"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. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes... understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for. Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?"And now we know.
(h/t to Charles Pierce, who mined this priceless quotation from the depths of prehistory...)
2 comments:
I remember that quote. It summarized HST's hopes and optimism about what America could be, and his horror and disappointment at what it actually was. I think in the end he just got tired of watching things fall apart, and took an early exit.
You can kinda see why; the Seventies were a dark time, and that was just because of disco and those gawdawful "CB" pop songs...
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