Hunter S. Thompson, R.I.P.

"He nodded a nod full of mystery and wisdom.
'I tell you,' he cried, 'this man has enlarged my mind.'"
– Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

For me, this quote has always been the most memorable in a literary masterpiece full of them. It's a dead-on assessment of what Joseph Conrad's character Kurtz meant to the Russian vagabond who leads Marlow to Kurtz. And of what Hunter S. Thompson has meant to me. With news of Thompson’s recent death by suicide, this passage came to mind immediately.

As best as can be derived from Thompson’s literary canon, Heart of Darkness was one of his favorite among a handful of classics – some mainstream, others not so much so – in which he found inspiration. I discovered Heart of Darkness and Conrad in general, thanks to Thompson. He also led me to a few other literary beauties through the years which proved to be of a more didactic nature than I would have originally suspected. Thompson's introduced me to the likes of Conrad and Nathanael West, and caused me to revisit and derive strange pleasures from authors I’d forgotten since my high school years … Hawthorne, Twain, Coleridge. And it was because of Hunter Thompson that I became acquainted with the one and only Sebastian Dangerfield – the protagonist in J. P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man, and one of the most delightfully repugnant characters in all of literature.

Thompson’s reputation for pharmaceutical intake and violent tendencies aside, he was able to do what some decade and a half of formal education could not: Interest me in great literature by great writers. This began in 1989 with my acquisition of The Great Shark Hunt; a book that Thompson himself called “my life's work."

Indeed, it was from within these pages that I was able to truly grasp the man and his work. Shark Hunt covers the true beginning of Thompson's writing life – from the early '60s to the late '70s – and includes the years when Thompson was at the height of his powers as a respected contemporary journalist. Two books came out of this golden age, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Today, it's easy to forget, unless you're a true Hunter Thompson aficionado and not merely a groupie, how great these books were and are, given the reputation he has acquired thanks to the cartoonish treatment he received at the hands of that pig, Gary Trudeau. Thompson openly resented Trudeau and once claimed, in so many words, that if he ever got his hands around Trudeau's neck, he may not let go.

Who can blame him? Trudeau's antics made a joke of Thompson’s literary accomplishments. Fortunately, something happened that began to correct this. In 1998, Thompson released a book called The Proud Highway, a collection of his early letters. In it, we learn of the aspiring young writer who, like Jack Kerouac, one of his heroes, wrote for himself and not for others. In reading these letters, his confidence and conviction absolutely burn.

It was at the end of ’89, after spending the year absorbing The Great Shark Hunt many times over, that I had the chance to attend one of Thompson’s “lectures.” Stepping into the Cabaret Metro that cold night in Chicago was like stepping back in time – specifically the time when Thompson was hanging out with the Hell’s Angels. The place was full of guys of all ages in biker leather; guys who knew the legend but had probably never read the books.

In we walked – me in my Polo tweeds and my date, a tall, radiant blond who seemed to catch more than a few eyes. For two hours, I kept returning to the lobby for beers, wondering if Hunter was ever going to make it. Twice a guy came on stage to announce that he was “in the limo and on the way.” Despite the yelping and howling from the seats, Hunter finally came on stage to a wild explosion of applause. Over the next hour and a half, an extremely disjointed Q&A session ensued, composed mostly of questions about drugs, motorcycles and everything except Thompson’s literary achievements. But about an hour into the evening, a guy in a blue oxford button-down shirt stood up and asked “what is your favorite book?”

Without naming titles, he heralded the genius of Conrad and Twain. Then said that “every damn one of you should read Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, but I imagine none of you will.” The next day, I owned it.

I can’t say that Hunter Thompson’s suicide surprised me, shocking and sad as it was. When ripping through The Great Shark Hunt for the first time, I came across an article Thompson had written in 1964 on Ernest Hemingway’s final days. It had been just three years since Hemingway had taken his own life with a shotgun. And if Thompson didn’t exactly rationalize the act, he certainly expressed an empathy towards it; a weird understanding of how a writer – or any creative artist – might reach this point.

Though I’ve thought about this possibility often – even as recently as the week prior to it happening – the anticipation doesn’t ease the pain of knowing that he no longer stalks the planet. But like all of us, I still have his work, and through it, his admonition to be a brighter mind, a more passionate artist and to love life more. What else could a writer ask for?

