To a
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HERNANDEZ, ALVARO LUNA
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Dear Warrior Writers Fam,
Aegis Destroyer Arrives on Jeju Island
Aegis Destroyer Arrives on Jeju Island
The USS Dewey Aegis Destroyer (DDG-105) made entry into the Jeju navy base amid people's protest. Facing the three small kayaks in protest to it, a Coast Guard ship was sent to stop the kayaks. Photographer Oum Mun-hee says, in the photos, you can see crews on the ship and even firing from the ship just before its entry to the port.
According to the Yonhap News, there will be 'live-fire naval exercise' in southern waters near Jeju Island joined by the three nations of South Korea, United States and Canada. The article details the Navy's words that 'the three sides plan to hold various drills on interdiction, air defense, anti-submarine operations and ballistic missile detection, along with live-fire training.'
Read more, including photos, at http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2017/06/aegis-destroyer-arrives-on-jeju-island.html
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com (blog)
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. - Henry David Thoreau
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com (blog)
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. - Henry David Thoreau
Veterans For Peace: No More Troops in Afghanistan
Veterans For Peace: No More Troops in Afghanistan
The Trump Administration announced it has given Defense Secretary Jim Mattis the authority to determine troops levels in Afghanistan. It is widely believed that Mattis favors sending several thousand more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. Why? Perhaps to break the “stalemate” as described by the Commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, Army General John Nicholson when describing the war to the Senate Armed Services Committee. In his June 13th testimony, Secretary Mattis told the same committee, “We are not winning in Afghanistan right now.”
Veterans For Peace calls for a different direction than more war. We call on Congress to stop funding war and demand a plan for a peaceful solution. We call on the President to immediately begin withdrawal of U.S. troops and take a new direction towards diplomacy and peace. And we call on the people of the U.S. to resist war and demand policies that foster peace and prosperity at home and in Afghanistan.
It should be clear after 16 years and the death of tens of thousands of people that no one is a winner in Afghanistan. There is no clear concept of what it means to win there. In fact, it is no longer clear why the U.S. continues to keep troops in Afghanistan and now is on the brink of increasing the number of men and women in harm's way.
The U.S. has claimed to be at war in Afghanistan to deny “terrorists” training and staging areas to attack the United States and to protect the people of Afghanistan. After this long period of war, what does the U.S. have to show for its military efforts?
Since the horror of September 11, 2001, the U.S. has been on a path of war, wreaking havoc on millions of people around the globe. Because of displacement, death and maiming of loved ones by U.S. wars, animosity towards the U.S. has increased and the world has become less safe. The animosity caused by the wars has created a larger pool of people willing to fight the U.S. In 2001 al Qaeda had limited influence and ISIL did not exist. Now Al Qaeda and ISIL have affiliated groups and sympathetic supporters around the globe.
The protection of the Afghan people has been a total failure. It has been widely reported that the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan found that there were 11,418 civilian casualties (3,498 deaths and 7,920 injured) between January and December 2016, an overall increase of 3 percent. An appalling number of those casualties were children – 923 deaths, and 2,589 injured – a 24 percent increase over record-high numbers from 2015. In addition, 3,535 coalition forces have died; three of which were recently killed as a result of an insider attack fire from an Afghan soldier. We must add to these losses all the people who are physically and psychologically broken and families torn apart.The human cost is immeasurable. But there is also a dollar cost to war. The U.S. has spent over $1 trillion in this failed and depraved effort in Afghanistan. These dollars represent lost opportunities to repair U.S. infrastructure, pay for healthcare, create jobs and address a host of human needs.
It is not too late for a different direction. War was always the wrong option. Perhaps it was not clear 16 years ago. It should be clear now more than ever!
Louisiana, 1811 America’s Forgotten Slave Insurrection
Workers Vanguard No. 1113
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2 June 2017
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Louisiana, 1811
America’s Forgotten Slave Insurrection
The monuments and statues we would build are those that honor fighters for liberation, not least the men and women who fought to destroy the slavocracy: the abolitionists; the Civil War soldiers, including 200,000 black troops, who crushed the Confederacy; those who rose up against the slave order. Among the latter are the hundreds who fought for their freedom in the January 1811 uprising in Louisiana—the largest, though largely unknown, slave insurrection in U.S. history.
From 8 to 10 January, 1811, an army of 500 slaves spread terror against the slaveowners on the German Coast of Louisiana. They killed two slave masters, burned plantations and marched toward New Orleans armed with axes, sugarcane knives and a few guns. Chanting “Freedom or Death,” they aimed to establish a black republic. The suppression of this insurrection was instrumental in consolidating Louisiana’s French planters into the U.S., including recent émigrés from France’s former colony of Saint-Domingue. It extended the reach and power of the slavocracy, which would finally be shattered by the Civil War.
The foundation for the 1811 uprising was the slave revolt in Saint-Domingue (Haiti), which began in 1791 and ended with the withdrawal of French troops in 1803 and the establishment of a black republic on 1 January 1804. The Haitian Revolution both inspired the insurrectionists, among them transplants from Saint-Domingue, and haunted the slave masters who feared its replication on North American soil.
In turn, the Haitian Revolution was inspired by the French Revolution. Under the banner “liberty, equality, fraternity” the masses rose up beginning in 1789, destroying the entrenched aristocratic and feudal order. In 1792, the French Republic was proclaimed, followed shortly by the execution of King Louis XVI in January 1793. However, France’s new bourgeois rulers brutally fought to maintain slavery in Haiti, which at the time of the 1791 uprising accounted for 60 percent of France’s export trade. In the face of continuing black revolt, and with England threatening to attack France’s most lucrative colony, the radical Jacobin regime in Paris, which came to power in 1793, abolished slavery in Saint-Domingue in 1794. Five years later, Napoleon Bonaparte took power in a coup, reinstated slavery and in January 1802 dispatched an armada and 20,000 French troops to reconquer the colony—only to be driven out the following year.
With the loss of his Saint-Domingue cash cow, Napoleon saw little use for his other major New World colony, the Louisiana Territory. In 1803, he sold it for a song to the U.S., an acquisition that nearly doubled U.S. territory. By 1810, slaves made up more than 75 percent of the total population of the region—a greater proportion than any other slave society in North America. The brutal conditions they faced working Louisiana’s sugarcane fields were matched by the huge profits their labor generated.
