Gore Vidal: ‘The Most Important Election in My Lifetime’

Editor’s note: On the eve of the publication of his new memoir, “Point to Point Navigation” (Doubleday), iconic author and historian Gore Vidal sat down to an exclusive video interview with Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer and offered this plea to America regarding the Nov. 7 elections:

“This is the most important vote that you’ll probably ever cast.  Because should this gang of thugs continue in the two houses of Congress, there isn’t any chance of getting the Constitution back....”

Watch it: (partial transcript below)

We’re facing the most important election in my lifetime—which does not quite extend back to that of Abraham Lincoln, but it’s pretty close. There’ll be nothing more important in the voting line that one can foresee that will come our way while any of us is still hobbling around. This will determine whether we regain the republic which we have lost over the last five years.

The coup d’etat was so rapid that even I, who am ready for such things ... I thought, these people are going to make a grab for it. But I thought, my heavens, there’s still the courts.... Even a shameless Supreme Court is not going to back up the loss of habeas corpus....

So, my fellow countrymen, as I sit here, not yet at Gettysburg, I have a notion that this is the most important vote that you’ll probably ever cast.  Because should this gang of thugs continue in the two houses of Congress, there isn’t any chance of getting the Constitution back....

This is the last chance, really, by getting some new chairpersons to head committees in the House ... to have a clean sweep, which, in normal times, if we’d ever enjoyed them, would have happened by now. Now it has got to happen, or welcome to the Third Reich.