I. Crève salope or May is the Most Divisive Month Spring fever is on us again. In the middle ages, Chaucer described it
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour…
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
In the modern age, T.S. Eliot decided that “April is the cruelest month” instead. That’s what happens when you try to fool Mother Nature by living in a seasonless society. People have to cast out the old and bring in the new sometimes. Or else you get revolution as they did in 17th century England and 18th century France and 20th century Russia. In the United States, they figured out a way to pretend that we are getting a change of government every four years, by holding a ceremonial rite called a
Presidential Election. As people have become more and more alienated and angry, the rite has become longer and longer. Under the current Bush/Cheney corporate fascist regime, with our do-nothing Democratic Congress that refuses to end the war or impeach, they had to extend the ritual to a full two years in order to sedate the masses. It is all a sham. We will get another corporate candidate, who will lull us with a different flavor of corporate friendly slogans that are all good for the bottom line of Microsoft and General Electric and the Rockefeller’s Standard Oil (which pretends that it is now several smaller companies) and The Phone Company which is currently AT&T and Verizon but which should be the behemoth of our youth once again within a few years if we continue on our present course.
It isn’t like that in other countries.
Mai 1968 was a historic month in France when the student body of that country and ten million workers went on strike, shutting down the government. The event had its own art form—graffiti and photographs—
—and it own music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxVD7fftxSA Crève salope by Renaud, which can be literally translated “Die Bitch”. Some things never change.
II. Thirty-six Years Later The corporate masters in the United States are no fools. They know how to keep the socialist revolution from taking hold in this country. Keep the working class divided. Men from women, Black from White, immigrant from native born, English speaker from Spanish speaker, disabled from… Angela Davis spelled it out in
Women, Race and Class . If more people here at Democratic Underground would turn off the Divide and Conquer the Democratic Party extravaganza of
Countdown and read Ms. Davis’s book, we would be a more productive place.
Thirty-six years ago, Hunter S. Thompson chronicled a Democratic Party that was being torn apart by outside interference. Dick Nixon wanted a blow out victory. Donald Segretti, Pat Buchanan, Karl Rove, Roger Stone (the last three are still with us) and others hired moles to infiltrate Democratic presidential campaigns, burglarized offices, drugged candidates, planted phony news stories, spread lies about one candidate which were attributed to another. They anointed George McGovern the
winner then began deconstructing him with the help of the press and more dirty tricks the minute he secured the nomination. Because of the extreme ill will that had developed within the Democratic Party during the primary, thanks in part to the gullibility of youthful McGovern supporters who could not recognize that they were being duped and who responded with
Well fuck them! Who needs the tradition Democratic voters, we have the youth vote! attitude, the party base would not rally behind McGovern when he was attacked in the general election. His own supporters had been too rude to other candidates whose support within the Democratic Party was much stronger than any feelings of antipathy which people had towards the war or Dick Nixon. That fall Blacks broke their trend of increased participation in presidential elections, opting to stay home rather than vote for George McGovern who had treated Hubert Humphrey, a staunch liberal who had worked his butt off to gain passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, with disrespect. The white working class went one step farther and voted for Nixon.
Karl Rove is a cowbird. He never builds his own nest. Instead his lays his eggs in a nest someone else has built. That is why I figured he would recycle Pat Buchanan’s ideas from 1972 when he needed a strategy to steal the election this time. He does not need a blowout, just a squeaker.
The passages in italics are from
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter S. Thompson, the chapter for the month of May. Keep in mind that Dr. Gonzo was writing this to publish at the time, but that he did not know that the Democrats were punked until the next year. Nor, did he know that he was serving a very important purpose in his good buddy Pat Buchanan’s plan. His ugly characterizations of people like Humphrey and Muskie would have divided the Democrats even farther, since he made his support for McGovern quite clear. Some may have felt that he was speaking for the McGovern camp. His was part of the media propaganda.