The architect of the 1811 rebellion was Charles Deslondes, whose position as a trusted slave driver on the plantation of Manuel Andry enabled him to move through the sugar fields without suspicion. Deslondes spread word through small cells scattered up and down the coast. On the night of January 8, the uprising began with an incursion on the mansion of Deslondes’ master. After wounding Andry and killing his son Gilbert, the group armed themselves with muskets and ammunition from the basement. They then started a two-day march down River Road toward New Orleans, which was 40 miles away. Groups of slaves joined them as they passed other plantations. Later, maroons (escaped slaves) left the security of their wooded retreats to fight alongside the rebel army. Terrified white residents either fled to New Orleans or hid out in the backwoods near their plantations.
Fearing that the city’s majority black population (including many free blacks) would join the rebellion, Louisiana governor William Claiborne ordered New Orleans sealed and a 6 p.m. curfew for black people. General Wade Hampton, a South Carolina slaveowner, mobilized two companies of volunteer militia, 30 regular troops and a detachment of 40 seamen who halted the slaves’ advance 15 miles from the city. A second militia of 80 planters formed by Andry unwittingly flanked the slave army on the morning of January 10. Though outnumbering their pursuers, the slaves were outgunned. After quickly running out of ammunition, they were brutally routed. Sixty-six fighters were killed and many others captured. Shortly after, the planter militias, supported by the U.S. military, captured Deslondes, chopped off his hands, broke his thighs, shot him dead and then roasted his body on a pile of straw.
Over the next few weeks, more than 100 slaves were executed. Their heads were put on poles and their dismembered corpses were publicly displayed as a warning to others. The federal troops called in to suppress the uprising and secure New Orleans were drawn from those defending the bogus Republic of West Florida that U.S. settlers seized from Spain in 1810, foreshadowing the grab of Texas from Mexico two decades later. Extending from Baton Rouge on the southwest to Natchez on the northwest and Mobile on the east, this “republic” gave the U.S. control over the Mississippi River and eliminated a haven for escaped slaves and native tribes, while securing commerce on the river.
Louisiana’s French planters, who had been contemptuous of the Anglo government in D.C. and indifferent to West Florida’s annexation, now became advocates of a strong U.S. military presence. One year after the uprising, Louisiana was admitted as a slave state, as other regions of the Louisiana Territory were later—Missouri (1821) and Arkansas (1836). The Mississippi Territory, which had been ceded by Spain in 1797, was divided into Mississippi and Alabama; they were admitted as slave states in 1817 and 1819. Between 1820 and 1860, the population of the Deep South slave states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama grew over 600 percent to almost 2.5 million. New Orleans became America’s second-largest port—and largest slave market. This confluence of events, of which the suppression of the Louisiana rebellion played no small part, consolidated the bulk of what would become the Confederacy.
We hail Charles Deslondes and his comrades. We seek to honor their memory by finishing the Civil War through a working-class socialist revolution.
A View From The International Left- British Trotskyists Say: No Vote to the Labour Party! Down With the EU!
Workers Vanguard No. 1113
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2 June 2017
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British Trotskyists Say:
No Vote to the Labour Party!
Down With the EU!
The following two statements were issued as a leaflet by the Spartacist League/Britain, section of the International Communist League, on May 27.
* * *
After years of attacks from successive Blairite [right-wing Labour] and Tory governments, Jeremy Corbyn’s promises to defend the unions; to increase spending for public housing, the NHS [National Health Service] and education; and to renationalise rail, water and the Royal Mail raised the hopes of working people and the oppressed across Britain and provided a welcome challenge to the Blairites. Corbyn’s support has been bolstered by the Tories’ vicious plans to increase the squeeze on working people—including Theresa May’s “dementia tax” scheme to force families to sell the homes of deceased relatives to pay for their home healthcare. But last year, Corbyn sided with the City of London and betrayed his working-class base by campaigning to remain in the EU [European Union]. Now Corbyn is continuing this betrayal by campaigning for Britain to remain in the European single market. The central issue in the 8 June general election is Brexit—and Labour’s position on the EU is contrary to the interests of the working class.
The EU is a reactionary capitalist bloc, originating as the economic adjunct to NATO in the anti-Soviet Cold War. From its inception, the EU has been a weapon to increase the exploitation of workers across Europe. The European imperialist powers—centrally Germany, Britain and France—have used the EU and the German-controlled euro as a means to plunder dependent European countries such as Ireland, Portugal and, most starkly, Greece. The single market which Corbyn embraces lies at the very heart of the capitalist EU project of privatisation and austerity.
Corbyn’s betrayal on the EU pushed workers towards the racist UKIP and the Tories. Now the Labour Party is playing into the resulting chauvinist frenzy, pledging to ban immigrants from recourse to public funds. Immigrants, including many from Eastern Europe, as well as black and Asian minorities constitute a key part of the British working class, often confined to the hardest, dirtiest and lowest-paid jobs. The capitalists use threats of deportation and attacks on the rights of immigrants and minorities to drive down wages and working conditions for the working class as a whole. The workers movement must champion defence of these oppressed layers of society, including organising immigrant workers into the unions. No deportations! Full citizenship rights for all immigrants!
In Scotland, a historic Labour stronghold, Labour is on life support after campaigning together with the Tories against Scottish independence in 2014. As party leader, Corbyn has upheld Labour’s long tradition of loyalty to the reactionary “United Kingdom,” opposing another referendum on Scottish independence and pushing Scottish workers into the arms of the bourgeois SNP [Scottish National Party]. Likewise, Corbyn’s remain campaign meant that Labour failed to provide a working-class pole for the nearly 40 per cent of Scots who voted leave. Advancing the fighting unity of the working class requires upholding the basic democratic right of the Scottish people to determine whether to stay in Britain or to form an independent state, including by holding a new referendum whenever they see fit.
Corbyn’s 2015 leadership campaign and his resounding re-election one year later posed the possibility of driving the Blairites, who have been seeking to transform Labour into an outright capitalist party, out of the Labour Party. Despite the bankruptcy of Corbyn’s parliamentary reformist programme, this would have constituted a step towards the political independence of the working class from its capitalist exploiters. However, in the general election, voting for Labour will not exacerbate the divisions in the Labour Party or advance the consciousness of the working class. Corbyn has blocked with the Blairites and has betrayed the interests of working people on the decisive questions of the EU and Scotland.
