That’s the real issue this time," he said. “Beating Nixon. It’s hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years.”

The argument was familiar, I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it. How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame, but “regrettably necessary” holding actions? And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?

Now with another one of these big bogus showdowns looming down on us, I can already pick up the stench of another bummer. I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing this year is Beating Nixon. But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960 – and as far as I can tell, we’ve gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same.

—Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72

When will we move on?

    • Dimmer06 [he/him,comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      39·
      11 days ago

      They were talking about the German petty bourgeoisie who they thought would betray the revolutionary proletariat once a bourgeois republic was established. 70 years later the Social Democrats put down the proletarian revolution in Germany to protect the Weimar Republic, inaugurating the reaction in Germany.

      • REgon [they/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
        16·
        11 days ago

        70 years later the Social Democrats put down the proletarian revolution in Germany to protect the Weimar Republic, inaugurating the reaction in Germany.

        Yeah I’ve just learned the details of the spartacist uprising sadness
        I just was not aware that the SPD were around during Marx and that they were referred to as “democrats”

        • Dimmer06 [he/him,comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          15·
          11 days ago

          Actually, some of the people this address was given to would go on to create the SPD and Marx and Engels would support them. The SPD, though it contained a conservative wing, would remain the party of the German proletariat until it split over supporting the first World War and the Bolsheviks in Russia.

          I’m not sure what specific names the German petty bourgeois were organizing under in 1850 but at the end of the Communist Manifesto they discuss a number of trends in German politics that would include the petty bourgeoisie.