corrente

John Nichols over at The Nation takes me back in his piece on HST’s legacy:

Thompson ran on what he and his backers dubbed the "Freak Power" ticket, declaring in an advertisement in the Aspen Times that, "(In) 1970 Amerika a lot of people are beginning to understand that to be a freak is an honorable way to go. This is the real point: that we are not really freaks at all—not in the literal sense—but the twisted realities of the world we are trying to live in have somehow combined to make us feel like freaks. We argue, we protest, we petition—but nothing changes. So now, with the rest of the nation erupting in a firestorm of bombings and political killings, a handful of "freaks" are running a final, perhaps atavistic experiment with the idea of forcing change by voting..."

…He wanted to combine "Woodstock vibrations, New Left activism, and basic Jeffersonian Democracy with strong echoes of the Boston Tea Party ethic" into what the writer-candidate referred to as "a blueprint for stomping the (conservative Vice President Spiro) Agnew mentality by its own rules—with the vote, instead of the bomb; by seizing the power machinery and using it, instead of merely destroying it."

Yeah, nothing changes. And now, thirty-five years later, how far have we come? The bad people have taken over. Yeeesh. Yet, the struggle goes on…Freak Power! We are the machinery, and the monkey wrench.