My kinship with Hunter S. Thompson has enriched my life immensely. As artist Ralph Steadman said upon hearing of his friend’s death, Thompson “enlightened” people. Yes, he did.

To quote Conrad, which Thompson so often did, “I tell you, this man has enlarged my mind.”

The Real Ronald Reagan

He fought hard to cut spending programs created for the needy.

He reduced insurance for workers who had lost jobs to foreign competition he refused to stand up to.

He reduced student aid and food stamps.

He reduced Social Security benefits and the budget for the Civil Rights Commission.

All for the purpose of increasing the defense budget unnecessarily.

He claimed that homeless people might well be “homeless by choice.”

He likened Nazi Stormtroopers to Holocaust victims.

He knowingly and willingly violated the U.S. Constitution.

He gave guns to the enemy.

“He” was no evil dictator from the distant past. No … “he” was the 40th president of the United States. The man who died three days ago on June 5th. The man who was revered by Americans during his presidency and is still seen today as one of the top-rated presidents of all time in most polls.

“He,” of course, is Ronald Reagan.

It may not be fair to pick on Reagan so soon after his death, but the reality is that his mind probably died many years ago – maybe before he was first elected president. But dead or not, it’s come time to put an end to the false personification of Reagan as some weepy-eyed mope of a president. Ronald Reagan was an inherently wicked human being with a boundless insensitivity whose legacy of hatred is unmatched in the history of the republic.

Just two months into his presidency, an assassination attempt on Reagan left his press secretary James Brady severely debilitated from a gun wound to the head. Yet throughout his two terms, Reagan couldn’t find it in himself to sign the Brady Bill into law, clinging desperately – like so many of the gun nuts in this country – to his own perverted idea of the 2nd amendment, not to mention the millions that the NRA and the gun lobby were feeding him. Truly beyond reprehension.

But Ronald Reagan had only just begun.

In 1983, Reagan was solely responsible for the deaths of 241 marines he’d sent to Beirut (against advisors' recommendations) when they were killed in a terrorist bombing. Ah, the ego.

Then there was the amassing of a previously unimaginable national debt in the name of defense against an enemy who was virtually penniless. The federal deficit tripled during Reagan’s time as he sent the economy into a downward spiral for the simple sake of his own elevated self-image. The truth is that it didn’t take the Star Wars program for the USSR to collapse; what it took was a hero from the inside who saw the future. That hero was Mikhail Gorbachev. However, Reagan didn’t see it that way and was willing to bankrupt the country for his own place in history. Soon, however, he would find a different way to find a place in history – Iran Contra.

Let’s be clear about this: Ronald Reagan gave guns to the enemy. Ronald Reagan gave weapons to the Ayatollah Khomeini – the same Ayatollah who held 53 Americans hostage for 444 leading up to Reagan’s presidency. Reagan then funneled the money he made from his gun sales to the Ayatollah to a foreign uprising; an act which had been deemed illegal by the U.S. Congress, putting the President in clear violation of the Constitution.

When it came to misdeeds, Ronald Reagan knew no limits.

He first denied the deal with Iran, then turned around and called Oliver North a hero – before and after North’s conviction.

What an imbecile.

By now, it’s public knowledge that secrets and deceit were nothing new to Reagan in the ’80s. In 1947, he refused to name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee – a most public forum. But, in private, according to Reagan’s F.B.I. file, he did, indeed name names, betraying his fellow cohorts and friends.

They called him the Great Communicator, yet in truth, he struggled to utter a complete sentence that wasn’t displayed before him on a teleprompter. No wonder he appealed to the masses – a dumb president for a dumb country, and the absolute fulfillment of H. L. Mencken’s famous prediction that “on some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

It could be said that we’re witnessing round two of this phenomenon, as the current Bush regime inches towards the end of its first – and hopefully, only – term. Like Reagan, Bush and his band of henchmen possess a touch of evil. So much so that I’ve come to liken them to the Third Reich.

