got to get some peace in my mind

The shittrain began on November 22nd, 1963, in Dallas...and then a year later, LBJ was re-elected as the "Peace Candidate."----------[excerpt, Hunter Thompson]---------------------Johnson did a lot of rotten things in those five bloody years, but when the history books are written he will emerge in his proper role as the man who caused an entire generation of Americans to lose all respect for the Presidency, the White House, the Army, and in fact the whole structure of "government."

And then came '68, the year that somehow managed to confirm almost everybody's worst fears about the future of the Republic . . . and then, to wrap it all up another cheapjack hustler moved into the White House.  If Joe McGinnis had written The Selling of the President about good old Ike, he'd have been chased through the streets of New York by angry mobs.  But when he wrote it about Nixon, people just shrugged and said, "Yeah, it's a goddamn shame, even if it's true, but so what?"

I went to Nixon's Inauguration.  Washington was a sea of mud and freezing rain....

= = = =

We couldn't find the commune.  The directions were too vague:  "Go far to the dim yellow light, then right at the big tree . . . proceed to the fork and then slow to the place where the road shines. . . . " 

After two hours of this I was half crazy.  We had been back and forth across the same grid of backroads two or three times, with no luck . . . but finally we found it, a very peaceful-looking place on a cold hill in the woods.

= = = =

Earlier that night, in Cambridge -- over dinner at a bogus Mexican restaurant run by Italian junkies -- several people had asked me why I was wasting my time on "this kind of bullshit."  McGovern, Muskie, Lindsay, or even Gene McCarthy.

= = = =

...That was four years ago.  LBJ was Our President and there was no real hint, in the winter of '68, that he was about to cash his check.  Johnson seemed every bit as tough and invulnerable then as Nixon seems today . . . and it is slightly unnerving to recall that Richard Nixon, at that point in his campaign, appeared to have about as much chance of getting himself elected to the White House as Hubert Humphrey appears to have now, in February of '72.

= = = =

Once they let you get away with running around for ten years like a king hoodlum, you tend to forget now and then that about half the people you meet live from one day to the next in a state of such fear and uncertainty that about half the time they honestly doubt their own sanity.

These are not the kind of people who really need to get hung up in depressing political trips.  They are not ready for it.  Their boats are rocking so badly that all they want to do is get level long enough to think straight and avoid the next nightmare.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Monday morning you look so fine
Friday I got travelin' on my mind
First you love me, then you fade away
I can't go on believin' this way
I got nothing but love for you
So tell me what you really want to do
First you love me, then you get on down the line
But I don't mind --
I don't mind --

I'll be there if you want me to
No one else that could ever do
Got to get some peace in my mind...

Monday morning you look so fine
Friday I got travelin' on my mind
First you love me, then you say it's wrong
I can't go on believing for long

But you know --
it's true
You only want me when I get over you
First you love me,
then you get on down the line
But I don't mind --
I don't mind --

I'll be there if you want me to
No one else that could ever do
Got to get some peace in my mind

-------------------------
---------------------------
{book excerpts:  Fear And Loathing:  On The Campaign Trail '72, by Hunter S. Thompson.  Copyright 1973}
{song:  "Monday Morning" -- Written, Lindsey Buckingham.  Label:  Reprise.  1975.  Fleetwood Mac album.}

-30-