Doctor Gonzo Endorses Kerry

Kris Weberg | October 22, 2004
Thus speaketh Dr. Hunter S. Thompson:

"Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all. The tide turned early, in Coral Gables, when Bush went belly up less than halfway through his first bout with Kerry, who hammered poor George into jelly. It was pitiful. . . . I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him 'Mister President,' and then I felt ashamed.

Karl Rove, the president's political wizard, felt even worse. There is angst in the heart of Texas today, and panic in the bowels of the White House. Rove has a nasty little problem, and its name is George Bush. The president failed miserably from the instant he got onstage with John Kerry. He looked weak and dumb. Kerry beat him like a gong in Coral Gables, then again in St. Louis and Tempe -- and that is Rove's problem: His candidate is a weak-minded frat boy who cracks under pressure in front of 60 million voters.

[....]

"Bush signed his own death warrant in the opening round, when he finally had to speak without his TelePrompTer. It was a Cinderella story brought up to date in Florida that night -- except this time the false prince turned back into a frog.

"Immediately after the first debate ended I called Muhammad Ali at his home in Michigan, but whoever answered said the champ was laughing so hard that he couldn't come to the phone. 'The debate really cracked him up,' he chuckled. 'The champ loves a good ass-whuppin'. He says Bush looked so scared to fight, he finally just quit and laid down.'

[....]

"Which has always been the case. Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous "trickle-down" theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow "trickle down" to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote.


Things haven't changed all that much where George W. Bush comes from. Houston is a cruel and crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It's a shabby sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West -- which can mean just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch.

"Houston is also the unnatural home of two out of the last three presidents of the United States of America, for good or ill. The other one was a handsome, sex-crazed boy from next-door Arkansas, which has no laws against oral sex or any other deviant practice not specifically forbidden in the New Testament, including anal incest and public cunnilingus with farm animals.

[....]

"Indeed. the numbers are weird today, and so is this dangerous election. The time has come to rumble, to inject a bit of fun into politics. That's exactly what the debates did. John Kerry looked like a winner, and it energized his troops. Voting for Kerry is beginning to look like very serious fun for everybody except poor George, who now suddenly looks like a loser.

"That is fatal in a presidential election.

"I look at elections with the cool and dispassionate gaze of a professional gambler, especially when I'm betting real money on the outcome. Contrary to most conventional wisdom, I see Kerry with five points as a recommended risk. Kerry will win this election, if it happens, by a bigger margin than Bush finally gouged out of Florida in 2000. That was about forty-six percent, plus five points for owning the U.S. Supreme Court -- which seemed to equal fifty-one percent. Nobody really believed that, but George W. Bush moved into the White House anyway.

"It was the most brutal seizure of power since Hitler burned the German Reichstag in 1933 and declared himself the new Boss of Germany. Karl Rove is no stranger to Nazi strategy, if only because it worked, for a while, and it was sure as hell fun for Hitler. But not for long. He ran out of oil, the whole world hated him, and he liked to gobble pure crystal biphetamine and stay awake for eight or nine days in a row with his maps & his bombers & his dope-addled general staff.

"They all loved the whiff. It is the perfect drug for War -- as long as you are winning -- and Hitler thought he was King of the Hill forever. He had created a new master race, and every one of them worshipped him. The new Hitler youth loved to march and sing songs in unison and dance naked at night for the generals. They were fanatics.

"That was sixty-six years ago, far back in ancient history, and things are not much different today. We still love War.

"George Bush certainly does. In four short years he has turned our country from a prosperous nation at peace into a desperately indebted nation at war. But so what? He is the President of the United States, and you're not. Love it or leave it.

War is an option whose time has passed. Peace is the only option for the future. At present we occupy a treacherous no-man's-land between peace and war, a time of growing fear that our military might has expanded beyond our capacity to control it and our political differences widened beyond our ability to bridge them. . . .

Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war.
--RICHARD M. NIXON, "REAL PEACE" (1983)

"Richard Nixon looks like a flaming liberal today, compared to a golem like George Bush. Indeed. Where is Richard Nixon now that we finally need him?

"If Nixon were running for president today, he would be seen as a 'liberal' candidate, and he would probably win. He was a crook and a bungler, but what the hell? Nixon was a barrel of laughs compared to this gang of thugs from the Halliburton petroleum organization who are running the White House today -- and who will be running it this time next year, if we (the once-proud, once-loved and widely respected "American people") don't rise up like wounded warriors and whack those lying petroleum pimps out of the White House on November 2nd.

"Nixon hated running for president during football season, but he did it anyway. Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for -- but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him.

[....]

" 'Four more years of George Bush will be like four more years of syphilis,' the famed author said yesterday at a hastily called press conference near his home in Woody Creek, Colorado. 'Only a fool or a sucker would vote for a dangerous loser like Bush," Dr. Thompson warned. 'He hates everything we stand for, and he knows we will vote against him in November.'

Thompson, long known for the eerie accuracy of his political instincts, went on to denounce Ralph Nader as 'a worthless Judas Goat with no moral compass.'

" 'I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago,' he said, 'and I will do everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat hammer, to help him be the next President of the United States.'

[.....]

"Bush is a natural-born loser with a filthy-rich daddy who pimped his son out to rich oil-mongers. He hates music, football and sex, in no particular order, and he is no fun at all.

[....]

"Hunter S. Thompson's latest book is Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness"

For more reasons not to use drugs, but to still vote Kerry, go to the full article by Dr. Thompson.

Amy Austin | October 22, 2004
"For more reasons not to use drugs, but to still vote Kerry..."

Hahaha -- I'd say so!

Lori Lancaster | October 22, 2004
[hidden by request]

Kris Weberg | October 22, 2004
Well, bear in mind that this the guy who lived and then wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Lori Lancaster | October 22, 2004
[hidden by request]

Amy Austin | October 22, 2004
Yeah, Lori -- "Fear" was autobiographical... did you see the movie? Definitely some drugs. I thought it was pretty hilarious.

Kris Weberg | October 22, 2004
The best of his books is Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, a piece of political reporting made perhaps more accurate because of Thompson's surreal style. He's right -- politics is often our modern, bizarre version of the deathmatch.

Amy Austin | October 22, 2004
hehehe -- I might just have to read both now...