I’m not saying this in defense of the man. but only to emphasize that anybody in Congress or anywhere else who plans to cross Jimmy Carter should take pains to understand the real nature of the beast they intend to cross. He’s on a very different wavelength than most people in Washington. That’s one of the main reasons he’s president, and also one of the first things I noticed when I met him down in Georgia in 1974—a total disdain for political definition or conventional ideologies. His concept of populist politics is such a strange mix of total pragmatism and almost religious idealism that every once in a while—to
politics, but not as ideology, simply as an art of self-defense—that’s what I learned in Chicago. I realized that you couldn’t afford to turn your back on the bastards because that’s what they would do—run amok and beat the shit out of you—and they had the power to do it. When I feel it’s necessary to get back into politics, I’ll do it, either writing about it or participating in it. But as long as it’s not necessary, there are a lot of better ways to spend your time. Buy an opium den in Singapore, or a brothel somewhere in Maine: become a hired killer in Rhodesia or some kind of human Judas Goat in the Golden Triangle. Yeah, a soldier of fortune, a profes-
me at least, and especially when I listen to some of the tapes of conversations I had with him in 1974 and ’75—that he sounds like a borderline anarchist…which is probably why he interested me from the very beginning; and why he still does, for that matter. Jimmy Carter is a genuine original. Or at least he was before he got elected. God only knows what he is now, or what he might turn into when he feels he’s being crossed—by Congress, the Kremlin, Standard Oil or anything else. He won’t keep any enemies list on paper, but only because he doesn’t have to; he has a memory like a computerized elephant. High Times: Did you ever have any ideology in the sense of being a liberal, a conservative…or were you an anarchist all along? Thompson: I’ve always considered myself basically an anarchist, at least in the abstract, but every once in awhile you have to come out of the closet and deal with reality. I am interested in
sional geek who’ll do anything for money. High Times: You’ve received a lot of flak for your enthusiasm about Jimmy Carter’s Law Day speech in Athens, Georgia. Do you still like Carter? Thompson: Compared to most other politi- cians, I do still like Carter. Whether I agree with him on everything, that’s another thing entirely. He’d put me in jail in an instant if he saw me snorting coke in front of him. He would not, however, follow me into the bathroom and try to catch me snorting it. It’s little things like that. High Times: In that Law Day speech, Carter quoted Bob Dylan. Do you really think Carter cares about Bob Dylan’s music the way we do? Thompson: I listened to Bob Dylan records in his house, but that was mainly because his sons had them. I don’t think he goes upstairs to...
Continued at hightim.es/hst
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