More hot water for Bashar

Israel has laid the blame on Syria for last night's nighclub bombing that killed four. It seems the Damascus branch of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad took "credit" for the murder. Interesting. It allows Sharon a chance to lay of Abbas for a little while, while increasing the pressure on Syria. This is a blast the Syrian president Bashar al-Asad does not need. He is already feeling a lot of heat for the murder of Rakif Hariri, and now it seems his country has replaced Iran as the leading obstructionist in the peace process. It may not be true- but it seems that way, and that is enough.

Syria can claim that they don't control Islamic Jihad, that they can't know everyone in the country, that there are terror cells in Germany, et al. Not a good defense. Germany is not a police state (I know- that sounds wierd, but it is true). Islamic Jihad has offices in Syria on the good graces of the security services. Did Bashar plan the attack? Certianly not. But if it was planned from his soil, it will only increase the pressure on him.

Weird situation with Syria. Young Bashar is such a cipher- probably not many people would be able to identify him. And he has not been flagrantly evil. For the West to mount a campaign against him, it has to become personal. Like with Saddam. It is impossible to say "We are going up against Syria"- that doesn't play well in Peoria (Peoria here meaning "Egypt" or any other country in the Arab/Muslim world). Bashar has so few accomplishments, good or ill. He seems more confused and dull than anything. It will be hard to personalize the issue in the way that makers of both policy and bumper-stickers love.

By the way, Greg has reccomended a Gombrowicz link. I couldn't possibly support this more. This is one of the great novelists of the 20th century, buried in obscurity. One of these days, when I have time for a serious reading project, we'll do a long overview of his work. Becuase he is brilliant, and if you want to get into an author that few have heard of- increase your street cred (a lame street, sure, but whatever)- look up the Polish genius Witold Gombrowicz.

The Moral Decline of John Paul II

Yes...it does seem a bit callous to write about a man's moral decline when his physical health is in such precipitous decline. But it was in between hospital bouts that the Pope launched into some of his most discordant screeds, and waiting for the obituaries to pour in means avoiding critical commentary. And since his last major statements, after one bout of near-fatal illness and shortly before another, were indicative of his collapse of the last few years, it is both an opportune time and fair game beside.

To start on a better note: Pope John Paul the II, third-longest tenured pope in the long history of the Catholic Church, has led what can fairly be called a remarkable life. An avid athlete and actor, the former Karol Jozef Wojtyla was gifted at many thing, movie-star good looks among them. He was also a poet of some good. And, much later in life, he was a surprise choice to lead the largest Christian sect in the world, becoming (at 58) the youngest pope of the 20th century and the first pope ever from Poland.

And it was on Poland, and by extension the rest of communist-blighted Eastern Europe that the pope first turned his attention. His 1979 visit to his homeland was, it is said, one of the thing that really jump-started the Solidarity movement, which eventually brought the degenerate government to its knees. John Paul understood clearly that he had a pulpit, and did not confine himself to dogmatic esoterica or muttering Vatican conspiracies. He spoke out strongly against the dangers of communism and how it destroyed the souls of men. He framed it in terms more theological than the current author may prefer, but the end result was a great good, and he was always very morally consistent.

Showing that he was not a one-note piano, the pope turned his attention, following the fall of communism, to the ravaging ills of excess, unchecked capitalism. He became an ardent supporter of debt relief for the Third World, an issue of such vital importance that even Bono supports it (this was a bit too arch: debt relief is important, and Bono, though grating, does good and sincere work). He also has spent a good bit of time apologizing for what the church has done wrong over the years, which, if carried to its logical close would take a lifetime, but it did inject a bit of humility in the cold, dim arrogance of the Church of Rome. He also overturned the church's support of the death penalty, an incredible and worthy act that would have made St. Francis proud.

Through it all, the pope carried a passion for building bridges between the Church and other religions, eschewing some of the muscular superiority of his predecessors. He obviously traveled tirelessly, but there was always a point. I happened to be in Cairo when he made his first visit to Egypt. Not a lot of Catholics there- the ones that were there were mostly foreigners and their children. But the pope was there to meet Muslim leaders, and leaders of the Coptic church.

His most moving meeting, though, and one that showcased his unique power, was his visit to Saint Katherine's, home of the Burning Bush, in the shadow of the mountain where Moses received the commandments, in the desolate heart of the burning, twisted, terrifyingly beautiful Sinai peninsula. The church was run by the eastern orthodox, and the head priest hated Pope John Paul, calling him "the anti-Christ" in William Dalrymple's "From the Holy Mountain". In the days leading up to his visit, it was unsure if the good brother would even let the pope in the doors of the monastery. But when the pope arrived, he was met with open arms, and the man who once said John Paul would be the first in hell let the frail pope lean on him as he showed him the sacred relics. It was genuinely touching and beautiful. I still have a picture of a sign someone put up, showing a clumsy drawing of the pope and reading "Mosslman Cristan Jooish are all the same," a worthy sentiment indeed.