It seems to fit nicely:

George W. Bush as Adolph Hitler
Dick Cheney as Albert Speer
Donald Rumsfeld as Heinrich Himmler
Condoleezza Rice as Martin Bormann
Karl Rove as Joseph Goebbels
John Ashcroft as Adolph Eichmann
Colin Powell as Rudolph Hess

Like George W. Bush, Reagan was, through his own dumb luck, able to get away with just about anything during his time as president – due perhaps, as some foolish instructor at Johns Hopkins named Kenneth Lynn claimed, to his “lack of guilt in his personal life” which Lynn called a “breath of fresh air.”

Fresh air, indeed.

The fact is, it’s difficult to fully comprehend the damage Reagan wrought on America in just eight years, as he, at one point or another, turned against virtually every meaningful person or group he encountered and, ultimately, even against the country he so adamantly claimed to love.

Ronald Reagan deserves only to be remembered as the most diabolically treasonous citizen in the history of the United States. Nothing less, and certainly nothing more.

The Shootout Over Guns

"The Democrats are trying to find a safe middle position without dealing with the controversial gun issue, but I don't know how you can deal with school violence without dealing with guns. There's one common thread throughout all of the violence in this country - and it's the gun."
- U.S. Rep. Bill Clay, Missouri, Summer, 1999

"Atlanta. Skokie. It's about guns."
- Chicago Tribune editorial headline, August 1, 1999

You’re goddam right it’s about guns. When will the killing stop? When we get the guns off the streets, that's when.

An acquaintance of mine tried to tell me that there have always been guns in this country, as if the idea of insane people in society is a new phenomenon. But there have been insane minds much longer than there have been guns - they've just never been able to kill with such ease, such frequency, such randomness and such immediacy before now – without guns.

One of our local U.S. Representatives here in the St. Louis, Bill Clay, got it dead right when he made the statement above and I've got to give him credit for having the balls to speak out in a way that 99% of his co-conspirators in the halls of the U.S. Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, are simply too gutless and too greedy to do. In the wake of the recent Atlanta shootings, even longtime Republican standard bearers like the Chicago Tribune are beginning to see the light. Sadly, there will always be money-grubbing holdouts like Jo Ann Emerson, another Missouri Representative, who actually stated that "the whole root cause of what happened at Columbine doesn't have anything to do with easy access to guns."

What an utter imbecile.

Clay's candid assessment is refreshing. And he is right. There are simply too many guns in society. Period. Not "too many in the hands of the wrong people," or "too many in cities;" there are too many guns, period. And it's time we eliminated them…..period. No questions asked.

* * *

“The culture of violence … we teach in music, what we teach in movies, and what we teach in video may degrade the value of life and desensitize us to brutality and death."
- U.S. Senator John Ashcroft, Missouri

There is indeed a single common thread throughout the violence in the country. And it's not insanity, or poor parenting, or music or movies, or a "lack of family values," whatever the hell that means. Or any other excuses that bonehead Ashcroft can dream up. The common thread is guns.

Sadly, we knew this long before Columbine, but did nothing about it.

"I'm sure Mr. Smith was not part of a well-regulated militia."- Mayor John Fernandez, Bloomington, Indiana

The "Mr. Smith" to whom Mayor Fernandez is referring is the madman who roamed the Midwest a few weeks back firing randomly in the Chicago suburb of Skokie and on the campus of Indiana University before finally killing himself. And, of course, the mayor's poignant reference to the true meaning of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution wisely opens and, hopefully, closes this debate once and for all.

Yet according to the pro-gun bunch, it says right there in the Constitution that we all get to carry guns, right?

Well, no, it doesn't, though that's the line the NRA and all the other gun freaks have been shoving down our throats for so many years. In fact, a current NRA advertising campaign (a truly strange and sickening idea in and of itself, when you stop to think about it) informs the reader through the words of NRA Executive Vice President Wayne Lapierre, that "our founding fathers often wrote about firearm freedom as an individual right." And that Thomas Jefferson wrote that "no free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." (Well, Jefferson also held slaves, but we've decided that was wrong, too.)

On the subject of guns, Jefferson obviously had a few detractors; enough to keep that line of thinking out of what became in the final analysis, the United States Constitution. Right. In the end, enough logical minds prevailed over two hundred years ago so as to prevent the inclusion of firearms as an individual right in the Constitution.

You say you’re shocked to hear this? You say you’ve always thought the Second Amendment actually did give private individuals the right to bear arms? That's not surprising given how the gun squad has hid behind the Second Amendment in an attempt to mislead the general public.

