Hunter S. Thompson // "Nixon, at least, was blessed with a mixture of arrogance and stupidity that caused him to blow the boilers almost immediately after taking command. By bringing in hundreds of thugs, fixers and fascists to run the Government, he was able to crank almost every problem he touched into a mindbending crisis... For now, we should make every effort to look at the bright side of the Nixon Administration. It has been a failure of such monumental proportions that political apathy is no longer considered fashionable, or even safe... The Watergate spectacle was a shock, but the fact of a millionaire President paying less income tax than most construction workers...and the threat of mass unemployment by spring tends to personalize Mr. Nixon's failures in visceral way... When the cold eye of history looks back on Richard Nixon's...years of unrestrained power in the White House, it will show that he had the same effect on conservative/Republican politics as Charles Manson and the Hells Angels had on hippies and flower power... Or maybe not...at least not on the scale of sheer numbers or people affected. In retrospect, the grisly violence of the Manson/Angels trips affected very few people directly, while the greedy, fascistic incompetence of Richard Nixon's Presidency will leave scars on the minds and lives of a whole generation...his supporters and political allies no less than his opponents. Maybe that's why the end of this incredible, fantastic year feels so hollow."