And that was a showcase for his amazing ability to transcend sectarianism, to push history into a dark corner, to move people to rise above their confessional prejudices. And that is what makes this a tragedy, writ large. In his dotage, the pope retreated into his dogmatic superstitions and extremist prejudices.

In a way, this is unfair. He was elected pope because he seemed to yearn for a day before Vatican II eased some of the rules. This is true, but also doesn't capture the full essence of the man. He did try to break down the mystery of the church, did try to connect with people, and in that matter seemed in line with the changes in the church. But these pleasant differences served to obscure his more obscurantist tendencies, which began to come fully into play in the Cairo Conference on Overpopulation in 1994.

It was there that the Catholic Church made a partnership with the forces of extremist Islam to stifle talk of the usage of birth control. In other words, the leader of the church was saying to his massive flocks in South America, sub-Saharan Africa and his lesser ones in Southeast Asia: do not use anything that will prevent you from having children.

One doesn't have to go too far to realize the effect of this. Actually, one does have to go far: it is easy in America or Europe to dismiss papal edicts as a relic, or dismiss the pope as a figurehead. But he is not that to many in the conservative Catholic churches of Africa and South America. The laws of the church mean something, and in this case mean that overpopulation is not an issue.

Of course, it is an issue. Birth control goes against God's will and all that, gets in the way of the natural process of childbirth and is therefore a sin. Those are church laws. But here are human laws: overpopulation in these areas leads to ecological ruin, poverty, hunger, war, depredation and a life lacking dignity and full of misery and penury. Church edicts like to proclaim the dignity of poverty, but it is usually proclaimed from gilded chapels in Italy. This pope, who talked so eloquently about the soul of man under communism, and about human rights with excess capitalism, is so dogma-blinded that he is undermining the positive work he has done in the third world.

Birth control is of vital importance in elevating the rights of women and in easing suffering, not to mention helping slow the spread of AIDS. Yes, one can abstain from sex, but that is not an easy thing to do, nor a realistic thing to expect of people (Blake: "Abstinence sows sand all over/The ruddy limbs & flaming hair/But Desire Gratified/Plants fruit & beauty there"). Birth control and sexual education are of paramount importance in the third world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, and the church, under John Paul II, has come down hard, firm and consistently on the wrong side of it.

Closer to home: I am not worried about the letting priests marry/ordination of women issues. That is an inner-church matter, especially the latter one. It might be regressive, but it is clearly in their jurisdiction. What is worrisome is one of the possible effects of not letting priets marry- the molestation of little boys, which by all accounts is nearly (and unsurprisingly) pandemic in its reach (disclosure: I was raised Catholic and was a decent Catholic for about 20 years. I went to Catholic school and was an altar boy for many years. I have never known any but good priests, some whom I would say are great men- I am better for having known them. This shows that it is unfair to paint with too broad a brush, but it is equally absurd to use one personal anecdote to ignore overwhelming evidence).

This is where the corrupt and degenerate Vatican bureaucracy comes into play: the wheels of cover-up turned, and the pope, other than a few passing statements, did little to speak out against it. One can argue he is ill, and that the machinations of Rome are too much for any one man. But the Pope has always been concerned with preserving the image of the Church- apologizing for the Inquisition while the molestation crisis was in full swing. He has failed to use his bully pulpit, which he wielded so excellently in the past, to deal with one of the great moral and legal failings in the recent history of his beloved institution.

Instead, he has turned his doddering attention to the evils of gay marriage, euthanasia, stem-cell research and cloning. He also is outspoken, as always, about abortion, but this is hard to criticize. Abortion rights should be sacred in a secular society, but there are principled stands to take against it. This is similar to the backwardness of his birth control stance. Sex and pregnancy will happen (especially if one doesn't use any protection), and some women will be desperate to abort. If it is illegal, they will go the back-alley route, or even the coat-hanger method. This is a vile crime that shouldn't happen in an advanced society. The pope could better spend his moral capital arguing against having abortions, rather than against making them illegal. This falls squarely within the American mainstream, and would allow the Church a say in the discussion. But I understand the abortion thing.

