I just, once again, read Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's "Better Than Sex - Confessions of a Political Junkie". Released in 1994, the book recounts the '92 Presidential campaign during which, the Republicans dumped George Bush the elder (guessed the economy would tank and better to have it in the Democrats' laps) and the Democrats shoehorned a good ol' boy saxophone player into the White House and slapped themselves on the back for doing so (didn't guess the Republicans were bailing out to regroup for '96 and letting them eat the ugly mess for four years, after which, they would come back as fiscal saviours). Funny how it worked out. By the time Slick Willy left office, there was a huge surplus of black ink in Washington for the first time since Eisenhower. Go figure. HST's two-year-later take on all this-plus Ross Perot-is even more fun in the squint of the longer perpective after it's long gone. The campaign, the administration, the legacy, and the surplus. If you've never read it, pick up a copy of "The Great Shark Hunt" and his view of the Watts riots, meeting Muhammed Ali, Jimmy Carter's speech hosting the Governors' Conference in Georgia, and other pieces will distill for you some of the moments of the day down to great clarity.
That was Hunter S. Thompson. Don't let the blurbs referencing "gonzo", "drug-addled" satire fool you-he was precise as a laser between the lines and left you with a more truthful rendering of a candidate's character-or lack of it-than you knew you had until it sunk in. Or until the pigeons came home to roost. We will always need someone like him. In a free-speaking, free-thinking nation, as we sometimes like to flatter ourselves that we are, a Hunter S. Thompson bravely points out to us that we're bullshitting ourselves again and again, buying into sound-bites and photo-ops praying against hope that some candidate lies to us so skillfully that we can feign being duped when the shit hits the fan. Then we can act "shocked and dismayed". Doc would never let us get away with that-at least if you had the guts to read his stuff. If you didn't then you deserve what you get. It takes guts to be a free people. We have to think on our feet. Things turn queer and ugly real fast in this world and if we're not sharp, we'll have Presidents lying us into wars for the sake of their family business, despite the protestations of their own intelligence and advisors. Wait...that couldn't happen, could it? Not without our complicity. I'd love to read what Doc would have to say about what's going on in Iran on this summer solstice. We're already being blamed for the uprising of the Iranian people in public by the bastards that were put into power by the same kind of protest. The Iranian people already know they can kick a tyrant into the street-and they don't even HAVE a Hunter S. Thompson. They're not even allowed to have one. What the hell is OUR problem? I miss Doc and I always will. You will too, even if you don't know it, because there will now be a big, irritating, pearl-forming grain of truth missing in what's left of our blessed wreckage of a democracy. There's always hope and a way, but we've lost a treasured member of the coaching staff.