In attempting (vainly) to conciliate the Blairites and prove to the British bourgeois establishment that he is “fit” to lead British imperialism, Corbyn has produced an election manifesto packed so full of concessions that it was cheered as “a cornucopia of delights” by Blairite Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee. Despite Corbyn having been a longtime opponent of NATO and a past chair of the Stop the War Coalition, his manifesto now embraces NATO and Trident [nuclear missile system]. The manifesto criticises Tory cuts in military spending and calls for more cops, prison guards and border guards, attacking the Tories from the right for supposedly weakening the capitalist state’s apparatus of repression. Moreover, any moves to actually implement the manifesto’s promised nationalisations would run right up against the privatisation diktats of the EU and its single market, which Labour supports!
Corbyn’s capitulation has not dampened the enthusiasm of the reformist left for electing a Labour government. The Communist Party of Britain (CPB), the Socialist Party (SP) and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) all called for a leave vote in the EU referendum last year, but for these opportunists, Corbyn’s betrayal on the EU is no obstacle to tailing Labour. The CPB, for the first time since 1920, is not running candidates. Likewise, Dave Nellist, perennial parliamentary candidate for the SP and the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, is not standing; instead, he is working “to send Jeremy to No. 10” [Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s residence]. For its part the SWP has emblazoned “Back Corbyn—Vote Labour” across the masthead of Socialist Worker. (The SWP’s other masthead slogan—“Vote left in Scotland”—leaves the door open for support to outright bourgeois parties like the SNP and the Greens.)
These reformist outfits are all promoting the illusion that electing a Labour government could meet the needs of working people. In reality, the parliamentary system provides a democratic facade for the class dictatorship of the capitalists, who own the means of production and make their profits from the exploitation of labour. To put the productive wealth of society at the service of workers and those minorities, women and youth impoverished by capitalism requires breaking the power of the bourgeoisie. It requires proletarian revolution to sweep away the state’s repressive apparatus and establish a workers government.
The bourgeoisie has been able to get away with decades of attacks on the working class because the trade union misleaders have diverted and sold out class struggles. Corbyn supporter and notorious sell-out Len McCluskey [general secretary of Unite union] has been particularly outspoken in pushing illusions in the ballot box in order to divert workers away from fighting in their own interests. History shows that improvements in the lives of working people and the oppressed are won through hard-fought class and other social struggle, not by relying on Parliament. The task of rebuilding the fighting strength of the workers movement is tied to forging a new, class-struggle leadership of the unions as part of the struggle to build a revolutionary workers party.
The Spartacist League/Britain seeks to combat illusions in Labourite reformism in order to win the most conscious workers, minorities and youth to build a multiethnic workers party devoted to rooting out the system of capitalist exploitation. The model for such a party was provided by Lenin’s Bolsheviks, who led the multinational working class of Russia to power 100 years ago. Following in their footsteps, we are devoted to the expropriation of the bourgeoisie around the world, to lay the basis for an egalitarian society of abundance based on an international, planned economy. For a voluntary federation of workers republics in the British Isles! For a Socialist United States of Europe!
On Manchester Bombing
The hideous 22 May suicide-bombing in Manchester that killed 22 people and injured dozens more targeted innocent concert-goers including teenage girls and children. The bomb appears to have been detonated by an Islamist youth of Libyan descent. This points once again to the poisonous fruits of British and U.S. mass murder in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, where horrors like the Manchester bombing are a daily occurrence. In indiscriminately butchering children, the perpetrator of this atrocity has displayed the same mentality as the imperialists: they identify the working class and the whole population with the policies of the ruling-class oppressors.
The day after the bombing, Prime Minister Theresa May activated “Operation Temperer,” a plan for deploying up to 5,000 troops on the streets of Britain to augment the police. This deadly force will in the first instance target the Muslim population, who time and again bear the brunt of the state’s “anti-terror operations.” Jeremy Corbyn is under attack for criticising British intervention in the Near East. Yet he joins the “anti-terror” chorus in demanding more cops on the streets. Ominously, Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced an intended “uplift” in the witch-hunting Prevent programme, which directs public sector workers such as teachers to spy on Muslims to spot “radicalisation.” Under Labour and Tories alike, the purpose of the British rulers’ “war on terror” has been to massively augment the state’s machinery for repression, aimed ultimately at the working class.
As always, the capitalists’ media flunkeys are on the job, whipping up racism against Muslims. Hours after the Manchester bombing, a mosque in Oldham was subjected to an arson attack. The Manchester bombing was a heinous crime, but the fact remains that the biggest terrorists on earth are the imperialists. British, French and U.S. bombing in 2011 led to the ouster and assassination of Muammar el-Qaddafi, leaving Libya a chaotic hellhole and paving the way for ISIS to strengthen its forces in that country. The imperialists support Islamic fundamentalists when it suits their purposes, most notably in the counterrevolutionary war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, but also more recently in Syria, Libya and elsewhere in the Near East. Down with the anti-Muslim “war on terror”! Down with “Operation Temperer”! British, U.S. and all imperialist forces out of the Near East!
The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love-From The Archives Of The “American Left History” Blog-Hunter Thompson-“Doctor Gonzo” Where Are You Now When We Need You?
The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love-From The Archives Of The “American Left History” Blog-Hunter Thompson-“Doctor Gonzo” Where Are You Now When We Need You?
Markin comment:
One of the beautiful things about commentary on American bourgeois presidential electoral politics is that with a change of name here, maybe these days an added gender or two, maybe a longer list of contenders in one contest year than another, you can “cut and paste” from 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 ( I’m ready) and be right on point. The following piece from the archives is a case in point. But the real beauty, as stated in the entry, is that I don’t have to actually vote for any of them. That, as the commercial says, is priceless.
********
In my old age I am getting a little weak-kneed about having to wade through the basically vacuous blather coming out of the Democratic and Republican presidential nominating processes. While we are in a little period of ‘doldrums’ before the deluge I keep falling back to the work of Hunter Thompson on earlier presidential campaigns to try to keep a little sanity. Here’s a little tribune to the fallen journalist. Damn, Hunter we sure as hell could use you now. Call me collect from wherever you are. I’ll gladly accept the charges. Selah.