There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey really is until you’ve followed him around…(he would) go crazy with rage if he ever saw in print what most reporters say about him during midnight conversations…”Humphrey has used the campaign slogans of John Kennedy (‘let’s get this country moving again’ ) and of Wallace (‘stand up for America ‘)In May, 2008 we have our very own Keith Olbermann on national television every night telling us that Hillary Clinton is a national disgrace and comparing her to Madeline Khan in
What’s Up Doc and asking when someone will take her in a closet and leave her there. Like Thompson, he seems obsessed.
“My next job---after getting brother elected President of the United States---will be the political destruction of Hubert Humphrey. “ Robert Kennedy; after the West Virginia primary in 1960…Remember me Hubert? I’m the one who got smacked in the stomach by a billy club at the corner of Michigan and Balboa on the evil Wednesday night four years ago in Chicago---while you looked dowm from your suite….Thompson goes on to mention that Ted Kennedy’s family supported McGovern in the primary. Too bad that support dried up in the general election when McGovern desperately needed a VP to get him out of the Eagleton affair. Ted Kennedy would have done the trick I expect that in supporting McGovern in the primary Teddy was doing what Bobby would have done---getting even with Humphrey for having the audacity to run a campaign against their brother Jack in 1960. This calls to mind the reason that Ted Kennedy endorsed Obama—he got mad because Hillary Clinton reminded the world that JFK could not pass the Civil Rights or Voting Rights Acts. LBJ and Hubert Humphrey did. So much for the politics of hope. This year the primary has been the politics of payback.
With the possible exception of Nixon, Hubert Humphrey is the purest and most disgusting example of a Political Animal in American politics today. He has been going at it hammer and tong twenty-five hours a day since the end of World War II…Thompson then goes on to imply that Humphrey’s anti-war stance is a lie, because he used to be anti-Communist years ago. He mocks his “late dovishness”.Remind you of anyone? Love the way that Thompson turns
hard working into something suspect. Can’t trust people who show up for work everyday, year after year. No one could be that perfect. There must a catch. Must be that
awful ambition .
Thompson also attempts to paint Humphrey as two-faced on civil rights issues by suggesting that he is trying to cozy up to George Wallace. This is an attempt to peel away Humphrey’s African-American support. However, his efforts are undone by a portion of the chapter in which he describes McGovern’s narrow defeat in Ohio after the votes from Cleveland’s twenty-first started coming in. The precincts were allowed to stay open late after a court order was obtained. This caused delays in counting the vote, which heavily favored Humphrey.
“Say, how many more votes do they have to count up there?”
“As many as they need,” Mankiewicz muttered.
Himmelmann glanced at him, grimaced, then hung up.
“What does that project to,” Frank asked Caddell. “About thirty thousand to six?”
The wizard shrugged. “Who cares? We got raped. We’ll never make that up—not even with Akron.”In case the reader does not get this, Thompson rehashes this over and over again. For ten pages. With dialogue and details. Though no formal challenge was issued, he tells the world that a Black precinct in Cleveland, Ohio stole the state election from McGovern and gave it to Humphrey. Talk about divisive. The phrase put up or shut up comes to mind.
Another candidate has seen every victory denounced as a cheat this primary season. Starting with New Hampshire, there have been charges of e-vote fraud in Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania. Asians in California, Latinos in Nevada, Whites in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania have all been called racists by the MSM, Obama supporters and agent provocateurs. That other candidate has earned almost as many votes as her rival. That means that
half the Democratic party has been labeled racist and a cheater .
Democratic Voters join this party and not the other one because they believe in equality and in fair play. When they are accused of being bigots and of being cheaters---especially if they have never had the advantages of higher education or extra income---they get royally pissed off.
That is how you lose an election before you ever enter the general election season. Obama supporters get a real laugh out of Clinton’s unity talk. However, people her age saw what happened back in 1972 when the Party broke into a bunch of little pieces.
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