Kingdom of Fear

What Hacker News says

1. rektideNov 2021
   There's indeed a lot of similarities in person here, characters of self-aggrandizement & mythologizing. Willingness to sleaze & act low. Both are deeply deeply deeply cynical. Both take advantage of those around them. But mercy heavens be, the output of these men could not feel more apart. Thompson's latter Kingdom of Fear is one of the few of his books I own, but seems characteristic. It describes the corruption & sadness of conservatist furor (including in Democratic characters such as then Mayor Dianne Feinstein) in story after story, decries racism & state violence & hatred, questions the abuse of authority that pervades American policing & war-making. Thompson decries the american hysteria, again and again (having been very very much shaped by the apocalyptically bad democratic convention of 1968), rebuffs those possessing self importance. It's absolutely cynical as shit (like DJT), but it does not purport some great new dawn by returning to the past, does not propose we make enemies of those who arent in our in group; Thompsons treatise is clearly that far too much of America has gone way way overboard defining battle lines. Is sickening bent on conflict & doomed by it.

   There's a remarkably convincing job done here, impressive even, in it's attempt to convince that two men who espouse dramatically opposed beliefs miggt in fact be kindred spirits. Perhaps so, perhaps they share a nature, but one of them is acute, aware, sensitive, concerned, begging for open consideration & wider perspectives, and the other preaches only totalizing belief in himself, has no other apparent values or sensitivities to offer. To try to conflate these two is a boldly vulgar emterprise. One has to ignore utterly what Thompson writes to make these arguments.

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2. girvoFeb 2014
   Yes! That's where I got the idea from originally, it was mentioned in Kingdom of Fear, one of my favourite books by/about Hunter S. Thompson -- who is one of my all time favourite authors.
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3. willhollowayFeb 2013
   My brother in law is from Denmark and he told me about this practice many years ago as a way of relating to me just how neurotic and afraid parents are in America.

   I asked him why he moved here, and he said "America is where you get rich". I often meditate on whether he made a Faustian bargain or not.

   I spend a lot of time trying to understand the country I was born in. What's the right approach to this place? Is this a community or a marketplace? Newt Gingrich says marketplace, and that seems to be the opinion of the owners in this country.

   Is this place so far gone that a reasonable man will try to extract as many resources and expatriate his money and his family to Norther Europe?

   Hunter S. Thompson called America a Kingdom of Fear and then shot himself. Al Giordano tried to help through activism but concluded this country is psychopathic and moved to S. America.

   N. Europe beats the US on almost every quality of life metric. The towns, cities and trains in Europe I see on travel shows just look prettier than the sprawling pattern of chain restaurants and gas stations I see here. Sprawl bothers me on a very base and fundamental level.

   I overpay for crappy broadband and healthcare and my neighbors are irrationally afraid and half our tax dollars fund a bloated war machine. For the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world, things kind of suck here.

   I've moved to some of the best cities this country has to offer and I found them lacking. In Austin and Boulder my girlfriend would be repeatedly harassed by schizophrenics let loose on the streets.

   I spent an hour conversing with a mentally unstable tattooed skin head in Austin armed with a claw hammer for protection from other homeless. If he is to be believed, and he seemed sincere, the police bound and gagged him to a chair and beat him for an hour while denying him his anti psychotics.

   The homeless in Austin know not to ask for much. In Boulder a street kid with dreads will sneer if you give him any less than a $5. The wretched of Austin just ask for quarters. They feel lucky that they aren't scheduled for lethal injection on felony murder charges.

   I was in Austin when the state executed a homeless kid that not even the prosecutor thought killed anyone. Four homeless kids take LSD. One snaps and kills two others. Texas executes the one kid that didn't hurt anyone on felony muder charges. The actual murderer was given a life sentence because he took a plea.

   The only silver lining I can take from all this is that because things suck and the US is a huge unified market, it is a great country to innovate and solve people's problems with technology.

   I used to spend a lot of thought time getting political or philosophical about my complaints above, I have come to realize if we are to be saved, our salvation will only come through technological innovation.

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