Fear and Loathing in Hell(A Eulogy for Hunter S. Thompson)

“What kind of candy-assed trick is this?” Dick Nixon was screaming from his bleeding lungs somewhere in his special level of hell in-between the floors reserved for war criminals and purse snatchers. “Goddamn it HR, he shot himself on President's Day weekend. Ain’t nothing holy to that Commie-loving dope-fiend?” Someone from above was banging on the floor, telling Dick to keep it down.

His jowls were hanging like the sagging breasts of an aging stripper. His eyes kept shifting in the crimson dark. He was besides himself, and even he didn’t want to be that close to Tricky Dick. But this was dark sacrilege and required some kind of supernatural intervention. It was his weekend and that drug-riddled journalist who had dissed him on his own death had now defiled his very day.

Oh yes, it was still his day. No shameful resignation could take that away. Not only was he elected over that hack Hubert, but he ran the reins of government over that starry-eyed McGovern. But this was personal. Hunter S. Thompson was mocking him once again, and this time for eternity, calling him out for the cheap Oval Office whore that he really was, and taking away what was really his, earned by hook and by crook. But then he laughed and once again transformed into that death-defying hyena that ate idealism for midnight snacks.

Ah! but now the coast was clear. The last of the gonzos had passed and men like Dick Nixon were finally safe again. He could feel the blood lust rising now. The age was turning. Every one wanted in on his action now. They’re loving every minute of it. More Nams. More Iraqs. More mine. They were lining the streets like they used to in DC when protesting his war, his Cambodia, his heart of darkness. But now they wanted in. They were tearing at their hair and scratching out their eyes and foaming at the mouth.

The Doctor is dead! He laughed another octave higher shattering the mirror that never tells our history as it really is. Only one man did that more than thirty years ago and looked where it got him, his brains splattered now in Woody Creek like Kennedy in Dallas. Nixon winced, remembering again the pain of 1960. “Damn that Jack,” he muttered. Black paranoia was setting in again. “And damn this infernal fear and loathing!” He turned to bark another order to Haldeman: “We got to burn his fucking books! They’ll ruin my escape.”

Indeed. How many times can a man be robbed -- on the same street, by the same people -- before they call him a man? Bob Dylan said something much like that in a tattered old song called "Blowin' In The Wind." Read it and weep, you poor bastards -- because Dylan was yesterday, and George Bush is now.

That is a morbid observation, at best, and we are all stuck with it. The 2004 presidential election will be a matter of life or death for the whole nation. We are sick today, and we will be even sicker tomorrow if this wretched half-bright swine of a president gets re-elected in November. Take my word for it. Mahalo.