Freak Kingdom

Freak Kingdom chronicles a decade in the life of Hunter S. Thompson amidst one of the more tumultuous and tense periods of American history. For how often HST found himself in the middle of cross-country era-defining adventures, he may as well be the political speed freak version of Forrest Gump (and I would so watch that movie). Partying with the counterculture Hells Angels and Merry Pranksters, calling out police violence in Chicago, running for Sheriff in Aspen, covering the Chicano Rights movement in LA, and even finding himself at the Watergate hotel bar the night of the infamous break-in.

As someone who used to read "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" every summer break in college, I am definitely an easy target for this action-packed biography. Still, Denevi's portrayal of HST is well-researched, honest and pulls no punches. I think the spirit of the text is best captured by the book's blurb: "Hunter S. Thompson is often misremembered as a wise-cracking, drug-addled cartoon character. This book reclaims him for what he truly was: a fearless opponent of corruption and fascism, one who sacrificed his future well-being to fight against it, rewriting the rules of journalism and political satire in the process." I was genuinely sad when it was over, I want to watch out the rest of history play out through lens of this sardonic madman.

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is for some an acquired taste. His outrageous and destructive behavior added a negative to his celebrity that was earned first as an insightful and brave journalist. Drugs and alcohol eventually got the best of him.

...Hunter Thompson was grabbing a drink at the Jerome with some friends when he noticed movement near the entrance; someone he didn’t know was walking up to the bar. This stranger was large: over six feet tall weighing at least 250 pounds. He had curly hair, a broad, expressive brow. His eyes were small and pointed─alert. He introduced himself: Oscar Acosta. “I’m the trouble you’ve been looking for,” he added wryly.

Thompson took his politics seriously, and the terror and unrest of the sixties stole from us all some very good men and women. The country was in crisis, and the best of the best were being shot down.

...“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” Bobby said just before he was assassinated, a quote his brother had attributed to Edmund Burke…

Due to the character flaws of leaders like Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon, Hunter Thompson sought to reveal them for who they were. Many of Thompson’s “truths” and observations in print turned out to be revelatory. The future Thompson predicted was also something that led to his own personal demons destroying what was best in him.

...When you vote for president today you’re talking about giving a man dictatorial power for four years. I think it might be better to have the real business of the presidency conducted by a City Manager-type, a Prime Minister, somebody who’s directly answerable to Congress, rather than a person who moves all his friends into the White House and does whatever he wants for four years. The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand, It’s come to the point where you almost can’t run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip on each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.

All through the book I kept thinking that if Thompson were here today to witness first hand Donald J. Trump he would definitely kill himself again. I kept saying to myself as I read that it is true that history does repeat itself.

...In the end the tragedy wasn’t just about Nixon, at least in the strictest sense; what was really at stake would be much bigger than the current moment. As he’s written that summer: “The slow-rising central horror of ‘Watergate’ is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it.”

The author Timothy Denevi has performed a great service for the good citizens of these United States. Using Hunter S. Thompson as subject, Denevi has adroitly shown the parallels between Nixon and Trump without ever mentioning his name. For those of us who want the truth and are willing to hear it, this book has it in spades. This book is a great and important work.

In May 1974, Republican congressman Charles Wiggins, one of Nixon’s staunchest supporters, tried to contextualize the mushrooming Watergate scandal: “These things go in fifty-year cycles,” he said, “from Grant to Harding to Nixon.”

And now Trump.