The Gonzo Fist:  Symbol of Gonzo Journalism and The Freak Power Party.

Fear and Loathing in La-La Land

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) by Lewis Carroll

It always happens in the wee hours of morning.  More often than not, around 2 a.m.  The recurring but infinitely variable Hunter S. Thompson dream.  Through the looking-glass of my sleeping brain, there he was again.  That cold stare through those uniquely cool shades, toking lightly on a lit joint, rolling his eyes, and shaking his balding head with a condescending grin.  A lively dialogue ensued, and may have breezed by in just a few seconds of dream time.  Since dreams can't be recorded, the following transcript may not be 100% accurate, but then, who'll ever know?  Anyway, when there are a couple of Gonzo Journalists involved in the conversation, details are superfluous.  Facts and quotes are far less important than meaning and purpose.

JRH:  Aloha Hunter.  Great to see you again.  You're looking remarkably well for a guy who's been deceased for a dozen years.  And, by the way Amigo, don't Bogart that joint.

HST:  Bubba, I just dropped by to give you a friendly slap in the face and an encouraging kick in the balls.  Have I taught you nothing?  Gotta tell you that I just read your most recent load of crap, and have been fighting back the dry-heaves ever since.  It's never as it seems, Bubba.  Never as it seems.  "Exhuming William Borah" indeed.  An amateurish lament on the horrors of war, the insanity of gun ownership, and the fragility of human sanity at best.  But the worst part is the way you kick it off with the assumption that the media's half-baked story on the so-called Las Vegas Massacre is the fucking gospel.  I know you weren't born yesterday.  You've already outlived me by a couple years.  Use that oversized cranium my friend!  The sorry made for television CBS saga of Stephen Paddock is almost certainly 90% pure fiction.  At a minimum.

JRH:  Well then, what really happened in Vegas?

HST:  I have no idea what happened, but the whole thing stinks in more ways than a pan full of putrid paella.  Right out of the gate; 58 bodies or 59?  Why can't the media whores agree on that?  Reports of shots coming from multiple directions, and no videos of any real carnage.  Where's the fucking blood, Bubba?  And how about those 500-some-odd wounded?  Not a one has croaked and been added to the death toll.  I know what high powered ammunition can do.  A bullet was the last thing that went through my mind back in '05.  Odds are about a trillion to one that not one of those allegedly wounded victims has yet met his maker.  Then there's the photo collage of the 58 or 9 pretty but now dead people, who appear to have been lifted from Crest Toothpaste ads.  But I won't belabor this sordid subject.  Something obviously happened in Vegas, but we'll likely never find out what it was, nor who benefitted from the circus.

JRH:  Amigo, you once remarked that you don't advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but that they've always worked for you.  Since I have a personal history of drug and alcohol use, and probably suffer from at least mild insanity, I'm with you  on this most of the way.  But I never understood your fascination...no, your obsession with firearms and violence.  Do you think it's possible that all these mass-shootings, whether real of contrived, are being used as an excuse to curtail or eliminate private gun ownership?  Or?

HST:  Yeah, we never did see eye to eye on guns.  I'm equally puzzled by your disdain for them.  What the jackals who pull all the strings and stage these bloody dog and pony shows have in mind is not for the likes of you and me to understand.  What I do know is that if you ever become much more than an irritating mosquito to them, and your little articles start making waves, they'll be on you like flies on shit.  Your First Amendment rights as a journalist just might need a good dose of Second Amendment protection.  I always took the Beatles literally.  Happiness IS a warm gun, Bubba.  By the way, now who's Bogarting the joint?  Pass it over to me.

JRH:  A lot of good a lousy gun will do me if the goons catch the scent of my blood.  I'm still not buying into your theory.

HST:  What do you plan on?  Living forever?  Jeezuz Bubba, you're already an old fart.  If the so-called intelligence fuckers come banging your door down, just imagine the supreme satisfaction of taking down a couple of them before they aerate your ancient bag of bones with lead.  Like old Tom Jefferson said about the tree of liberty and blood of patriots, the scum-sucking pigs who run this criminal organization called The U.S.A. aren't going to just go away without a river of bloodshed.  After Nixon, I thought it could never get worse, but boy did I ever underestimate the idiocy of our fellow citizens.  Slick Willy Clinton, the Bushes...all more vicious than Mussolini and more stupid than Hitler, with hands so constantly bloody that after a while nobody even noticed.  Snake-oil salesman, C.I.A.-trained empty suit, and convincing orator Obama, who managed to carry on seven bloody fiascos across the globe.  And now orange President Moron has taken the theater of the absurd to all new lows.  All the while, a Pentagon full of rabid Generals, with honored West Point names, screams loudly and nonstop for more blood, bombs, fire, and carnage.

JRH:  Why can't we give peace a chance, Hunter?  Why has mankind's history been one of nonstop violence?  Am I just a starry-eyed flower child?

HST:  Open your eyes, Bubba.  You don't have anything in your house more deadly than a kitchen knife.  A weapon, whether a sword, a gun, or an atomic bomb, makes a god of its owner.  A guy who owns both a functioning set of genitals and a handgun is a supreme being.  He has the power of life and death.  Creation and destruction.  The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.  Ever think about how much a stiff cock, firing a million round barrage of sperm at its target resembles an automatic rifle?  And as one of these gods who's both created and destroyed life, I can assure you that the sheer fucking joy involved in exterminating a foe is equal to the ecstasy of sowing seeds of creation.  The universe is an ongoing story of creation and destruction.  Get used to it.

JRH:  I don't care what you say, Amigo.  I've never owned or fired a gun, and never intend to do so.  I can't even begin to understand how anyone could find joy in destruction, excitement in death.

HST:  You understand much more than you'll admit, you fossilized hippie.

JRH:  What do you mean?

HST:  Don't forget; I don't exist.  I'm dead as a doornail, and this conversation is really a monologue inside your mind.  Deep down, you get it, Bubba.  All men get it.  We're hell bent on destruction, and only a miracle will save us from extinction.  Just look at the moron you elected to have his finger on the doomsday button.  And even if you find a way to get rid of him, we've all got that basic flaw.  His replacement will be no better.  The flaw that will be our undoing.  We like to see things blow up.  We love the sight, sound, and reverberation of the blast.  We yearn for the death of others.  We all secretly thirst for our own passing.

JRH:  Can we talk about the weather now?