This commentary was originally used as part of a review of Hunter Thompson's Songs of the Doomed. Since most of the points I made in my review of that book apply here I will let that review stand in for the essential thrust of his whole body of political work. Obviously each book written by Thompson on the various presidential campaigns is formatted differently but whether Thompson was skewering the Nixon era, the Reagan era, the Clinton era or the Bush eras the song is the same. And it was not (and is not) pretty.
Generally the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation has been done by thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists and other progressive thinkers. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self defense, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This was particularly true when it came from a known dope fiend, gun freak and all-around lifestyle addict like the late, lamented Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Although he was far from any thought of a socialist solution and would reject such a designation we could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us- but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.
I am not sure whether at the end of the day Hunter Thompson saw himself or wanted to been seen as a voice, or the voice, of his generation but he would not be an unworthy candidate. In any case, his was not the voice of the generation of 1968 being just enough older to have been formed by the earlier, less forgiving milieu of the 1950's. His earlier writings show his struggle to break out of formalistic journalism. Nevertheless, only a few, and with time it seems fewer in each generation, allow themselves to search for some kind of truth even if they cannot go the whole distance. This compilation under review is a hodgepodge of articles over the best part of Thompson's career. As with all journalists, as indeed with all writers especially those who are writing under the gun and for mass circulation media these works show an uneven quality. However the total effect is to blast old bourgeois society almost to its foundations. Others will have to push on further.
One should note that `gonzo' journalism is quite compatible with socialist materialism. That is, the writer is not precluded from interpreting the events described within himself/herself as an actor in the story. The worst swindle in journalism, fostered by the formal journalism schools, as well as in other disciplines like history and political science is that somehow one must be `objective'. Reality is better served if the writer puts his/her analysis correctly and then gets out of the way. In his best work that was Hunter's way.
As a member of the generation of 1968 I would note that this was a period of particular importance which won Hunter his spurs as a journalist. Hunter, like many of us, cut his political teeth on one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States and all- around political chameleon. Thompson went way out of his way, and with pleasure, skewering that man when he was riding high. He was moreover just as happy to kick him when he was down, just for good measure. Nixon represented the `dark side' of the American spirit- the side that appears today as the bully boy of the world and as craven brute. Sound familiar? If for nothing else Brother Thompson deserves a place in the pantheon of journalistic heroes for this exercise in elementary hygiene. Anyone who wants to rehabilitate THAT man before history please consult Thompson's work. Hunter, I hope you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Read this book. Read all his books.
Zack James’ comment June, 2017:
You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S
Thompson, the late legendary journalist who broke the back, hell broke the
neck, legs, arms of so-called objective journalism in a drug-blazed frenzy back
in the 1970s when he “walked with the king”’ is not with us in these times. In
the times of this 50th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of
Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and
in your face research by the way) on the notorious West Coast-based Hell’s
Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s
place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place and where for a time the
Angels, Hunter in tow, were welcomed. He had been there in the high tide, when
it looked like we had the night-takers on the run and later as well when he saw
the ebb tide of the 1960s coming a year or so later although that did not stop
him from developing the quintessential “gonzo” journalism fine-tuned with
plenty of dope for which he would become famous before the end, before he took
his aging life and left Johnny Depp and company to fling his ashes over this
good green planet. He would have “dug” the exhibition, maybe smoked a joint for
old times’ sake (oh no, no that is not done in proper society) at the de Young
Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period showing
until August 20th of this year.
Better yet he would have had this Trump thug bizarre
weirdness wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with
the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one
Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was
running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like
some rabid rat. He would have gone crazy seeing all the crew deserting the
sinking U.S.S. Trump with guys like fired FBI Director Comey going to Capitol
Hill and saying out the emperor has no clothes and would not know the truth if
it grabbed him by the throat. Every day would be a feast day. But perhaps the
road to truth these days, in the days of “alternate facts” and assorted other
bullshit would have been bumpier than
in those more “civilized” times when simple burglaries and silly tape-recorders
ruled the roost. Hunter did not make the Nixon “hit list” (to his everlasting
regret for which he could hardly hold his head up in public) but these days he
surely would find himself in the top echelon. Maybe too though with these thugs
he might have found himself in some back alley bleeding from all pores. Hunter
Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for now
Markin comment:
One of the beautiful things about commentary on American bourgeois presidential electoral politics is that with a change of name here, maybe these days an added gender or two, maybe a longer list of contenders in one contest year than another, you can “cut and paste” from 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 ( I’m ready) and be right on point. The following piece from the archives is a case in point. But the real beauty, as stated in the entry, is that I don’t have to actually vote for any of them. That, as the commercial says, is priceless.
********
In my old age I am getting a little weak-kneed about having to wade through the basically vacuous blather coming out of the Democratic and Republican presidential nominating processes. While we are in a little period of ‘doldrums’ before the deluge I keep falling back to the work of Hunter Thompson on earlier presidential campaigns to try to keep a little sanity. Here’s a little tribune to the fallen journalist. Damn, Hunter we sure as hell could use you now. Call me collect from wherever you are. I’ll gladly accept the charges. Selah.
This commentary was originally used as part of a review of Hunter Thompson's Songs of the Doomed. Since most of the points I made in my review of that book apply here I will let that review stand in for the essential thrust of his whole body of political work. Obviously each book written by Thompson on the various presidential campaigns is formatted differently but whether Thompson was skewering the Nixon era, the Reagan era, the Clinton era or the Bush eras the song is the same. And it was not (and is not) pretty.
Generally the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation has been done by thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists and other progressive thinkers. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self defense, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This was particularly true when it came from a known dope fiend, gun freak and all-around lifestyle addict like the late, lamented Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Although he was far from any thought of a socialist solution and would reject such a designation we could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us- but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.
I am not sure whether at the end of the day Hunter Thompson saw himself or wanted to been seen as a voice, or the voice, of his generation but he would not be an unworthy candidate. In any case, his was not the voice of the generation of 1968 being just enough older to have been formed by the earlier, less forgiving milieu of the 1950's. His earlier writings show his struggle to break out of formalistic journalism. Nevertheless, only a few, and with time it seems fewer in each generation, allow themselves to search for some kind of truth even if they cannot go the whole distance. This compilation under review is a hodgepodge of articles over the best part of Thompson's career. As with all journalists, as indeed with all writers especially those who are writing under the gun and for mass circulation media these works show an uneven quality. However the total effect is to blast old bourgeois society almost to its foundations. Others will have to push on further.
