotage, forgery, theft of confidential files, surveillance of Democratic candidates and their families and persistent efforts to lay the basis for possible blackmail and intimidation.’ how would the voters react if they knew the President of the United States was presiding over ‘a complex, far-reaching and sinister operation on the part of White House aides and the Nixon campaign organization. he speaks for the Werewolf in us the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable.

Our Barbie doll President, with his Barbie doll wife and his box-full of Barbie doll children. Either Thompson could see it coming or it simply isn’t anything new. They love him and his actions because that’s exactly what they would do if they were president. Millions of voters elected Trump because they see themselves in a morally bankrupt authority figure. You can mock the disabled, insult war veterans, get caught on tape bragging about assaulting women: All this, and your country will anoint you leader. You can gain notoriety via a reality show where you feel self-empowered for firing people. You can be a philandering businessman, a failure. Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President? This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves finally just lay back and say it-that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

Are there parallels in Thompson’s coverage of the 1972 campaign to what we’re experiencing in the era of Donald Trump? Specifically, was the Nixon campaign, and was Nixon as a candidate, as depraved (to use a Thompson word) and absurd as what we’re seeing today? Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 this year for two main reasons.

Fear and loathing 72