Fear and Loathing on the Campaign 

Trail ‘08

Poor Hunter dead and gone left me here to sing his song. Author Hunter S. Thompson (HST), the original
Gonzo journalist, died by his own hand in February of 2005. His most famous work was Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. It introduced the world to
the concept of Gonzo Journalism. After watching the epic Meet the Press interview of Ron Paul last
weekend Hunter has been much on my mind, reincarnate as the "filthy bearded raven croaking
nevermore."

The campaign kicks into high gear next week as we enter the New Year and it promises to be a real
animal act, the kind that Hunter would revel in. The mainstream (straight) press has been voraciously
devouring the campaign to date. Like malignant hyenas they are dieting on the bones and gristle of
failed and failing policy nostrums from all the usual suspects.

Like Christmas, political campaigns seem to start earlier and earlier in every election cycle. The quest for
the Holy Grail of Politics, the American presidential nomination from the major parties is no different.
The frenzy is already in full regale as the "leading candidates" swagger, stagger and bluff towards the
finish in November. A lot of heat and noise is being generated but little light from what Hunter called the
Straight (Linear) Press.

The Democrats, as they have since JFK was assassinated, are dragging up career political hacks with the
morals of hammerhead sharks. Edwards, Clinton and Obama are just the latest chapter in an ongoing
saga of political devolution and the near suicide of the Democratic party. They offer nothing different
than their long line of predecessors: Mondale, Biden, Bentsen, Ferraro, Kerry, Clinton I, Gore and the
ubiquitous Hube. A steady dose of statist pabulum: soak the rich, help the poor, free health care, lower
taxes, higher spending. Roast ducks will fly into the open mouths of the proletariat if they just elect
them! Habitual LRC readers and Austrians know that this thin gruel of economy-busting inflationist fiscal
policy, taxation, profligate spending, and increased regulation is the recipe for ongoing disaster. The
Democrats are truly the party of no ideas. Every one of these "thought leaders" is proffering the eerie
reincarnation of Hubert (I was a Jew once myself) Humphrey, a massive dose of prevaricating atavistic
swill.

The Dems at least are consistent, reusing, yet again, the same dog-eared and tired platform of the
ghosts of elections past. This time they are fielding, in my humble opinion, the least electable candidates
yet. This says a lot given that this is the party of LBJ, Humphrey, Mondale, Dukakis and Kerry, career
stiffs with the charisma of a wax mannequin. They would have been better off stuffing the corpse of a
Democrat that has actually won an election and hiring Disney Imagineers to bring it to life with the
desperate hope that 2-minute sound bites, and content-devoid debates, would again fool a dulled and
somnolent populace into voting the creaky and soulless party machine back to power.

What about the first Clinton election? Well in my opinion, it was a mass media–orchestrated knee-jerk,
socialist, statist, media-crafted platform of the fabric not being Ronald Reagan. Bush the Elder was
another unelectable candidate, but ran as 4 more years of Reagan which the country still wanted. The
masses always prefer economic growth and lower taxes which is something that the Democrats have
failed to learn in the last half century.
An unelectable Democratic candidate is a recurring theme. The successful ’76 campaign of Carter was of
not being the Nixon/Agnew/Rockefeller axis. Walter Winchell’s dummy could have beaten that crew.
Gerald Ford was dragged in by the party machine as Nixon’s replacement who was squeaky clean
(politically), but then the scales of justice would tip in Jack the Ripper’s favor when compared with that
Devil’s Trilogy. Ford does occupy a special place in my heart as the President who vetoed more bills than
any other in history (a record he still holds). When Blow Dried and Toothy Jimmy had to run on his own
merit he was quickly relegated to the dustbin of history. Jimi Hendrix’s leather fringe coat would have
won the election of ’76 against the malignant and rotting corpse of Nixon’s disastrous Presidency. Nixon
was, after all, the candidate who prolonged the Vietnam War an additional four years just so his mean-
spirited cadre could get another 4 years of their hand in everyone’s pockets and rent-free living at 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Conservative Nixon Presidency that featured wage and price controls continued his folly as
Cambodia and Laos got more craters than the moon (Nixon wasn’t bombing he was just relocating scrap
steel for the DoD). So much shrapnel was disgorged that magnetometers will never work there. This
sideshow brought Pol Pot to power with collapse of the Cambodian government thanks to Nixon’s
criminal non-bombing. Sadly in the seventies this was actually understandable given that most everyone
was stoned, and relieved that the Vietnam War had finally ground to a halt on the nightly news (even if
the forces of socialist darkness were slaughtering millions more as another monument to failed
European nation building that had gone completely sideways).