Let's have a look at what the Second Amendment really says:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Well, I couldn't agree more. I, too, think our military services should be properly equipped for the sake of national security. And that's what the Second Amendment is really all about.

Twenty-seven words which make it very clear that the idea behind the Second Amendment was to establish a government-sanctioned, properly equipped military for the sake of defending ourselves from enemy nations; not for going around shooting each other.

The NRA twinkies and their disciples have cloaked themselves in this amendment for as long as memory serves. And not once have I heard anyone call them on – until now.

This NRA advertising campaign is, of course, designed to sway those folks who have the audacity to believe that guns actually can – and do – kill people. It's hardly a threat; at least, no more so than other pro-gun tactics taken by the NRA through the years. It features the usual dumb-dumbs; people like actor Tom Selleck, who in his ad for the NRA is described as a "Recreational Shooter." Wow, that's sounds really, really fun.

Of course, king of the gun idiots is actor and NRA President Charlton Heston, who, in the latest ad, claims that the "NRA's National Firearms Museum …. tells the story of human freedom and the American experience…."

A gun museum as the place to absorb American history? What an obscene goon Heston has become.

He's not alone. One particular member of congress who has amazed us with an incredibly blatant and unexplainable act of stupidity is Oklahoma U.S. Congressman J. C. Watts. I had read about the NRA advertisement that features Watts. Yet, if I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed it. It just seemed impossible to fathom. This maneuver is so utterly void of any shred of common sense, it causes one to ponder how in the hell he made it out of his own neighborhood, much less through the doors of the United States Congress.

To date, I've given Watts credit. He's been put on display as the symbol of the "new" Republican Party for more than a few years now and has, since his speech at the '96 convention in San Diego, been a politician of considerable prominence. He's hung in there, unlike that quitter Susan Molinari, who couldn't handle the pressure of being a token female for the likes of what remains of the GOP – the Good Old-boy Party. But this recent blunder is simply too over the top, even for a "to get along go along" freak like Watts.

In his NRA ad, Watts informs us, as have so many Republicans stuck in the pocket of the NRA, that "the second amendment is very dear … that all Americans have the right to bear arms for whatever lawful purpose they choose…."

Oh really? So, congressman Watts, the time has come when we can now start making and living by our own set of laws, the U. S. Constitution be damned?

Watts is quoted in his ad as saying, "I grew up with a healthy respect for guns as a way of life. As American as mom, football and apple pie."

Right. That's the problem, Congressman. Too many kids are also growing up with "guns as a way of life." Sadly, very, very few of them possess "a healthy respect for guns", as it appears you do – an absolutely demented mindset, in and of itself.

Which is why the killing goes on and on and on …

Speaking of politicians, there have been lame attempts at sympathy toward victims by Republicans across the land. The Colorado State legislature, after the Columbine killings suspended a gun control vote out of respect for the victims. Hell, if they had any real nuts, not to mention true conviction in their souls for what they say they believe in, they'd have had that vote; only they new they couldn't have won, the gutless snakes. I say, let them take the vote, lose the vote, then let the pro-gunners lose where it really counts – at the polls.

* * *

What is the answer? As always the simplest answer is the right one. NO MORE GUNS. Right. As in no more guns for public consumption, period.

A God-given right? My ass – no god would be so stupid.

A Second Amendment right? Obviously not, considering the true language of the Amendment.

In my book, The General's New Clothes and Other Myths From Campaign '96, I actually hypothesized that maybe, just maybe, we weren't fit to govern ourselves, as it were, and that the idea of a representative government, though a noble idea, was a failed one, and therefore, a bad one.

Maybe.

But there is no "maybe" with guns. We have time and again demonstrated that as a society, we are simply unfit for gun ownership. Not just kids; adults, too. Hell, adults, especially. Because it's adults that teach kids that guns are good. It's adults that neglect their kids, an act which leads kids – often because of lack of discipline in the home – to do what they've done in all types of communities these past few years. It's adults that stockpile weapons illegally (see David Koresh, Montana Freemen.) It's adults that hide behind their own twisted, distorted, maligned view of the Second Amendment.

