“Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72” is one of the staples of what I’d call classic campaign lit (like “The Selling of the President,” “The Boys on the Bus,” “What It Takes”). I once found a Zodiac sign with Cruz’s name under it scrawled inside a movie theater bathroom stall.) (I now see him as an unacknowledged forefather of what we call weird Twitter – a vague collective of surrealist social-media users with a fondness for retweeting old Donald Trump tweets ironically and memes suggesting that Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz was actually the Zodiac Killer. to prepare me for the paranoia, the loathing (self- and otherwise) and the fundamental tedium of the campaign trail that I’m seeing up close for the first time, and I’ve sensed his influence, particularly on social media, during some of the most hallucinatory moments of the 2016 campaign. Thompson, right, speaks on the influence of the news media on the 1972 national elections.įortunately I had Hunter S. Instead, I watched roving bands of communists, anarchists, religious fundamentalists and rifle-toting Second Amendmentistas get kept in line by the biggest army of police you’ve ever seen, and the press get … noticeably bored at the lack of action, which must be one of the reasons everyone hates us. Thompson lose his mind.īefore the convention, a large portion of the national press corps had been freaked out about getting shot in armed showdowns between skinheads and black separatists as Donald Trump accepted the one of the most controversial presidential nominations in modern times. I just got off the plane from the Republican National Convention with a bulletproof vest still packed in my suitcase, and I have to wonder if last week would have made Hunter S. With him are Pam Powell, head of Young Voters for the President, and Sammy Davis, Jr., the rally master of ceremonies.

Nixon at a youth rally in Miami Beach, Fla., after the Republican National Convention nominated him for re-election.

Fear and loathing 72