Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Prevail

The famous high-water mark description in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas shares an important word with the 1984 commercial for Macintosh. And it turns out that's an early word in Al Gore's Turning Point article in Rolling Stone as well:

Our energy would simply PREVAIL.
...we will ultimately prevail...
We shall prevail!

While Hunter Thompson (born 1937) was Silent, that bit of prose was all about the counterculture and What The Sixties Meant.  Al Gore is practically the Platonic ideal of the Boomer. While Steve Jobs didn't write the 1984 commercial, it's still such a dose of revolutionary exuberance that it seems very much a Prophet sentiment. Even if (or because?) Big Brother is saying those words, scant moments before a sledgehammer flies through his telescreen.

"Prevail" carries the tone of inevitability and eternal success. It takes confidence to pull it off - people may think you are bluffing, unless you really believe it. Gore, at least, seems to have that confidence, only a few years after An Inconvenient Truth.




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