One should note that `gonzo' journalism is quite compatible with socialist materialism. That is, the writer is not precluded from interpreting the events described within himself/herself as an actor in the story. The worst swindle in journalism, fostered by the formal journalism schools, as well as in other disciplines like history and political science is that somehow one must be `objective'. Reality is better served if the writer puts his/her analysis correctly and then gets out of the way. In his best work that was Hunter's way.
As a member of the generation of 1968 I would note that this was a period of particular importance which won Hunter his spurs as a journalist. Hunter, like many of us, cut his political teeth on one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States and all- around political chameleon. Thompson went way out of his way, and with pleasure, skewering that man when he was riding high. He was moreover just as happy to kick him when he was down, just for good measure. Nixon represented the `dark side' of the American spirit- the side that appears today as the bully boy of the world and as craven brute. Sound familiar? If for nothing else Brother Thompson deserves a place in the pantheon of journalistic heroes for this exercise in elementary hygiene. Anyone who wants to rehabilitate THAT man before history please consult Thompson's work. Hunter, I hope you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Read this book. Read all his books.
An Encore -In The Time Of Elvis' Time-One More Time Down 1950s Record Memory Lane
An Encore -In The Time Of Elvis' Time-One More Time Down 1950s Record Memory Lane
Sam Lowell, considered himself a corner boy from the time in the early 1960s when in the working-class neighborhoods of America were filled to the brim with such guys hanging out on the corners, in his case North Adamsville not far from urban Boston. Here is the progression not too atypical of corner boys with too little money and too much time on their hands which underscored the corner boy 1960s night plight (and which still plagues corner boys even though they no longer for the most part hang on corners but malls and other places where there are not any “No trespassing, police take notice” signs to harass young men still with not enough dough and too much time on their hands). If you grew up in the Acre, Sam’s growing up section of town you progressed from one place in elementary school, another in junior high school when corners and who was on what corner started to get sorted out in earnest, and high school where the corners were doled out hard as steel in high school.
Places like South Boston (an all Irish enclave then where even those who like Sam’s maternal grandparents had moved out of the enclave to an Irish neighborhood in North Adamsville were considered suspect, were looked at with jaundiced eye even by the relatives left behind), Main Street in Nashua (at the time a dying city what with the mills heading south to cheaper labor and eventually overseas and so a tough place to dream in), New Hampshire, 125th Street in high Harlem< New York City (with all the excitement of jazz and be-bop but with all the high segregation of the South except for the formality of Mister James Crow’s laws), any of a million spots on Six Mile Road in Detroit (never a place of dreams but of steady work in the golden age of the American automobile for those from Delta Mister James Crow black refugees to the Okie/Arkie white rabble coming out of the hills and dustbowls), the same on Division Street in Chi town (the beat street divide of many of Nelson Algren’s tales of drugs, urban lost-ness, and sullen back streets disappointments), the lower end of North Beach beyond where the “beats” of a few years before did their beat thing (the places where the longshoremen and waterfront workers did their heavy drinking after work and where the sailors off their Pacific ocean ships fought all- comers from the Artic to the Japan seas).
Jack Slack’s was the last port of call for the Acre crowd, for that motley collection of corner boys picked up and discarded along the way although the core of Frankie , Jack, Jimmy, Allan, Markin and Five-Fingers held throughout which had started at Doc’s Drugstore complete with sofa fountain and shiny glass penny candy-case to draw selections from after school to energize up for the real world activities of kid-dom in elementary school, Miller’s Diner for the jukebox in junior high when they were just becoming aware of girls, maybe having to dance with them, and maybe trying to figure out, the eternal trying to figure out how to approach them without them giggling back and Salducci’s Pizza Parlor in early high school before the new owners decided that unlike Tonio, the previous owner who sold out to go back to Italy from when he came as a boy they did not want colorful rough-necked boys standing one knee against the wall in front of their family friendly establishment scaring the bejesus out of the important Friday and Saturday give Mom a break family trade.
That time, those early 1960s times for some reason known only to them, was time that you had best have had corner boy comrades when you hung out on date-less, girl-less, dough-less Friday and Saturday nights to have your back if trouble brewed (that “comrade” not a word to be used then in the tail end of the height of the red scare Cold War night not if you wanted knuckle sandwiches from the unthinking patriotic guys but that does convey the sense of “having your back” critical to your place in those woe begotten streets).
That corner boy business extended through the 1960s after high school for a couple of years when in addition to being a corner boy Sam became a “flower child” along with his long mourned and lamented friend the late Peter Paul Markin heading out west on the hitchhike roads when the world turned upside down later in the decade. (Markin who met a horrible end down in sunny Mexico after the fresh breeze of the 1960s turned in on itself and he got flat-footed by the backlash ebb tide riptide and could no longer hold back his “from hunger” wanting habits held in check through summers of love and a tight tour of Vietnam and made the fatal, very fatal, mistake of trying to broker an independent drug deal and got two slugs to the back of his head for the attempt.) Sam, now a sedate grandfatherly semi-retired lawyer filled with respectability and memories had to laugh about how much he of late had been thinking about the 1950s, about not just those corner boy days but about the music that drove every corner boy, including Markin, make that perhaps most of all Markin, to distraction as they tried to eke out a sound that they could call their own. A jailbreak sound that was not something their parents would approve of at a time when titanic generational battles were foaming at the mouth.
Thinking about the 1950s the times when he came of age, came of musical age, an age very mixed up with that corner boy comradery, that hanging at Doc’s and Miller’s Diner when he started noticing girls and their charms (amid the first blush of giggles which he soon figured out was their rational response to whatever was going on inside their bodies just like guys like Sam were going through in their bodies). Those first noticings started his life-long journey of trying to figure out what made them tick, what they wanted, wanted of him, from a girl-less family making everything that much harder. Noticing that they too hung around Miller’s in order to play that fantastic jukebox which had all the latest tunes and plenty of oldies too (oldies being let’s say we are talking about 1958 then maybe 1955 hits like Eddie, My Love, Rock Around The Clock, and Bo Diddley showing that teen time, youth time anyway is measured differently from old man lawyerly time, measured in days, weeks, months at the most-years were beyond the pale) drawing away from the music on his parents’ family living room radio and their cranky old record player music.
