To begin with, Thompson was a good writer but definitely not a political theorist or even a smart person, he was a clown who got famous by doing 'journalism" that wasn't actually journalism all while out of his mind on drugs.
Second, the outlaw biker subculture has been studied extensively. They weren't left-behinds retaliating against a changing world, they were saying FU to boring, middle class postwar society. If anything bikers played a major role in changing American culture in the 60s - possibly as much as the hippies did. Hells Angels had long hair and beards before hippies even existed, they experimented with drugs before hippies, they broke sexual mores before hippies. They were high testosterone party animals who liked living on the edge - which was anathema at that time. Some modern bikers might be left-behinds but not the ones Thompson wrote about. So the theory that Thompson predicted anything is total bullshit; there is no connection between modern politics and biker history. The author of the piece seems to have a personal connection to Thompson and gives him too much credit.
Finally, the idea of "total retaliation" is too scatterbrained. The reality is simple -- mainstream Americans have been hearing how terrible we are from the democratic party for decades. We've been getting nothing but deadlock from republicans. That's why Trump won.
I don't dispute most of what you said there, except the part where Thompson wasn't capable of making astute observations.
Beltane, that's a cheap tactic of avoidance dismissing the concept as "the politics of total retaliation" as "too scatterbrained."
Look at the Tea Party. Look at trump. Here's what another political observer ;-) , with the help of trump himself - has to say.
A look at trumps assault on the norms governing how our leaders engage with us and in turn how that effects the way we engage with one another.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZAPwfrtAFY
5:20 - delegitimizing the Media
6:20 - Whataboutism - moral equivalency
8:50 - Trolling - 10:08 President bragging on being "most superior troll"
12:20 - How low can trump go - The "figure it out yourself" president.
"I didn't stand by anything" - lordie and that was elected president !?
14:50 - the moral, intellectual coward Congressman Paul Gosar
I'm sharing it because an awful lot of it made frightening sense and I was curious your opinion.
What about the crazy things he said during his Asia trip, jesus christ it was moronic,
so what are we doing here, Beltane, what's the plan ???Whatever.