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Let the Eulogies Begin...
Today is my 32nd Birthday. And a man little more than twice my age, who has been a profound influence on my life, has committed suicide.
Hunter S. Thompson, a writer whose debaucherous style of “gonzo journalism” I grew up relishing as a smart in-joke from a disenfranchised generation before me, was discovered with a gunshot wound(s?) to his head in his home in Aspen.
I am struggling to explain why this has made me cry so much.
Re-reading some of his greatest works, on the campaign trail leading to Nixon’s re-election, I am stupefied by how prescient he was. Even while wallowing in the dark ramifications of such a conservative fascist’s vindication, Thompson was never cognizant of how much more fucked this country would be in less than 30 years time that it would settle on George W. Bush as its leader. History will no doubt look back on this time with puzzlement as to how G.W. Bush was ever allowed near the Oval Office even with a Friends & Family tourist pass. I can only imagine that Hunter’s effacement of this was searing.
Yet I never heralded Hunter as a savior of the Left--some pioneer of the Haight-Ashbury drug scene stumbling prosaically into journalistic day job credibility. The man was a gun nut for crying out loud, someone who would sit down to interview a presidential favorite like Bill Clinton with perennial conservative pragmatic humorist P.J. O’Rourke for Rolling Stone and only inquire about his stance on the Second Amendment.
But to grow up reading how much he reviled Nixon, and only to a lesser extent doubt the contemporary Democratic dilettantes Humphrey, McCarthy, and McCaskey, can I now see the aching foresight he presented to our current administration...
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