Music in the teen households emphatically not on Miller’s jukebox or there would have been a civil war no question, a civil war avoided in his own home after his parents had bought, to insure domestic peace and tranquility if he remembered correctly, his first transistor radio down at the now long gone Radio Shack store and he could sit up in his room and dream of whatever coming of age boys dreamed about, mainly how those last year’s bothersome girls became this year’s interesting objects of discussion (by the way in that small crowded upstairs bedroom, shared with his two brothers, he found out he could discover the beauty of the “hold up to your ear” transistor radio and drown out the world of brotherly scuffings).
More than that though, more than just thinking about the old days like every old guy probably does, even guys who had not been lawyers as a professional career, guys who you see sitting on park benches, a little disheveled, maybe some crumbs in their unkempt beards, feeding the birds and half-muttering to themselves about how when FDR was around everybody stood tall, every country bent it knees in homage to America, or else, or old bag ladies rummaging through trash barrels looking for long lost lovers or their faded beauty Sam had been purchasing compilations of what are commercially called “oldies but goodies” CDs. Doing so via the user-friendly confines of the Internet, at Amazon if you need a name like today anybody, except maybe three people up in heathen Alaska or the Artic, doesn’t know that is the site to get such material these days instead of traipsing over half the East Coast trying to cadge a few examples from the dwindling oldies and used records emporia, and purchasing several record compilations of the “best of” that period from a commercial distributor (and also keeping up to date on various versions of the songs on YouTube) and through his friend and old corner boy Frankie Riley been spilling plenty of cyber-ink on Frankie’s blog, In The Be-Bop ‘50s Night, going back to the now classic age of rock and roll.
Sam had to laugh about that situation back in the day as well since he had been well known back on the corner, back holding up the wall in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, on many of those date-less, date-less because although he might have been an all “hail fellow, well met” hard-assed corner boy full of bluster and blah he was sister-less and hence baffled by girls and their ways and very shy around the question of asking for dates although he was quite willing to tell each and every girl who would listen to him about ten thousand fact on any of sixteen subjects, not excluding science, philosophy, and the poor fate of the Red Sox then. Although those ten thousand facts would come in handy when he got to college a couple of years later and he had girls hanging off the walls in debate class waiting for him to ask them out then those precious facts did not add up to a date by osmosis but rather incomprehension even by girls like Patty Lewis and Mary Shea who liked him and would have be glad if he asked them for a date without the ten thousand facts, thank you.
Here though is something about the mores of the time that young people today might not comprehend girls just waited for guys to make a move, or moved on to the next guy who would, especially if he had a boss ’55 Chevy, like Patty and Mary did. Also girl-less (already explained but here the question is having a serious girl and the just mentioned facts will hold here as well), and dough-less (self-explanatory in working-class North Adamsville, the sorry fate of the working poor, the marginally employed like his father, no money when the rent was due and Ma had not money for the damn rent collector much less discretionary money for dates with girls) on Friday and Saturday nights when he proclaimed to all who would listen (mainly Frankie, Markin, Jimmy Jenkins, Jack Callahan, Kenny Hogan and Johnny “Thunder” Thornton and an occasional girl who all wondered what he was talking about) that “rock and roll will never die.”
Mainly, through the archival marvels of modern technology, pay-per-song, look on YouTube, check out Amazon Sam had been right, rock and roll had not died although it clearly no longer provided the same fuel for later generations more into hip-hop-ish, techno music, or edge city rock. But Sam always though it funny when kids, his grandkids, for example, heard (and saw) Elvis, all steamy, smoldering and swiveling in some film clip to make the older almost teenage girls among them almost react like the girls in his time did when they saw him on the Ed Sullivan Show and had half-formed girlish dreams about personally erasing that snarl from his face. Especially that flip clip of the prison number in Jailhouse Rock. Bo Diddley proclaiming to the whole wide world that he in fact had put the rock in rock and roll and who could dispute that claim when he went bonkers in some Afro-Carib number with that rectangular guitar. Say too Chuck Berry telling a candid world, a candid teenage world which after all was all that counted then, now too from what Sam had heard from his grandchildren, that Mister Beethoven from the old fogy music museum had better take himself and his cronies and move over because a new be-bop daddy, a new high sheriff was in town, was taking the reins, making the kids jump on jump street. Ditto curl-in-hair Buddy Holly pining away for his Peggy Sue.
Better, mad monk swamp rat Jerry Lee Lewis sitting, maybe standing for all Sam knew telling that same candid world that Chuck was putting on fire everybody had to do the high school hop bop, confidentially. And how about Wanda Jackson proclaiming that it was party time and an endless host of one hit wonders and wanna-bes they went crazy over. Yeah, those kids, those for example grandkids jumping around just like the young Sam who could not believe his ears when he had come of age and, yeah, jumping around for those same guys who formed his musical tastes back in the 1950s when he had come of age, musical age anyway. Jesus, Jesus too when he came of teenage age and all that meant of angst and alienation something no generation seems to be able to escape since the world had no less dangerous, no less incomprehensible today.
Sam had thought recently about going back to those various commercially-produced compilations put out by demographically savvy media companies that he had purchased on Amazon to cull out the better songs, some which he had on the tip of his tongue almost continuously since the 1950s (the Dubs Could This Be Magic the great last chance dance song that bailed him out of being shut out of more than one dance night although his partner’s feet borne the brunt of the battle, and the Teen Queens Eddie My Love, where Eddie took advantage of the girl and she was wondering, maybe still is, when he is coming back, a great love ‘em and leave ‘em song and the answer is still he’s never coming back, are two examples that quickly came to his mind). Others like Johnny Ace’s Pledging My Love or The Crows Oh-Gee though needed some coaxing by listening to the compilations to be remembered.
But Sam, old lawyerly Sam, had finally found a sure-fire method to aid in that memory coaxing. Just go back in memory’s mind and picture scenes from teenage days and figure the songs that went with such scenes (this is not confined to 1950s aficionados anybody can imagine their youth times and play). But even using that method Sam believed that he was cheating a little, harmlessly cheating but still cheating. When he (or anybody familiar with the times) looked at the artwork on most of the better 1950s CD compilations one could not help but notice the excellent artwork that highlights various institutions illustrated back then. The infamous drive-in movies where you gathered about six people (hopefully three couples but six anyway) and paid for two the other four either on the back seat floor or in the trunk. They always played music at intermission when that “youth nation” cohort gathered at the refreshment stand to grab inedible hot dogs, stale popcorn, or fizzled out sodas, although who cared, especially if that three couples thing was in play, and that scene had always been associated in Sam’s mind with Frankie Lyman and the Teenager’s Why Do Fools Fall In Love.
