The last time I took in one of those shabby little traveling carnivals that prowl the nation’s strip malls and fairgrounds was back in the Nixon years, when Hunter S. Thompson and I were both spending a lot of time, arguably too much of it, completely out of our minds.
Hunter was, of course, a pro, and getting good copy out of his trips, especially that long one spent covering the 1972 presidential campaign for Rolling Stone that turned into “Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.”
Me? I was strictly amateur hour, and as two hits of mescaline sent me reeling around that dime-store Disneyland across from the old Rustic Hills Mall in Bibleburg my only creation was an unbridgeable chasm between me and my horrified ex-girlfriend.
I think she was my ex-girlfriend. If she wasn’t, right at that particular moment, she soon would be.
A half-century later I have absolutely no recollection of what I saw that so enthralled me. But whatever it was, I doubt it could hold a candle to what’s happening at the White House today, Flag Day, in the Year of Our Lard 2026. Especially since I no longer indulge in the various brain erasers of my youth.
If only Hunter were still around to give us the 411 on this shit. We’ll have to settle for what he wrote way back when.
This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. … Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be president?
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