Except for use by law enforcement bodies and federally-sanctioned military….NO MORE GUNS. NONE. EVER. AT ALL.

Gun manufacturers? Government contracts only. Sorry, there are too many dead.

Gun collectors? Go buy stamps. Sorry, there are too many dead.

Hunters? Go buy a bow and arrow, and turn hunting into a real sport. Sorry, there are just too many dead.

Naturally, the gun supporters (think about that phrase for a minute - "guns supporters") will view this proposition as insane. Right – about as insane as the idea that guns don't kill.

Those who agree with me will view this as utopia. And of course, it will never come to pass for two simple reasons: politics and money. So let me throw an idea out there that involves money and politics so that everyone on both sides of the fence can understand.

The time has come to install metal detectors in rural and suburban public schools, an inconvenience that urban schools have put up with for years now. And how do we pay for this? "We" don't. Gun owners do. By way of a law that would require any individual who purchases and/or registers a gun of any type to pay a tax designated specifically for the installation of metal detectors in the public schools and universities across the country.

Now there is a challenge for any member of congress who may have the guts and the conviction. The guts of Rep. Bill Clay, in fact – one of the first U.S. Representatives to actually say what needed to be said on this sick issue of guns. Could it be the soon-departing Clay's grand finale? We can only hope so.

JFK, Jr. Upholds the Family Tradition

"It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they made…."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Call it bad karma or simply bad judgement. Either might answer the question that lies in the wake of the plane crash that claimed the life of John Kennedy, Jr., his wife and her sister - "Why?"

Why, indeed, did another tragedy befell this American family which, as President Clinton said yesterday, has given so much, yet, endured so much, too.

Amidst the spooky speculation that the Kennedys are "cursed" came an explanation which, for me, seemed to cut through all of that.

"They're reckless people; always have been and always will be, 'cause they think they can do anything they want."

That wasn't some bitter old-school Republican who said that. It wasn’t some new-age journalist with no reasons whatsoever to claim the Kennedys as friends. And it wasn't one of the millions of Americans whose infatuation with all things Kennedy borders on the unhealthy. This lone voice of reason had come simply from a single radio listener somewhere in the Midwest who had somehow figured it out a long time ago.

This is not to diminish or demonize the memory of John Jr. by any means. He was, as a person – as a mere human being – able to raise himself above that lousy bunch on his father's side he was forced to call "relatives." It's often been said that John Jr. inherited his mother's looks and his father's smarts (or lack thereof.) But another aspect of the Kennedy side that missed John Jr. was the out-and-out ruthless mindset possessed by the Kennedy clan. And they are a clan. It's their way or the highway, and anyone who treads in their path be damned. They have always been, in their own minds, above the law and in that respect, they are true villains in society, much in the way that Tom and Daisy Buchanan were the win-at-all-cost villains in The Great Gatsby.

It's been almost 75 years since Scott Fitzgerald gave us these two literary heathens - some three and a half decades before the election of John F. Kennedy - and still we haven't learned from the lesson Fitzgerald tried to teach us.

A prominent historian and Kennedy groupie attempted, via a New York Times editorial, to excuse the family's hi-jinks as an antidote for "useless boredom." But there's a big difference between “useless boredom” and “bad judgment.” And much like the string of his relatives who have made bad decisions, John Kennedy, Jr. made a bad decision. He was reckless and careless and confused; a victim of the hubris and subsequent bad judgment which has been inherently Kennedyesque for half a century. Which is bad enough; but worse when your own bad judgement is responsible for other victims, too. Just ask the family of Mary Jo Kopechne.

Speaking of Chappaquiddick, did anyone else find it strange that the disappearance of John Jr.'s plane took place 30 years to the day (the third Friday of July) that his Uncle Ted drove a car over a bridge near Martha's Vineyard, crawled out and swam to safety, left Mary Jo Kopechne to die, then decided to tell the police about it some nine hours later?

Careless and reckless - the stuff that Kennedys are made of.

For those who understand and trust in the strange powers of karma, it doesn't take much to recognize that these people have taken a whole lot more than they have given, and that from time to time, they must pay the piper.

The sentiment I will concede is that, if nothing else, this family has demonstrated amazing resiliency and I salute them for it. Though given their history of decision-making, they haven't given themselves much choice.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby