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...“In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.” ...
The Justice Department is investigating President Donald Trump’s actions as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to four people familiar with the matter.Prosecutors who are questioning witnesses before a grand jury — including two top aides to Vice President Mike Pence — have asked in recent days about conversations with Trump, his lawyers, and others in his inner circle who sought to substitute Trump allies for certified electors from some states Joe Biden won, according to two people familiar with the matter...
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The first quote above is one of the most oft-pulled bits from Thompson's most famous work which later became the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Personally, that's a piece I rarely re-read because unlike, say, all that is amassed in the Great Shark Hunt (or even the Campaign Trail book), I find the Vegas screed, above all, to be a lark (as it was intended to be while Thompson was unwinding/avoiding writing a massive piece for Wenner about Mexican-American unrest in Southern California called Strange Rumblings in Aztlan).
However...
Just after the bit about crime and stupidity in the Vegas screed Thompson, masquerading as alter ego Raoul Duke, also wrote the following:
It is a weird feeling to sit in a Las Vegas hotel at four in the morning – hunkered down with a notebook and a tape recorder in a $35 a day suite and a fantastic room service bill, run up in 48 hours of total madness – knowing that just as soon as dawn comes up you are going to flee without paying a fucking penny …
{snip}
This was the final step. I had taken all the grapefruit and other luggage out to the car a few hours earlier.
Now it was only a matter of slipping the noose: Yes, extremely casual behavior, wild eyes hidden behind these Saigon-mirror sunglasses … waiting for the Shark to roll up...
Which got me wondering...
If and when the going gets legally tough for the good Mr. Trump, will he turn pro or will he slink out of town unseen and unheard like Mr. Duke long before he became everybody's favourite uncle?
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7 comments:
aLWAYS LIKED the character, "Uncle Duke". Perhaps Thompson didn't want to grow up to be a "cartoon carachter", but "Uncle Duke" was amazingly funny, to me at least and had great skills and little in the way of "morales". I liked that.
Truimp isn't as smart as "Uncle Duke" nor does he have the ethics of him either. IF the law actually comes after Trump and he is put on trial, I expect he may well flee the country. He can not accept he is not above the law and all he has is his big mouth. In a fight, that really doesn'get you much.
Always liked that cartoon and the character. Thanks for the reminder.
B.c. Liberals, bill 37… Gordie Campbell gave his business pals esp. in the fast food industry a gift when he lowered standards and wages (below minimum level) in 2004 for working kids 12-15. The reasoning was the kids would get valuable work experience while the employers got cheap(er!) workers and I assume the libs got generous campaign donations.
eaf--
I think, perhaps, that Thompson didn't like the idea that G. Trudeau's character caused the public to conflate the fictional Raoul/Uncle 'Duke' with Thompson himself...Thompson says as much to a BBC film crew in the late '70's.
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Bruce--
Good point!
(am assuming your comment is directed to previous post)
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Yes, sorry.. shift over maybe?
No worries.
The first week of the tRump presiduncy was fantastic, the fantasy being that he would leave his odious campaign rhetoric behind and focus on the responsibilities of his new office. But only a week in, after peevishly turfing the FBI Director who refused to kiss tRump’s ring, grim reality set in, and those closest to the new presidunce realized it first and most: this fool has no intention of learning the job, and every intention of thumbing his nose at ordinary politics—and would therefore need to be contained. Twenty-odd firings later, cabinet members finally figured out how to appease the man-child while keeping him out of trouble. Everyone knew it was going to be a long four years—and almost as many knew that his first term of the usual two would have to be his last.
Personally, I felt tRump would be called to testify in his own defence eventually, but I never thought he would be convicted after impeachments (three were initiated, the first in the GOP majority House of Representatives where it was voted down; the second and third impeachments succeeded in the Democrat majority House, but the Senate refused to convict on either). Rather I foresaw tRump’s re-election defeat (even before the midterms) and rather expected what eventually—I would say, inevitably—has happened: the former presidunce would only be a candidate for indictment after he no longer held the office and its various immunities.
I anticipated tRump being cross-examined under oath, and tested a joke about “taking the 25th”—a spoof on the better-known Fifth Amendment in which a sworn witness is protected by law from testifying anything which might incriminate chim. But, not being a real comedian, I could never get it quite right (I had to explain the various punchlines I tried—meaning I continually bombed).
Seriously, though, if tRump ever has to face charges related to his term of office, he could—as it might relate to the 25th Amendment which allows for the removal of a president who can’t fulfil the duties of office—plead insanity. Or, more likely, insist that he can no longer remember because of senile dementia—a defence tactic attempted by a infamous mobster who aped mental feebleness to dodge comeuppance for his many crimes. At worst, the sentence would involve a stay at a plush sanitarium.
I eventually gave up on the “taking the 25th” gag and resigned to the greater likelihood that he would slip away quietly to some nice dacha on the Black Sea coast. But who really thinks national security agents would allow this “asset” to fall into enemy hands?
Cue the canned laughter.
Scotty--
Re: the 'asset' and whose hands he ultimately ends up in...
One can only wonder if the real reason his secret service detail wouldn't let him go to the Capitol on January 6th had somethng to do with what the hands of 'his' mob might do to him if he had ultimately called for them home...After all, as Cassidy Hutchison's testimony made clear, the security/service folks knew that a good number of those hands were armed.
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