Thompson era mirrors present day woes facing America

I've been reading Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail by Hunter S Thompson, focused on the US presidential campaigns of 1968 and 1972, a time of turbulence in the US and elsewhere.

Thompson, who may be unfamiliar to most readers, is the originator of gonzo journalism, a term he invented to describe his avowedly non-objective riffs on the American scene, its culture and its politics.

He published in Rolling Stone, an American journal immersed in rock and roll, but with a strong political beat that resonates to the present day. It was Rolling Stone's reporting of the verbal insubordinations of his staff that forced the resignation of General Stanley McChrystal, late US commander in Afghanistan.

Despite Thompson's claim to being high on substances while doing his job, the writing, full of hyperbole, is nevertheless fluid and well constructed. It was about the excesses of the '60s and '70s, and it reflected those excesses in style and substance.

Who else but Thompson would call a sitting US Supreme Court Justice, William Rhenquist, "a swine" but recount with admiration his own ride earlier with Richard Nixon, the man who later appointed Rhenquist, during which Thompson and Nixon discussed pro football (gridiron) for an hour and Nixon impressed his guest with mastery of the game's marginalia? Thompson wrote of an era when the divisions in America were tearing it apart, as war and race and generational attitudes brought conflicts to the boil and Americans to the streets.

In short, it was a time like the present.

The campaign of 2008 brought Sarah Palin to the stage. Her acceptance speech was full of populist rhetoric with imagery of a country divided into "Real Americans" and supposed others fitting together unhappily. With Obama's election victory and inauguration, an almost instantaneous drumbeat began by those who would soon call themselves the Tea Party and who said their goal was to "take our country back". This divisive rhetoric - like that of George W Bush's famous mantra, "you're either with us or against us" - eventually sharpened into a direct attack upon the legitimacy of Obama as President and even as a citizen. As recently as this past spring, Donald Trump demanded that the President produce a birth certificate as proof of his citizenship qualification for office.

Last week a super-committee designated by the Congress to come up with US$1.2 trillion ($1.6 trillion) in spending cuts and/or revenue increases to meet deficit reduction targets failed to reach agreement. The effect of yet another congressional failure to deal with debt issues has again roiled financial markets as it diminishes confidence that the Government can get its fiscal house in order - with potentially disastrous results for the general economy.

While the parties are blaming one another, it's clear that, whereas Democrats were considering serious cuts to social programmes Medicare (seniors' insured medical care) and Medicaid (health care for the poor), Republicans refused to raise taxes even for the top 1 per cent of the people, people making US$1 million annually.

A majority of Republicans have signed a pledge to Grover Norquist, an unelected Republican operative, never to raise taxes, no matter the circumstances.

Consequences to those who stray from the pledge are loss of funds for election contests and a challenge in so-called primary elections - in other words, their jobs are at stake. The no-tax pledge, it seems, trumps the constitutional oath of office, which requires putting the country first.

Obama has quickly seized upon this failure to remind citizens that the interests of the 99 per cent are being ignored in favour of the 1 per cent. His Republican adversaries are quick to call Obama's attack divisive and an example of class warfare. From where I sit, Republicans have nothing to whinge about. They've been practising class warfare for the past three decades and, measured by income inequality, the class they represent has won.