To harp on and on about gay marriage, even going so far as to say it was incumbent upon Catholics not to vote for anyone who wasn't against it (read: vote for Bush) is to squander political currency, as the White House might phrase it. In doing this, in basically advising Catholics to vote for Bush (who was also against euthanasia, stem-cell, et al), he placed these weird old-fashioned dogmatic "principles" over the death penalty, the War in Iraq, social justice, and other things Catholics have frequently been on the forefront of fighting for. He clearly does not understand stem-cell research or medical cloning (cloning just an organ).

But it is gay marriage where his stance is most infuriating. He recently called it part of an "ideology of evil." Note: the sub-headline on this link tells you everything you need to know about his moral decline. I wish I had written it myself. It reads "Stresses Life and Family Concerns First over Food, Peace, Freedom." All ye need to know, my friend, all ye need to know.

And that is why this story is tragedy. Were another man at the helm, one could glibly say "Well, he is a Catholic, after all. That is what the church does." Anger would come easier. It is more difficult here; it is tinted with sadness. For a long time, food, peace and freedom were the most important things to this man. Especially freedom. But he has replaced, in slow-motion, the bondage of communism with the equally insidious ties of dogma and misery, of over-population and endless poverty, railing feebly against gay marriage while his flock roils with scandal and is ravaged by AIDS. One can ignore the inane creation of saints, including many dubious ones. Who cares? But what is inexcusable is the way he has betrayed his people, and tarnished his legacy, by this slip-slide in medieval theology that should have been beneath probably the most impressive man ever to sit on the Throne of Peter.

Terri Schiavo, Hunter Thompson, and the Right to Die

In the world of the ancient Greeks, hubris was the sin of defying the gods. Salman Rushdie talk of this in an commencement address to Bard's College, a brave little school that offered him a position during the dark days of the fatwa (the speech is anthologized in Step Across This Line, a fine collection of his essays and speeches). He talks of the gods coming across poorly, punishing, say, Prometheus for stealing fire, something many of us would call progress these days. Rushdie urges more of this.

"...the myriad deities of money and power, of convention and custom, that will seek to limit and control your thoughts and lives. Defy them; that's my advice to you. Thumb your noses. For, as the myths tell us, it is by defying the gods that human beings have best expressed their humanity."

To me, this seems an appropriate way to discuss what happened with Hunter S. Thompson this week and what is continuing to happen- or not to happen- to Terri Schiavo. Rushdie's speech, and his elegant formulation of humanity, is key to this discussion, spurred by this site's brief debate on suicide earlier.

During that debate I quoted lyrics from a song by the Buffalo-based songwriter Johnny Dowd, a weird and depressing but very talented man (think a combination of Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Hank Williams, all at their darkest). The desolate "Ballad of Lonnie Wolf," is the name of the song, a cheery one about a man paralyzed from a failed suicide attempt (sample cheerful lyric: "blink an eye, squeeze a hand/life stretches out like the desert sand"). The salient lyric, for our discussion, was this one: "Now he's in a VA hospital/a victim of life's ancient riddle/tried to die, but he's condemned to live/death's a gift, only god can give."

Haunting, creepy, bleak, and if Rushdie had taught us anything, false. It is our hubris, in the best, most liberating sense of the word, that renders the notion of death being god's gift so laughably wrong.

Let's look at both meanings of "gift" here, both in the traditional religious sense and in the way that Johnny Dowd intended. For the religious, death is a gift, a chance to be with the maker (provided you follow all the rules, of course. Don't sway too far though, Chuckles: this gift ain't returnable). Because of that, death is something we are supposed to which we are supposed to look forward, all the while walking a thin line dictated to us by ancient manuscripts.

Johnny Dowd's meaning is slightly different and even contradictory. As much as you are supposed to look forward to death, it can only come when the Man himself decides it is your time. You can't take it unto yourself to leave this mortal coil. If it isn't your time it isn't your times. To do otherwise would be to take god's will into your own hands- and it is a sin. But why, we ask? What if you are just really eager to meet the lord? Shouldn't that be ok?

No. Indeed, it is the worst sin of them all, the one that undermines what all the clergy stand for: it is hubris. It says to the invented gods "Thanks, but we can take it from here."
That is why the religious right and all the social conservatives have rallied around the Terry Schiavo case. Schiavo, has been basically a vegetable since 1990, following severe health problems. She is tragically young, alive only because of a feeding tube, and has no chance of recovery. Her husband, Michael, wants to pull the plug, saying it is her wish, and has been fighting in court for years. Her parents want to keep her alive, and have fought Michael in court (one imagines they don't spend the holidays together). The most recent turn in the case was yesterday, when a Florida court stayed an order to remove the tube.

Now, this case has been getting a lot of media attention, but it is far from a typical case, and it is not at all cut and dry. Her parents have set up a touching website detailing why she should be kept alive, and I don't mean that sarcastically. It is touching; she is their daughter, and not only do they hold out hope of recovery, they don't want to see their daughter go. Who would?