That is how Sam played the game. Two (or more) can play so he said he would just set the scenes and others could fill in their own musical selections. Here goes: the first stirrings of interest in the opposite sex at Doc’s Drugstore with his soda fountain AND jukebox; the drive-in restaurant with you and yours in the car, yours’ or father-borrowed for an end of the night bout with cardboard hamburgers, ultra-greasy french fries and diluted soda; the Spring Frolic Dance (or name your seasonal dance) your hands all sweaty, trying to disappear into the wall, waiting, waiting to perdition for that last dance so that you could ask that he or she that you had been eyeing all evening to dance that slow one all dreamy; down at the beach on day one of out of school for the summer checking out the scene between the two boat clubs where all the guys and gals who counted hung out; the night before Thanksgiving football rally where he or she said they would be there, how about you; on poverty nights sitting up in your bedroom listening to edgy WMEX on your transistor radio away from prying adult eyes; another poverty night you and your boys, girls, boys and girls sitting in the family room spinning platters; that first sixth grade “petting” party (no more explanation needed, right); cruising Main Street with your boys or girls looking for, well, you figure it out listening to the radio in that “boss” Chevy, hopefully; and, sitting in the balcony “watching” the double feature at the Strand Theater on Saturday afternoon when you were younger and at night when older. Okay, Sam has given enough cues. Fill in the dots, oops, songs and add scenes too.
*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Alvaro Luna Hernández
http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html
A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967 -*When “Doctor Gonzo” Was "King Of The Hill'-The Master Journalism Of Hunter S. Thompson-"The Great Shark Hunt"
The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967 -*When “Doctor Gonzo” Was "King Of The Hill'-The Master Journalism Of Hunter S. Thompson-"The Great Shark Hunt"
Book Review
The Great Shark Hunt; Gonzo Papers Volume One, Hunter S. Thompson, 1978
In a review of Hunter Thompson's later journalistic work compiled under the title , Song Of The Doomed, a retrospective sampling of his works through the early 1990s, many of the early pieces which appeared in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine during its more radical, hipper phase, I noted the following points that are useful to repost here in reviewing The Great Shark Hunt, an earlier, similar compilation of his journalistic pieces:
“Generally the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation has been done by thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists, like Karl Marx. Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky and other less radical progressive thinkers. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self-defense if nothing else, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This is particularly true when it comes from a man of big, high life appetites, a known dope fiend, a furious wild man gun freak, and all-around edge city lifestyle addict like the late, massively lamented, massively lamented in this quarter in any case, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Nevertheless, although he was far, very far, from any thought of a socialist solution to society's current problems and would reject such a designation, I think out of hand, we could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us-but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of mad truth-seeking journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.
I am not sure whether at the end of the day Hunter Thompson saw himself, or wanted to been seen, as a voice, or the voice, of his generation but he would not be an unworthy candidate. In any case, his was not the voice of the generation of 1968, my generation, being just enough older to have been formed by an earlier, less forgiving milieu, coming of adult age in the drab Cold War, red scare, conformist 1950s that not even the wildly popular Mad Men can resurrect as a time which honored fruitful and edgy work, except on the coastal margins of society. His earlier writings show that effect. Nevertheless, only a few, and with time it seems fewer in each generation, allow themselves to search for some kind of truth even if they cannot go the whole distance. This compilation under review is a hodgepodge of articles over the best part of Thompson’s career, the part culminating with the demise of the arch-fiend, arch-political fiend, Richard Nixon. As with all journalists, as indeed with all writers especially those who are writing under the pressure of time-lines and for mass circulation media, these pieces show an uneven quality. Hunter's manic work habits, driven by high dope infusions and high-wire physical stress, only added to the frenzied corners of his work which inevitably was produced under some duress, a duress that drove his hard-boiled inner demons onward. However the total effect is to blast old bourgeois society almost to its foundations. Others, hopefully, will push on further.
One should note that "gonzo" journalism is quite compatible with socialist materialism. That is, the writer is not precluded from interpreting the events described within a story by interposing himself/herself as an actor in that story. The worst swindle in journalism, fostered by the formal journalism schools, as well as in the formal schools of other disciplines like history and political science, is that somehow one must be ‘objective’. Reality is better served if the writer puts his/her analysis correctly and then gets out of the way. In his best work that was Hunter’s way.
As a member of the generation of 1968 I would note that the period covered by this compilation was a period of particular importance in American history, the covering of which won Hunter his spurs as a journalist. Hunter, like many of us, cut his political teeth on wrestling with the phenomena of one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States, all-around political chameleon and off-hand common criminal. His articles beginning in 1968 when Nixon was on the rising curve of his never ending “comeback” trail to his fated (yes, fated) demise in the aftermath of the Watergate are required reading (and funny to boot). Thompson went out of his way, way out of his way, and with pleasure, skewering that man when he was riding high. He was moreover just as happy to kick Nixon when he was down, just for good measure. Nixon, as Robert Kennedy in one of his more lucid comments noted, represented the "dark side" of the American spirit- the side that appears today as the bully boy of the world and as craven brute. If for nothing else Brother Thompson deserves a place in the pantheon of journalistic heroes for this exercise in elementary political hygiene. Anyone who wants to rehabilitate THAT man before history please consult Thompson’s work.
Beyond the Nixon-related articles that form the core of the book there are some early pieces that are definitely not Gonzo-like. They are more straightforward journalism to earn a buck, although they show the trademark insightfulness that served Thompson well over the early part of his career. Read his pieces on Ernest Hemingway-searching in Idaho, the non-student left in the 1960’s, especially the earnest early 1960s before the other shoe dropped and we were all confronted with the madness of the beast, unchained , the impact of the ‘beats’ on the later counter cultural movements and about the ‘hippie’ invasion of San Francisco. The seminal piece on the Kentucky Derby in 1970 which is his ‘failed’ (according to him, not others) initial stab at “gonzo” journalism is a must read. And finally, if nothing else read the zany adventures of the articles that give us the title of the book, “The Great Shark Hunt”, and his ‘tribute’ to his friend the “Brown Buffalo” of future legend, Oscar Acosta. Those are high water marks in the great swirl of Hunter S. Thompson’s career. Hunter, I hope you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Read this book. Read all his books.”
