I have just started re-reading HST’s The Great Shark Hunt (after finishing a book about him, I thought I’d re-read something by him), and I come across this piece of writing from “Fear and Loathing In The Bunker”, first published in the New York Times, talking about the Nixon administration.

“It has been a failure of such monumental proportions that political apathy is no longer considered fashionable, or even safe, among millions of people who only two years ago thought that anybody who disagreed openly with “the Government” was either paranoid or subversive. Political candidates, in 1974 at least, are going to have to deal with angry, disillusioned electorate that is not likely to settle for flag-waving and pompous bullshit.”

This would seem to me to be the difference between 1974 and now, politically speaking: I just don’t have it in me to be convinced that any US presidential campaign isn’t all “flag-waving and pompous bullshit”, or that the majority of the American electorate are clever enough to tell the difference between that and policy that will actually make a difference.