(no subject)

[bzarcher]

Hunter S. Thompson is dead. He shot himself on my Birthday.



I know a lot of people have been talking about the possibility that he had some form of terminal illness, and chose to go out standing. It's certainly possible.

I have another theory, though. Because I think he was enough of a fighter that JUST cancer or Parkinson's, he would have fought as hard as he could. I think there was something more on the Duke's brow.

Hunter believed in America. It's in his columns. In his books. In his correspondance, public and private. Not the system, or the government, but in the spirit of the country itself. A land where people could find the freedom they needed, and grab the rest from there.

And America betrayed him.

Look back a few months. Hunter had been so caught up in the election-frenzy that he wrote a column for Rolling Stone explaining why he would have voted for that lying, cheating, bastard Richard Millhouse Nixon rather than put Bush back in office. He stood with a lot of people screaming at the top of their lungs about the fact that personal liberties were being curtailed, and that we were no safer than we'd been on 9/10/01.

And then he watched the election.

Hunter had reached out to the freaks, the quiet ones, the raging, ragged masses. He tried to put forward every warning flag he had. And he watched that 51% majority vote against everything he'd tried to tell them, not because of policy or politic (which I think he would have still been angry at, but would have understood), but for "moral issues."

Hunter really dropped off the radar after the election. I suspect the psychic shock of "moral issues" was like one too many hits to the prize fighter's jaw. Blow after blow, after blow.

I think he saw where the world was going, added the illness (if illness there was), and decided it was time to go. He was a professional, and he wasn't going out hooked to tubes in a bed.

I am a Warrior, and the time had come to Rumble. Many things have happened since last week -- many weird things, radical things, Savage 180-degree swings between totally opposite poles like Joy and Fear, Wild passions and violent rages, sudden Love and sudden hate. ... I have known them all, and I fear I have come to like them too much. I am an Addictive Personality, they say, a natural slave to passion -- and many Doctors have warned me against it. I am a High-risk Patient.

God save you, Hunter. Keep a beer cold for us up there.

Comments

[ed-dirt.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday. Seriously.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[spoonybardol.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine absolutely loves Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and has always tried to get me to read it. So far I haven't, perhaps now I will.

Happy birthday, all the same.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

It's not a bad book if you can wrap around it.

If you're thinking of something a little more straightforward, his personal correspondence from 1930-2002 was collected in a series of books called "Diary of a Southern Gentleman" (3 volumes). It's interesting stuff.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Whoops. Screwed up the title. It's The Proud Highway: The Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman. I've got volume 2, which is letters from 1959-74. Need to go get the rest at some point.

I cracked a knuckle and took a long, hard hit.

[aberrantangels]

I suspect the psychic shock of "moral issues" was like one too many hits to the prize fighter's jaw. Blow after blow, after blow.

I think he saw where the world was going, added the illness (if illness there was), and decided it was time to go.

I was going to write a post saying this, but you beat me to it. Thanks.

There was an illness, I think, but it was purely a sickness of the soul. He saw America marching off a cliff, and chose not to be dragged along with it.

"The scumbag turkeys with fire in their eyes and Zippo lighters in their hands have taken over. Whatever that means."
— "Fear and Loathing among the Sheep", an HST parody from the Princeton Tiger c. 1971 (the title of this comment is the last sentence of that piece)

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Believe me, I wish I hadn't written it. But the minute I saw the headlines, I needed to.

Re: I cracked a knuckle and took a long, hard hit.

[ardaniel]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/docbrite/2005/02/21/ tends to suggest that a "sickness of the soul" looks remarkably like a neuromuscular or other terminal condition...

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Does look that way. I can understand why he chose to go out on his own terms, if that's the case.

We'll see what his family is willing to release.

Re: I cracked a knuckle and took a long, hard hit.

[aberrantangels]

Ironically enough, I saw that link elsewhere on my f'list sometime after posting my comment. *shrug, sigh* Yeah, that was probably the main cause. But my mental image of HST is such that it synergizes with the psychic damage of the continuing adsinistration, either in the sense of "I'm not strong enough to keep up the Good fight" or "Better to die now than to decline along with my Nation".