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February 21, 2005
R.I.P. Hunter S. Thompson

You will know more about him than I do.

UPDATE: Billmon sure does and yes it´s Frisco, a place I love.

For the dumb ones like me, Fran pointed to an SFGate article:
HUNTER S. THOMPSON: 1937-2005

But maybe he isn´t dead at all. Giblet says (hat tip Kate):

Giblets saw the Good Doctor with his own two eyes just a few hours ago, heading north in the White Whale. He said he was headed up to heaven to shoot God. "The great bastard’s in season and it’s long overdue," the Godfather of Gonzo said as he dusted off his elephant gun. "I have full reason to believe they will award me both the head and the tail. Expect me back by the apocalypse."

Posted by b on February 21, 2005 at 15:25 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Put another way: The only “end” justified by the “means” of capital accumulation is material depletion, death.
Thanks, rgiap. I feel refreshed.

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 26 2005 19:51 utc | 101

slothrop
remember marcuse was writing in the middle of armed warfare or as bill ayers called it ‘armed propoganda’ – marcuse was reacting to that – & in these armed groups who had taken lin piao at his word about the field & the city – decided they were the masses. marcuse was at once responding to the ‘failure’ of the orthodox left & the messianism of the armed groups. each of which had their own singular histories : the red brigades, the provisional ira, red army fraktion, japanese red army, weather underground but what they had in common was a reaction to the darker policies of a johnson & a nixon & all their local representatives. they were already responding to a histroy that had been despoiled. rereading marcuse – especially one dimensional man – you sense the apocalyptic
that is strange then – that today – we are in the shadow of apocalypse – intentional or ‘accidental’ – in a way they never were – when marcuse wrote there was a balance – largely between east & west that precented the kind of initiatives taken by the bush cheney junta
i could understand – that an element of hunter s thompson despair not only with his body but the body politic – where resistance & even protest have been so marginalised that they effect so little. & the needs are great. very great
this evil war must end. a war against iran or syria must be prevented at all costs. but i too am in despair at the odds that are to be faced & the level of comprimise – especially of intellectuals – hiding behind the inertia of the mass & their own consumption
the triumph of u s imperialism was also the triumph of corruption – whether it was andreotti in italy, kohl in germany, suharto in indonesia – a whole swathe of middle eastern beneficiaries of us largesse – one after the other in a seemingly endless line of corruption
& that corruption has eaten into the soul of people. really. they are as much frightened by the terro of the u s as the corruption & incompetence of their own leaders
& it is so sordid – our contemporary history – whether you are french, british, american or syrian or any number of countries that collapse under the weight of their own endless corruption
nelson mandela is the only person of histroic importance who has risen above that & in part because he was in jail most of the time. che guevara too stayed elementally true to what he had written in ‘socialism & man’ – but his pathetic end in bolivia targeted by no less a personnage than kissinger & alienated from the local people. there are moments in other people but just moments
it is so dark – so relentlessly dark – that even if what you say is sd in mockery – it remains dark. the only way that there can be any form of light is for the people to take into their own hands – their history – as the latin american people appear to be doing at this precise moment & to which galeano hesistantly affirms; this is the only bright light at all & it is still rather fragile – for reason of their focus on the middle east – u s imperialism has not had the means to try the usual methods there. but i try to be hopeful
someone once sd here that my work was a form of bandaid – calming extremely furious people who would otherwise engage the state in one way or another – that by their very nature are political. & i say to those critics – who are mostly on tenure in some university – that i work with so much suffering, so much suffering – that if i can ease that suffering & aid in transforming it a little into a form of resistance that neither belittles or destroys thos communities – then i have done something
but in the current climate it is so hard to tell. in the middle of the pounding u s imperialist bombs in vietnam i did not feel the shadow of disaster as i feel it today

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 26 2005 20:57 utc | 102

beq–
Here’s the image of the quotation.

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Feb 26 2005 23:43 utc | 103

“in the name of reason, the advocates of planning turn power over to those who already possess it in the name of mystification. the power of reason today is the blind reason of those who currently hold power. but as power moves towards the catastophe it induces the mind which denies it with moderation to abdicate to it”
theodor adorno

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 27 2005 1:41 utc | 104

“going down
we’re going
down we’re going
down slow
going down slow”
big bill broonzy

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 27 2005 1:45 utc | 105

“the authoritarian state has to fear the opposing mass parties only as competitors. they do not threaten the principle of the authoritarian state itself.
in reality the enemy is everywhere & nowhere”
max horkheimer

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 27 2005 1:51 utc | 106

see, in adorno you can always find what you are looking for.
The further subjective reason leads us away from nature, the dimmer our need for freedom becomes.

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 27 2005 2:38 utc | 107

Thompson’s widow forgives his suicide

Posted by: Closure | Feb 27 2005 3:55 utc | 108

no, closure as american commentators are want to say in terms of the eternal narratives will only come when the criminal bush cheney junta are behind bars in the hague with their other pals in blood

