It was not quite 4:30, and I was not quite up.
I was awake, rolled up in the blankets like a strip of bacon in a breakfast burrito. But I was in no rush to get unwrapped, gnawed on, and shat out by Election Day 2024.
Like Mike’s bankruptcy in “The Sun Also Rises,” it has finally arrived: “Gradually and then suddenly.”
Don’t worry. I haven’t been reading Ernest Hemingway in the run-up to The Big Show. No, I’ve been wallowing in bits of this and that from Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.
The Good Doktor wrote madly about The Edge, until he finally stepped over it. Nineteen years later, dead by suicide, cremated, and shot from a cannon by Johnny Depp, he still has more class — albeit in a certain Hell’s Angels style — and gave more service to his country than many a president.
Writing about the Hell’s Angels in his book of the same name, HST described people like the ones Herself recently saw herding flamboyantly Trump-flagged pickups up and down Tramway, horns honking:
“They are out of the ball game and they know it, (so) they spitefully proclaim exactly where they stand … Instead of losing quietly, one by one, they have banded together with a mindless kind of loyalty and moved outside the (establishment) for good or ill. (That) gives them a power and a purpose that nothing else seems to offer.”
He may have been a bit premature with the second volume of his “Gonzo Papers,” titled “Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80s.” If he had kicked his dope-soaked alter ego Raoul Duke to the curb and survived to see this generation of swine — HST would be 87 today — he might have looked back on the ’80s with a certain fondness, even longing.
Describing the difference between the ’60s and the ’80s, between the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals, he wrote:
The criminals in Watergate knew they were guilty and so did everybody else; and when the dust cleared the crooked president was gone and so were all the others. They were criminals and they had the same contempt for the whole concept of democracy that these cheap punks have been strutting every day. …”
Don’t you wonder what he’d have had to say about the 45th president — impeached twice, beaten in his bid for re-election, tried to reverse the defeat with violence and chicanery, obviously insane, declining hourly — and still within a whisker of winning a second term, going two for three? I know I do.
HST mentioned that guy only in passing, as far as I can recall. But he took note of Joe Biden’s first major presidential-election meltdown over a plagiarism scandal at law school in the ’60s. The candidate who hopes to succeed Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, had won her first election — as San Francisco district attorney — just three years before HST died in 2005.
So, yeah. HST left the party too early for a change, and more’s the pity. He wasn’t always right, and sometimes wasn’t even readable. But when he was on his game the Good Doktor could walk with the King. Or savage him. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be reading right now as we all tiptoe toward The Edge once again.
Here he is again, quoting John Keats instead of his personal fave, the Book of Revelation:
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Selah.
• Late update: Seems Charlie Pierce had HST on the brain today too.
Mad Blog Media 
Just got back from doing our Civic Duty. I think I’ve hit the ballot box every time it has been open since I turned 18, which is when the 26th A gave us teeny boppers the vote. That was a pretty inglorious start. I think I was one of two or three people who voted for George McGovern, who lost 49 states. ’84 was not much better. But in ’76, Jimmy Carter gave a speech at the U of Rochester that I went to. We got him elected. And then there was October Surprise. Sheesh.
Here in The People’s Republic, all of the local elections were uncontested. Fuck, I left those blank. These uncontested elections give us bozos like our current District Attorney, who let the folks who destroyed the obelisk off with a wink, nod, and a promise to write a blue book about how they will make it up to the community. We really need competitive elections to even give us a chance to do better. The present GOP not withstanding. Jeebus, if a Republican Party can’t even put up an old fashioned District Attorney that actually prosecutes cases, they might as well go fuck themselves.
I’ve no doubt that as George Carlin alluded, my vote will make as much difference as a fart on a desert island with a high wind blowing. But I’ll do it anyway. Vote, that is…..
I was with you there during McGovern-Nixon, my brutha. What a vicious beating that was. “Welcome to electoral politics, you hippie scum.” And then they wondered why we wanted to blow shit up.
Back in B-burg/El Pendejo County the Donks were the ones who didn’t field candidates in local elections. Seriously lame. You can’t win if you don’t play. We voted anyway.
I have always voted anyway. There are enough things to vote on besides the main ticket, in this case, Harris v The Criminal. We walked over to the grade school and voted. A bunch of bond issues, judicial retention elections, and amendments as well as the U.S. Senate and C.D. 3.
I actually get along pretty well with our state house representative and not so well with our state senator. Our state senator reminds me of those faculty lounge liberals that Paul Begala belittled on that Bill Maher Show. I grew up in a UAW house, felt The Fear during long strikes and layoffs, and always looked a little askance at white collar folks (like myself) so tend to be a working class liberal. Probably why former Hawaii governor Ben Cayetano and I got to be friends in the middle of the faculty strike.
I think a low vote count for uncontested elections should send a message. But it probably won’t.
Ah, the old daze. 1984 was another blowout with Mondale taking a beating. A bunch of us grad students from the Geology Dept were drinking heavily, eating pizza, swearing, and throwing dirty socks at the TV as the returns came in. I never shoulda set foot in my car afterwards but fortunately got home in one piece and without needing to call a bail bondsman or collision shop. Nearly drove into Long Island Sound on one curve in the road that I noticed a little late.
My liberal friends here ( I still have a few) are all convinced I would vote for Mr. T because of Kamala’s stance on guns. Little do they admit I am not a single issue voter. It was actually easy to fill in the Donk blank on that one. Fuckin’ Trump/Vance should be a court docket, not an election choice.
But let’s see what the rest of the proles do today. Unfortunately, I just did a laundry so there are not too many dirty socks. Hope I don’t need them.
Speaking of politics, opinions, and socks (in this case, to the funnybone), Pasatiempo has a story about the legendary editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant, a resident of The City Different.
I got to meet Oliphant in B-burg, where the Fine Arts Center was hosting an exhibit of his paintings back in the Seventies. I was a daily reporter who dreamed of being a full-time cartoonist and in between interview questions I sought professional tips.
He was very generous with his time and advice, a real gent, and I have an extensive collection of his cartoons — I see eight books as I glance at the office bookshelf. There may be more.
Like me, Oliphant no longer draws. But in his case, it’s not the spirit that’s weak, it’s his eyes. What a pity. He should be flogging them still.
I have voted Since ’72 when I turned 18 and got the vote and a high lottery number. I didn’t worry about this election till today, now I am scared witless or something like it. I hope that people like myself who have kept their heads down and wits about them in this sh&t show of an election will vote for the sane candidate. With no poll or pol to guide them, the results will show that the founding fathers were correct or otherwise we are well and truly screwed. The system has been self-correcting for 2p0 + years, let us hope it works again. When Bernie Sanders, Liz, and Dick Cheney see the same light it is not the apocalypse but there is something in the air that is disturbing.
Yeah, read that. Had no idea he lived on Acequia Madre. Lovely little road, way beyond our reach. I bike through there from time to time.
All I can say is “shit”