Friday, October 22, 2004
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 2004
Sentient readers of this bilge will remember that from its inception until just last weekend, this blog was headed by a quote from Hunter S. Thompson's book Kingdom of Fear: "We are living in dangerously weird times now.... Doom is the operative ethic.... Guaranteed Fear and Loathing. Abandon all hope. Prepare for the Weirdness...." Nobody does a better job of recognizing cultural rot when he sees it, and so when Dr. Thompson speaks, we listen. This week, he speaks in Rolling Stone this week about Campaign 2004.
Thompson, of course, wrote one of the greatest works of campaign reportage in history, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, which is not just a must-read for political junkies, but an important work of American literature, gonzo-style--even if it is sometimes hard to tell what's truthful and what's fiction. While on the trail in the early 1970s, Thompson says he met John Kerry for the first time. ("He was yelling into a bullhorn and I was trying to throw a dead, bleeding rat over a black-spike fence and onto the president's lawn.") Thompson claims Kerry told him earlier this year that he'd make a good running mate. He's a bit less photogenic than John Edwards these days, but he does have political experience--a famous run for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, on the Freak Power ticket in 1970, described in great detail in Kingdom of Fear.
All you really need to know of Thompson's take on 2004 is this: He wrote the most vicious obituary of all time for Richard Nixon in 1994, but he now says that if Nixon were running against Bush, he'd get the Doctor's vote. But Nixon remains safely dead, and Kerry is Thompson's dog in this fight.
Sentient readers of this bilge will remember that from its inception until just last weekend, this blog was headed by a quote from Hunter S. Thompson's book Kingdom of Fear: "We are living in dangerously weird times now.... Doom is the operative ethic.... Guaranteed Fear and Loathing. Abandon all hope. Prepare for the Weirdness...." Nobody does a better job of recognizing cultural rot when he sees it, and so when Dr. Thompson speaks, we listen. This week, he speaks in Rolling Stone this week about Campaign 2004.
Thompson, of course, wrote one of the greatest works of campaign reportage in history, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, which is not just a must-read for political junkies, but an important work of American literature, gonzo-style--even if it is sometimes hard to tell what's truthful and what's fiction. While on the trail in the early 1970s, Thompson says he met John Kerry for the first time. ("He was yelling into a bullhorn and I was trying to throw a dead, bleeding rat over a black-spike fence and onto the president's lawn.") Thompson claims Kerry told him earlier this year that he'd make a good running mate. He's a bit less photogenic than John Edwards these days, but he does have political experience--a famous run for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, on the Freak Power ticket in 1970, described in great detail in Kingdom of Fear.
All you really need to know of Thompson's take on 2004 is this: He wrote the most vicious obituary of all time for Richard Nixon in 1994, but he now says that if Nixon were running against Bush, he'd get the Doctor's vote. But Nixon remains safely dead, and Kerry is Thompson's dog in this fight.
Your neighbor's grandchildren will be fighting this stupid, greed-crazed Bush-family "war" against the whole Islamic world for the rest of their lives, if John Kerry is not elected to be the new President of the United States in November.Yes. Then we sacrifice him to the Rat gods.
The question this year is not whether President Bush is acting more and more like the head of a fascist government but if the American people want it that way. That is what this election is all about. We are down to nut-cutting time, and millions of people are angry. They want a Regime Change.
Some people say that George Bush should be run down and sacrificed to the Rat gods. But not me. No. I say it would be a lot easier to just vote the bastard out of office on November 2nd.