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 27 2005 18:09 utc | 109

Pretty amazing thread – I’ve just come around to read it today, thanks to all (including rgiap;-) ) for all the heartfelt posts.
This whole thread, including the detour about anonymity, seems to point out to me to the fact that our times cruelly lack personal responsibility. we have destroyed the great (in their scope) institutions that created order in society – churches, communism, even feudalism or paternalism, which were by no means perfect but where there was a minimum of right and obligations on everybody, including the most powerful.
We remember elder statsmen not because they were perfect democrats, but because they cared enough to work at least in some ways for the population, to protect them and work for them with some integrity.
Today, we have fought oppression, tyranny and backroom decision making, and old institutions in the name of freedom and transparency, and we have ended up in a situation where there are no obligations, only rights. But what are the constraints on each of us to make society work? And where is the transparency?
My rights have for only limits the enforcement of the rights of others? Even supposing that the enforcement system worked well (which is obviously not quite the case, doesn’t that say that our collective morality has become totally absent – do what you want so long as you are not caught, and if caught, do it if the penalty is less than the gain from doing it? Where’s the integrity?
People don’t put limits upon themselves, they want everything, forgetting that the value of liberty is in actually making choices, not just having the options – and sticking to them. And guess what, people that make choices and stick to them seem happier than those that don’t. We have so mpuch freedom, and we have never had more unhappiness, kooks, stress, breakdown and spiritual drift than today. People cannot handle freedom on their own because they are fed the daily barrage of “me, me, me” everywhere and nobody is telling them to take a stand against that anymore.
People want freedom without integrity, responsibility, or ethics.
Well, that’s not going to happen. Instead, we end up with the worst of all worlds – people do notnrule themselves, and there are no checks on those that rule the collective institutions that remain, that strange mixture of corporation and government.

Posted by: Jérôme | Feb 27 2005 21:06 utc | 110

First, Mistah Thompson, big man, big funny. I’m currently re-reading Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. Great stuff, but even better I think if one has a taste for hallucinogens.
As for anonymity, if someone is posting bile, anonymity saves them an inbox of bile-by-return-of-post. Otherwise (as in my case), who I am off your computer screen (real name, phone number etc…) seems by the by. Call him Einstein, call him Einstien, call him Ironstein. It’s the Theory of Relativity with all the maths that rocks boats, not his home phone number, etc. Now, if the discussion is heavy political, watch out for the secret police, then codenames are, perhaps, essential rather than cowardly.
But enough about that. Responisbility. “People” don’t exist, it seems, only bunches of characters who act individually and in consort. I live in the UK and there are two mass phenomena which drive me personally crazy but, on t’other hand, I understand that I am a minority and there’s no point or need (or utility) to my screaming about the issue as others already have and will do (ad nauseam for those who don’t like their views.) Urgh, I’m confused. Here are the two social facts:
The British don’t want to be part of Europe.
The British don’t believe a third party can win an election
Unwind those any way you want, they are pervasive, un-thought-out, like slumbering elements in the collective unconscious, or sommat.
Responsibility. Individuals are working out their own ways, but if I could bring some joy and hope to the despair of life on Eugh, I live in an area where national wars are over. GRRRRRRRRRREAT! The price we pay is low-level alienation. My take is, people can no longer lose themselves in love-fests of the “We are great! They are scum!” variety, but that makes….eurgh, I’m lost. I apologise. This is what happens when I’m sober. Where were we? Ah, yes, the urge to merge leads to wars and thought-death (or blissful union, but that seems rarer…). I think “America”, by which I mean the part that voted for George Bush, lives in a land and a time where they can still circle their wagons and have a beanfeast within and shoot at all without, without doubt or self-consciousness.
That’s enough from me.
——————-
The Unknown Citizen
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisified his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology Workers found
That He was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
W.H. Auden
(I memorise these poems and type them out purely for exercise and because I’m sure a poem by W.H. Auden is worth casting one’s eyes over. But I’ve only learnt the first part of the above poem, which I don’t want to copy / paste from the web because my sense of responsibility tells me it don’t mean much if I just move it around without absorbing it, like a sponge in a vat of cream and whisky.

Posted by: ARgh | Feb 28 2005 11:03 utc | 111

The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved, HST, 1970.

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Feb 28 2005 11:26 utc | 112

@ Kate Storm: February 26, 2005 06:43 PM.
Thanks for that. Late coming but I was away from my computer this weekend. It makes a great difference to see it in his own hand. 😉

Posted by: beq | Feb 28 2005 13:44 utc | 113

As it should be:

She pushed into the kitchen and found Thompson still in the chair. He had done a remarkable job, she thought. The pistol shot did no damage to his face and there was little blood.

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 28 2005 16:13 utc | 114

My take is, people can no longer lose themselves in love-fests of the “We are great! They are scum!”
oh, how I wish, how I wish, how I earnestly wish… not here in adolescent Amurka yet, that’s for sure. here, that tired old mantra still plays to packed houses.
meaning to comment more on Jerome’s latest but no time right now. Jerome, referring you to Bill McKibben’s book Enough in which he suggests that the great tragedy of consumer capitalism is loss of the concept of self-restraint. [sudden flash on the revealing little ditty “I Want it Now” from the musical version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory]

Posted by: DeAnander | Feb 28 2005 18:01 utc | 115

merci jérôme
i have wanted to continue this meditation because all our warriors & i consider hunter s a warrior as i would edward thompson the great english marxist – they are our warriors – their very difference – their very capacity for multiplicity makes them worthy of honouring
& honouring we must in the plain light of day & in these particularlyt dark nights
people who get their kicks out of reducing the ‘reputation’ of hunter have the effect of reminding me of his humanity – of his essential human frailty
but i was thinking that of marx too when he was borrowing a bob from friederich to get through his dark night – or lenin & the solitude of zurich or of mao in the caves of yenan
they are all far from perfect – but they all placed – the world before themselves whatever way you cut it
& for that honour & attention must be paid – as too for the long & heroic struggle of a ward churchill – no matter how human he turns out to be
if this is turgid – then so be it

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 28 2005 20:06 utc | 116

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