There was an interesting piece earlier this year wishing that Hunter S. Thompson were around to cover the 2016 election. If it were Thompson at his 1972 peak, maybe so. That was before booze, drugs, and gun nuttery diminished his talent and made him scary crazy as opposed to inspired crazy. The later period Thompson might have surprised us by looking more favorably on Trump than his admirers would want. We’ll never know but a move from the far left to far right in not uncommon. Come on down, Whittaker Chambers.

The writer I wish were around to comment on the 2016 freak show is Gore Vidal. Gore would have viewed the Insult Comedian with the same appalled fascination that I have for him. Like me, the Master had a soft spot for Hillary Clinton despite his usual dislike of conventional politicians. He met HRC on several occasions and came away liking her, which is typical of those who meet her in person.

Vidal wrote many brilliant political essays over the years but the one that comes to mind after a week of OTT Trumper misogyny is a review of a book by Eva Figes, Patriarchal Attitudes. It led to the legendary Miller-Mailer-Manson Man essay for the New York Review of Books in 1971, which I have typed out since the NYRB web site has it on restricted access. Here’s the money quote:

It is no accident that in the United States the phrase “sex and violence” is used as one word to describe acts of equal wickedness, equal fun, equal danger to that law and order our masters would impose upon us. Yet equating sex with violence does change the nature of each (words govern us more than anatomy), and it is quite plain that those who fear what they call permissiveness do so because they know that if sex is truly freed of taboo it will lead to torture and murder because that is what they dream of or, as Norman Mailer puts it, “Murder offers us the promise of vast relief. It is never unsexual.”

There has been from Henry Miller to Norman Mailer to Charles Manson a logical progression. The Miller-Mailer-Manson man (or M3 for short) has been conditioned to think of women as, at best, breeders of sons; at worst, objects to be poked, humiliated, killed. Needless to say, M3’s reaction to Women’s Liberation has been one of panic. He believes that if women are allowed parity with men they will treat men the way men have treated women and that, even M3 will agree, has not been very well or, as Cato the Censor observed, if woman be made man’s equal she will swiftly become his master.

M3 knows that women are dangerously different from men, and not as intelligent (though they have their competencies: needlework, child-care, detective stories). When a woman does show herself to be superior at, say, engineering, Freud finessed that anomaly by reminding us that since she is a bisexual, like everyone else, her engineering skill simply means that she’s got a bit too much of the tomboy in her, as W.C. Fields once remarked to Grady Sutton on a similar occasion.

Women are not going to make it until M3 is reformed and that is going to take a long time. Meanwhile the current phase of the battle is intense and illuminating. M3 is on the defensive, shouting names; he thinks that to scream dyke is enough to make the girls burst into tears, but so far they have played it cool. Some have even admitted to a bit of dyking now and then along with warm mature heterosexual relationships of the deeply meaningful fruitful kind that bring much needed children in the world (“Good fucks make good babies”—N. Mailer). I love you Marion and I love you too Marvin. The women are responding with a series of books and position papers that range from shrill to literature. In the last category one must place Eva Figes who, of the lot, is the only one whose work can be set beside John Stuart Mill’s celebrated review of the subject and not seem shoddy or self-serving.

I wish I could have found 3 Ts for Trump or 3 Gs for Giuliani. I originally called this piece Bannon-Bossie-Stone Man but after re-reading Vidal I could not do it. In hommage to the Master, B3 it is.

You all know who and what Andrew Breitbart was: the original alt-right chauvinist pig who is currently roasting on a spit in hell. The second B is Stephen Bannon the CEO of the Trump campaign who I call Breitbart Dude since he’s on leave from running that disgusting “news” site. Bannon is an accused spousal abuser and all-around racist asshole. The third B is less well-known but he shouldn’t be. When David Bossie joined Team Trump, I knew it was only a matter of time until Bill Clinton’s sex life became a campaign issue. Bossie was one of primary pursuers of the Presidential penis during the 1990’s. He’s one of the founders of Citizen’s United. I think you’ve heard of them. Believe me, believe me.

B3 have found the perfect candidate in Donald Trump; a man with no boundaries who will say and do anything in support of his cause. I nearly said to advance his cause but going to war with the GOP only helps with hardcore Trumpers. Here’s a recent example of his online malakatude:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/785885793340448769

Along with Trump’s noxious son-in-law Jared Kushner, Bannon and Bossie were behind the 1990’s parade of deplorables press conference right before the Slog in St. Louis. These creeps thought it was a good idea to trot out Bill Clinton’s discredited accusers. Instead, it laid an egg; only political junkies, Breitbart readers, and the dread Andrea Mitchell had a clue as to what was happening. Along with Giuliani and Stone, the B3 survivors advised Trump to follow his natural instincts to issue a non-apology apology about the grab ’em by the Billy Bush tape. I’ve been driving Dr. A crazy the last few days by saying in a heavy Noo Yawk accent: “It’s locka room tawk. Nobody cares but pussies.” A similar sentiment inspired this sign:

It’s hilarious that the B3 Man who made that sign did what the MSM does to f***k. Fucking wuss. We here at First Draft believe in calling a pussy a pussy; Oscar and Della object to the euphemism. The word *was* obscene as used by the horny adolescent posing as a grown man in the Access Hollywood tape but it is not inherently so. Let B3 Man be politically correct. Fuck that shit. I’ll save my asterisks for other uses.

I realize that Breitbart, Bannon, and Bossie are much less distinguished than Miller and Mailer as well as less notorious than Manson. It’s a sign of the degeneration of our culture that B3 is standing-in for M3 but what can you do? The depressing thing is that 45 years after Gore Vidal wrote that classic essay the same sexist attitudes remain widespread. They, are, however, on the wane, but just as Barack Obama’s election brought all the racists out from under the woodpile, the probable election of our first female President has all the misogynists shooting their vile mouths off. It’s the downside of progress.

I have been extremely proud of my candidate in the last few weeks. Hillary has kept her cool in the face of enormous provocation from the opposing campaign and from all the B3 cretins out there. I don’t know how she does it but I’m glad that she’s willing to keep fighting.  It’s time for the good old US&A to join the other democracies that have elected a female leader. We claim to be in the vanguard on women’s issues but we’ve been bringing up the rear in comparison to the rest of the world. It’s time to consign both Miller-Mailer-Manson Man and Breitbart-Bannon-Bossie Man to the ash heap of history along with Trump, Giuliani, Kushner, and Stone.

There’s only one way to close a post about B3 and M3:

Since all the Beatles recordings have been removed from YouTube,  I had to use some live Macca. It’s his song, not Manson’s, after all.