Zack James’ comment June, 2017:
You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S
Thompson, the late legendary journalist who broke the back, hell broke the
neck, legs, arms of so-called objective journalism in a drug-blazed frenzy back
in the 1970s when he “walked with the king”’ is not with us in these times. In
the times of this 50th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of
Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and
in your face research by the way) on the notorious West Coast-based Hell’s
Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s
place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place and where for a time the
Angels, Hunter in tow, were welcomed. He had been there in the high tide, when
it looked like we had the night-takers on the run and later as well when he saw
the ebb tide of the 1960s coming a year or so later although that did not stop
him from developing the quintessential “gonzo” journalism fine-tuned with
plenty of dope for which he would become famous before the end, before he took
his aging life and left Johnny Depp and company to fling his ashes over this
good green planet. He would have “dug” the exhibition, maybe smoked a joint for
old times’ sake (oh no, no that is not done in proper society) at the de Young
Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period showing
until August 20th of this year.
Better yet he would have had this Trump thug bizarre
weirdness wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with
the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one
Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was
running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like
some rabid rat. He would have gone crazy seeing all the crew deserting the
sinking U.S.S. Trump with guys like fired FBI Director Comey going to Capitol
Hill and saying out the emperor has no clothes and would not know the truth if
it grabbed him by the throat. Every day would be a feast day. But perhaps the
road to truth these days, in the days of “alternate facts” and assorted other
bullshit would have been bumpier than
in those more “civilized” times when simple burglaries and silly tape-recorders
ruled the roost. Hunter did not make the Nixon “hit list” (to his everlasting
regret for which he could hardly hold his head up in public) but these days he
surely would find himself in the top echelon. Maybe too though with these thugs
he might have found himself in some back alley bleeding from all pores. Hunter
Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for now
Book Review
The Great Shark Hunt; Gonzo Papers Volume One, Hunter S. Thompson, 1978
In a review of Hunter Thompson's later journalistic work compiled under the title , Song Of The Doomed, a retrospective sampling of his works through the early 1990s, many of the early pieces which appeared in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine during its more radical, hipper phase, I noted the following points that are useful to repost here in reviewing The Great Shark Hunt, an earlier, similar compilation of his journalistic pieces:
“Generally the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation has been done by thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists, like Karl Marx. Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky and other less radical progressive thinkers. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self-defense if nothing else, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This is particularly true when it comes from a man of big, high life appetites, a known dope fiend, a furious wild man gun freak, and all-around edge city lifestyle addict like the late, massively lamented, massively lamented in this quarter in any case, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Nevertheless, although he was far, very far, from any thought of a socialist solution to society's current problems and would reject such a designation, I think out of hand, we could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us-but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of mad truth-seeking journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.
I am not sure whether at the end of the day Hunter Thompson saw himself, or wanted to been seen, as a voice, or the voice, of his generation but he would not be an unworthy candidate. In any case, his was not the voice of the generation of 1968, my generation, being just enough older to have been formed by an earlier, less forgiving milieu, coming of adult age in the drab Cold War, red scare, conformist 1950s that not even the wildly popular Mad Men can resurrect as a time which honored fruitful and edgy work, except on the coastal margins of society. His earlier writings show that effect. Nevertheless, only a few, and with time it seems fewer in each generation, allow themselves to search for some kind of truth even if they cannot go the whole distance. This compilation under review is a hodgepodge of articles over the best part of Thompson’s career, the part culminating with the demise of the arch-fiend, arch-political fiend, Richard Nixon. As with all journalists, as indeed with all writers especially those who are writing under the pressure of time-lines and for mass circulation media, these pieces show an uneven quality. Hunter's manic work habits, driven by high dope infusions and high-wire physical stress, only added to the frenzied corners of his work which inevitably was produced under some duress, a duress that drove his hard-boiled inner demons onward. However the total effect is to blast old bourgeois society almost to its foundations. Others, hopefully, will push on further.
One should note that "gonzo" journalism is quite compatible with socialist materialism. That is, the writer is not precluded from interpreting the events described within a story by interposing himself/herself as an actor in that story. The worst swindle in journalism, fostered by the formal journalism schools, as well as in the formal schools of other disciplines like history and political science, is that somehow one must be ‘objective’. Reality is better served if the writer puts his/her analysis correctly and then gets out of the way. In his best work that was Hunter’s way.
As a member of the generation of 1968 I would note that the period covered by this compilation was a period of particular importance in American history, the covering of which won Hunter his spurs as a journalist. Hunter, like many of us, cut his political teeth on wrestling with the phenomena of one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States, all-around political chameleon and off-hand common criminal. His articles beginning in 1968 when Nixon was on the rising curve of his never ending “comeback” trail to his fated (yes, fated) demise in the aftermath of the Watergate are required reading (and funny to boot). Thompson went out of his way, way out of his way, and with pleasure, skewering that man when he was riding high. He was moreover just as happy to kick Nixon when he was down, just for good measure. Nixon, as Robert Kennedy in one of his more lucid comments noted, represented the "dark side" of the American spirit- the side that appears today as the bully boy of the world and as craven brute. If for nothing else Brother Thompson deserves a place in the pantheon of journalistic heroes for this exercise in elementary political hygiene. Anyone who wants to rehabilitate THAT man before history please consult Thompson’s work.
Beyond the Nixon-related articles that form the core of the book there are some early pieces that are definitely not Gonzo-like. They are more straightforward journalism to earn a buck, although they show the trademark insightfulness that served Thompson well over the early part of his career. Read his pieces on Ernest Hemingway-searching in Idaho, the non-student left in the 1960’s, especially the earnest early 1960s before the other shoe dropped and we were all confronted with the madness of the beast, unchained , the impact of the ‘beats’ on the later counter cultural movements and about the ‘hippie’ invasion of San Francisco. The seminal piece on the Kentucky Derby in 1970 which is his ‘failed’ (according to him, not others) initial stab at “gonzo” journalism is a must read. And finally, if nothing else read the zany adventures of the articles that give us the title of the book, “The Great Shark Hunt”, and his ‘tribute’ to his friend the “Brown Buffalo” of future legend, Oscar Acosta. Those are high water marks in the great swirl of Hunter S. Thompson’s career. Hunter, I hope you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Read this book. Read all his books.”
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