America has passed way beyond the Do Long Bridge! This brings focus to the mainstream Republicans:
Thompson, McCain, Huckabee, Romney and Giuliani leapfrogging one another in taking up the mantle of
Bush the Lesser. Bush II’s presidencies has been a cruel charade of Nixon/ Kissinger diplomacy with lie
and kill in center ring as the main event, second only to borrow, borrow, and borrow again. As if the 4
trillion dollars in additional debt that the Neocon-Military-Congressional-Complex has yoked Americans
with isn’t enough. These candidate golems are playing the foolish and desperate game of trying to one-
up one another in offering acts III and IV of the same debacle. Numerous LRC contributors have beaten
this platform into dust; I’ll spare readers kicking up any more here. Which brings me around to the
legacy of Hunter S. Thompson, aka Dr. Gonzo, the man may be gone but his philosophic method lives on.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail was Thompson’s finest work. During the presidential campaign
of 1972 Hunter diligently filed bi-weekly reports on what the candidates, the press corps, their
entourages and fellow travelers were doing. It was later packaged as a book replete with Eagleton
breakdowns, Muskie’s ibogaine allegations, backroom/bar-room shenanigans and Peter Sheridan as the
first evangelical neo-con to trash a hotel room. The work had brilliant allegorical references to the
deviant behavior that Hunter watched, and whole-heartedly participated in, as all concerned showed
how low they could stoop on the road to becoming Potus Imperious. While Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas proved to be a self-indulgent and empty diatribe against Thompson’s perception of American
Corporatism, it did awaken a journalist spirit to strike at the enemy ("I kicked Nixon … every chance I
could") hard and often. Dr. Gonzo’s obituary is a classic bile-filled screed against the Nixonian
monstrosity. The current campaign trail goes from a footpath to a superhighway this January. This
necessitates full Thompsonian disclosure to cut through the fog of the Linear Press. It’s hard to tell if
they (linear press) are drunk or just stupid as they witlessly perform the Ruling Party’s attempt at
suppression of dissent and the promulgation of relevant ideas. Neocons, like Nixon, do not see dissent,
they see criminals when they look beyond their many moat’s at the rebelling populace.
Nixon may be dead, but his legacy of hate and malfeasance lives on in the mainstream Ruling Party in
both of their malignant wings with Bush the Lesser as Nixon reincarnate.

Still Hunter Thompson was a pitiable soul. His multi-faceted addictions were a poor compensation to his
awareness of the deconstruction of the American dream. His prose brought this to millions, as he
wielded the adjective like a double-edged sword. As his Gonzo became integral to the process that it
was observing, it perturbed both outcome and observation such that the vision of the potentialities got
obscured. As criticism it lacked the essential ingredient of offering an alternative. As the years went on
Hunter sunk into a drug induced fog. His writing became disjointed as he was able to produce less and
less as time marched on. He could still occasionally spit out epiphanies but they were often lacking in
wisdom. As a methodology his results were nil, even if the process became hilarious (try reading
Campaign Trail in public, you’ll soon be "cackling like a hen full of amyls"). The only real benefit was
inculcating readers in the quest to seek the reality lurking beneath the increasingly crude façade. This
quest is become a conflagration igniting countless blogs, web sites, and grassroot candidacy worldwide.

In college I tracked down and read every single word he had written for publication, and savored most of
them many times. He still had his talent. Hunter and his Gonzo methodology had brought into the media
spotlight an arena that had assiduously shunned it for almost a century. Yet Hunter never saw the bigger
picture that was grounded in ironic perception, revisionist understanding of history and the Austrian
economic policy that is the logical end result of the same. The spotlight turned from his writing to his
behavior, and his message got lost for a time. His suicide was his last futile, poignant but nihilistic
vanguard of Gonzo.

Hunter died unaware that the Internet was a reincarnation of his Gonzo method. Still his Great Shark
Hunt lives on. The Internet is streaming uncensored information at light speed around the planet and is
starting to drive the media and the campaign process. It is now continuously available to billions almost
everywhere. Uncountable numbers of blogs are the vigorous implementing the HST vision of Gonzo. The
Ruling Party with its opposing wings are cranking up the volume on their one-note song: Blue State
Socialists want two clicks of the statist ratchet of ruining this country while the Red State Fascisti are
determined on ruining all others. The cacophony of their death throes will be deafening as the reigns of
power slip from their claw-like grasp.

Power, like a championship fight, must be taken from the titleholder. The Ron Paul revolution has the
ruling elite on their heels, back to the ropes, weakening with every blow. Last weekend bore witness to
something previously never thought possible in the age of media-controlled candidacy and
disinformation dissemination: a viable candidate at the national level discussing actual issues, with
thought-provoking and cogent arguments based on both a moral and a historically accurate basis.

Dr. Ron Paul represents a limited government conservative, classically liberal. The only platform of
consistent and ideological Republicanism. This is the American Dream that Hunter longed for; it is not
dead. This is what HST wanted Gonzo to be, a viral force that changes the process yet does not get
compromised from the participation. He wanted a free America, free of war, free of racism, free of
corporatism, free of fear and devoid of loathing.

The viral Ron Paul revolution is gaining momentum everywhere but in the linear press (whose audience
dwindles daily), which is still working overtime denying the viability of the candidacy. Dr. Paul is viral on
Meet the Press (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV)
Ron Paul Presidency is a head-on assault to the Ruling Party, government bureaucrats and their many
supplicants. It is where Hunter Thompson wanted to go. I urge you all to join me in supporting him in the
Republican primaries and, if he is nominated, the general election.

In closing I quote HST from his last great work:

Jun 16, 1994

MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK

DATE: MAY 1, 1994

FROM: DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON

SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON:

NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER... HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE
SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA... BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.

"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is becoming
the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."
~ REVELATION 18:2

Richard Nixon is gone now and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing – a political monster straight out
of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same
time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-
president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who
believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that I know I
will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."

Res Ipso Loquitur