My guess is he would bite hard on his cigarette and punch a visceral deconstruction of Peace In Our Time into his typewriter. He would start in Oakland and New York City, where riot police cleared out Occupy Wall St. protesters with tear gas in the dead of night, refusing to let reporters document their actions. He would move to U.C. Davis, where police pepper-sprayed a group of peaceful protesters in the face two weeks ago. I'm not sure he'd be all that thrilled with the Occupy kids; I would expect an ironic, pessimistic, fatalist send-up of both the 1% and the Merry Men in hoodies. But I suspect Thompson understood better than most the corrosive nature of power and the Undying Truth that the enemy of democracy is a can of pepper-spray, a baton, a taser, a fire hose, a rifle in the hand of an irresponsible policeman, regardless of whether he or she has the legal right to use it.
I know he would churn out page upon page about the Republican presidential debates, where audiences have cheered the execution of 200 death row-inmates, booed a U.S. soldier, and applauded the idea that people without health insurance should be left to die in the streets. Maybe what would burn him most, or maybe it's just what burns me, would be seeing a Republican candidate chewed to pieces for suggesting that we shouldn't round up illegal immigrants who have been living peacefully and productively in the country for 25 years, take them away from their families, and send 'em back on a bus.
Nevermind that no pathway-to-citizenship 'magnet' could ever compare with making seven dollars an hour in the U.S. instead of seven dollars a day in Mexico. In fact forget a pathway to citizenship, just declining to deport eleven million illegal immigrants is now a fringe position in the GOP. Apparently it's treasonous heresy to suggest that packing them on 220,000 buses covering roughly 14,000 square miles (or in layman's terms, Rhode Island) and carting them off to their country of origin isn't the best solution to our immigration problem. And heaven help you if you think spending billions of dollars on a 2,000 mile long super-fence is also a lacking solution. Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?
The kids are turned off from politics, they say. Most of 'em don't even want to hear about it. All they want to do these days is lie around on waterbeds and smoke that g-ddamn marrywanna... yeah, and just between you and me Fred that's probably all for the best.
Hunter S. Thompson
Image: zen
(This is Jason Evans, btw)I think current events and events of the last few years would have galvanized Hunter to write some truly great writing. Anger was a driving force in most of his best writing, I think - just look at his writings on Nixon - but he was just going through the motions in his last few years, beaten down by illness, depression and feeling stymied by the pressures to keep up the "Dr. Gonzo" persona.
ReplyDeleteIn one of the documentaries about him, his ex-wife says she's furious with him for killing himself - "because we need him now more than ever." I agreed then and I agree now.
"There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” That's some lovely and powerful writing.
Jason! So good to hear from you, old friend.
ReplyDeleteThe passage you posted is so amazing and moving for me. I think you posted that somewhere long ago, and reading it was part of what inspired me to dive deeper into Thompson's work.
I agree, anger was a driving force for him, as it was for this post. Not a great motivator of course, but it sure drove him to write some incredible stuff.
I watched that documentary too, I think. I think it was called "Gonzo." I do wish he was still here, though I agree his spirit was not the same in the years before his death. At least in the few pieces I have read.
No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun – for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax – This won’t hurt.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorites as well.