The Left Wing Gump

"My name is Trotsky Gump, people call me Trot."

In 1981, Trotsky Gump recounts his life story to strangers who sit next to him on a bench in Savannah, Georgia.

On his first day of school in 1950s Greenbow, Alabama, Trot meets a girl named Jenny Curran who, unlike the other children, immediately befriends young Trot. Due to leg braces fitted to correct a curved spine, Trot is unable to walk properly. One day, a young truck driver stays at the boarding house that Forrest lives in with his mother. The young truck driver turns out to be Elvis Presley who, while playing guitar for him, becomes enthralled at the jerky hip thrusting movements the hobbled Trot makes while trying to dance. Later on, Elvis becomes famous by imitating the dance.

Trot is often bullied because of his physical disability and marginal intelligence. One day, while trying to escape some bullies chasing him, his braces fall off revealing the young Trot to be a very fast runner. Despite his low intelligence quotient, Trot's new running ability leads to him receiving a football scholarship to the University of Alabama in the early 1960s, becoming a top running back, and joining the All-American team. He quits the team and drops out when he sees black team mates being treated like second class citizens, he then dodges the draft, and goes on the run.

While out jogging he runs into Muhammed Ali who is also out for a run. The Champ tells him he doesn't know what to do about his being drafted. Trotsky tells him the Yellow man ain't ever done nothing to him. If his religious principles are against the war he must refuse being inducted into the army.

While hanging out with the Nation of Islam he befriends a fellow protestor named Bubba X, who convinces Trotsky to go into the shrimping business with him after they stop the War. In 1967, they are protesting the war in Vietnam at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles and Bubba X is killed by the Police. Trot gets shot.

Once Trot has recovered from the gunshot wound to his buttocks received when he is shot by the police, he is given a choice by the authorities, jailtime or join the US Olympic team. They remember him from his college days. He ends up winning the Silver medal at the Mexico City Olympics in the 200 Meter and gives the Black Power salute with Tommie Smith and John Carlos.

At an anti-war rally in Washington, D.C., Trotsky stops a man from sabotaging the speeches and briefly reunites with Jenny, who has been living the Jet set lifestyle. While in D.C. in 1972, Trot is working in the Watergate hotel, and accidentally reveals the Watergate Scandal, forcing Nixon to resign.

Returning home, Trot endorses a company that makes condoms. He uses the earnings to buy a shrimping boat, fulfilling his promise to Bubba. In 1974, Trot saves a Vietnam war vet named Lt. Dan from killing himself via overdose. He joins the shrimp boat crew and although they initially have little success, after their boat becomes the only one to survive Hurricane Carmen, Trot and Lt. Dan reveal their true feelings for each other but Lt. Dan says they could never truly be together in the country they were living in, after this moment they pull in huge amounts of shrimp. They use their income to purchase a fleet of shrimp boats. Dan invests the money in Microsoft (which Trot naively thinks is a form of erectile dysfunction) and Trot is financially secure for the rest of his life, but gives half of his earnings to Bubba X's family and the other half to a variety of charities. He then returns home to see his mother's last days. She can not afford health insurance and dies from lack of proper medicine.

In the late 1970s, Jenny returns to visit Trotsky and he soon proposes to her. She declines, but gets really high and slips into his bedroom and makes love to him that night before leaving early the next morning. Now having herpes, Trotsky elects to go for another run. He decides to keep streaking across the country several times, over three and a half years, becoming famous in the process.

In the present, trot reveals that he is waiting at the bus stop because he received a letter from Jenny who, having seen him run on television, asked him to visit her. Reunited with Jenny, she introduces him to his son, named Trotsky Gump, Jr. Jenny tells Forrest she is broke having spent whatever money her rich sugar daddies have given her on too much blow.. The three move back to Greenbow, Alabama. Jenny dies a year later of a heroine overdose. Trotsky reunites with Lt. Dan and the two are married.

Trotsky and Lt. Dan and Trot's son await the school bus on Trot, Jr's first day of school.

Anything that should be added?
 
He's a fool, but he's wise. He's not big vocab smart, but he has a knack for getting to the gist of matters. Maybe because he's confident within himself, that is, most of the time (except when he's worrying about being school smart!)

1) Maybe he decides drugs are about free choice and he confidently says, drugs just aren't my program.

2) He says, that what I've observed with my own two eyes, I can see how some people might like marijuana. Other stuff, I'm not such a big fan of.

3) He helps out with Native American Rights in the 1970s.

4) He helps out with environmental movement, and helps crunchy conservatives. Reminds us what the Reagan Revolution could have been.

5) He does something with Third World solidarity. No issue is probably more important than the marketing practices of infant formula companies, but it's a boring ass issue.
 
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