On the Eve of Another Sad Anniversary - Nine Years Since the Death of Hunter S. Thompson (2/20)

The 21st century is a little more than a decade old and already we've lost too many heroes: Ted Kennedy, Pete Seeger, Walter Cronkite, Benazir Bhutto...all figures fossilized at various points in the archaeological timeline of social progress.

Tomorrow it will be 9 years since the passing of perhaps THE greatest single American patriot. I rank him up there with Washington and Lincoln. Perhaps if he'd lived at the right time, history books would speak kindly of a President Thompson. Unfortunately, he occupied that cesspool of desperation and depravity referred to as the latter half of the 20th century. A time when the powers that be were raking up all they could in the name of building a strong ownership society. 

The first decade of the 21st saw the culmination of 35-40 years worth of high stakes gimmeeism on the part of our decadent aristocracy. And if you don't think we have one, well, Jasper, I don't know what to tell you. Their decadence may not be as blatant as that of the French on the eve of their revolution; but who knows to what heights they would soar if lead-based face powder was as popular today as in the late 1700s?

Perhaps that's why Mr. Thompson had only survived through the infancy of that horrid decade able to take no more as it grew into a perverse conscious embracing of the cliche that somehow giving the rich more would improve things. It wasn't for lack of courage that humanity was failing, but energy. The end of the 60s had knocked the wind out of the last great leftist uprising, why should this one be any different?

I think he would've been glad to see two Obama presidencies, the near-universal acceptance of marriage equality, and of course what some may see as the implosion of the drug war with marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington state. However, the lack of accountability for Wall Street financiers who pulled off one of the most spectacular heists of all time, the NSA spying programs, the prospects of drones policing us by patrolling the skies, these would be sure to get the great Dr. Gonzo going...if only to remind us that there was still much to be done in the hope of preserving true liberty.

So, my friends, it is a sad evening. But somewhere on the perimeter of reality and reason looms a great reckoning. Nobody knows what form it will take; nor when it will descend upon us. But when the trumpet sounds the gates will open. And when they do, you'll want to be one of the ones welcomed inside rather than stuck trying to push camels through the eyes of needles. For them, the weight of their possessions chain them to a fiery world where they are sentenced for all eternity to a wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Over and out.