The reason this case is so difficult, and kind of a sideshow, is that Terri herself has no legal record of her intentions. Her husband claims she would like to die, her parents say she wouldn't, so the case is basically one of deciding whose claim means more.

But that is not why the religious right is flocking (and I use that verb very literally) to this case. They don't really care about the husband/parents continuum. After all, the Bible says that one has to grow up and leave their parents and turn to their spouse. It might be hypocritical for the religious right to address it if those are the terms, and we all know they shun away from such behavior.

They want to squash the notion that any human can decide when a life should end (not counting the death penalty of course, though this is one of the few areas where the Catholic Church has been morally consistent, in their own peculiar way). They want to take away the ability of humans to have a say in the most important decision of their lives. Again, this isn't the issue in the Terri Schiavo case, but it is being spun as a matter of protecting life or embracing a culture of hedonistic death-worship.

This is where the right is at their best: spinning everything, twisting the issue around so that it is very hard to disagree with them, framing it in such a way that it seems godless and un-American to think any other way. Indeed, the very idea that they can lump "godless" and "un-American" into the same thought is a remarkable negation of history (for a full discussion on this, read Susan Jacoby's "Freethinkers." Absolutely worth the time and money).

But here is the rub: euthanasia, and its less medically sanctioned counterpart, your garden-variety suicide, is godless. Even if the religious do it, it is a way of taking back from god the most important decision of your life: when it should end. What can be more hubris-filled than that?

The legal arguments against euthanasia, or just pulling the plug, are all based in a very narrow, shallow morality. It is ostensibly pro-life, but it is really just pro-religion. It is a closed-minded definition of life to say that someone should have to suffer enormously, barely actually living, in order to satisfy someone else's idea of god's will. An actual appreciation of life would be to allow someone to decide how they want to go. To decide when exactly they have had enough of life.

Now don't get me wrong: I am not an advocate of suicide. Suicides are generally sudden, a momentary decision, leaving many mourners shocked and sad and angry and scarred, confused and adrift. It is a selfish decision in many ways (unless of course the person consults with others first, which is basically euthanasia).

This is not a culture of death; it is a true culture of life. I knew a man, a good friend, who suffered from ALS. It is a horrible, nasty disease- the body stops working but the brain is alive to watch the thousand humiliations and degradations that come daily to someone who can't do anything for themselves. I don't know if he ever seriously contemplated suicide, but if he had, who could blame him? That he never did was enormously inspiring and brave. He worked until shortly before he died, and his friends and family were richer for his courage and humor. I hope I can go out with half as much dignity. But this is exactly the point: he stayed on because he choose to do so.

And Hunter choose not to. It was probably selfish, he was recently married and had a son and grandson. He was suffering, but others suffered more. But so what? Is it for any of us to say what he should do with himself. Yes, we feel he owes us artistically, and that it is a waste and a shame that he is gone, and can feel vicarious anger for those he actually hurt, but it is not our call. I feel the same way about Kurt Cobain and Elliot Smith, perhaps more so because they were both still vital artists (surprising myself: Smith probably more so). So yes, there is anger, but can any of us say they are cowards? No.

Because we as humans shouldn't arrogate unto ourselves that right over the emotions and fundamental rights of others. We should reject the religious mentality that speaks of some vengeful cloud-demon fulminating and hurling lightning bolts because we take something from him. Enough of that, then. The right to die is key issue in whether or not America remains a secular country, the way it was meant to be.

I'll end where I began, with Rushdie, in the same book, at an address delivered in King's College Chapel, on the anniversary of his death sentence (let's be honest: Rushdie has as much right as nearly anyone to despise the over-bearing effects of religion, and its will to impose morality on others. The fatwa wanted Rushdie to die, and the religious want the suffering to live, but it the same coin. It is imposition and control). Here is his conclusion.

"I had to understand not just what I am fighting against- in this situation, that's not very hard- but also what I am fighting for, what is worth fighting for with one's life. Religious fanaticism's scorn for secularism and for unbelief has led me to my answer. It is that values and morals are independent of religious faith, that good and evil come before religion: that- if I may be permitted to say this in the house of God- it is perfectly possible, and for many of us even necessary, to construct our ideas of the good without taking refuge in faith. That is where our freedom lies, and it is that freedom, among many others, which the fatwa threatens, and which it cannot be allowed to destroy."

Notes on (yet another) New Nationalism

Nationalism is widely considered a dirty word, and with good reason: the ills of the 20th century sprung largely from the idea that one country, with its borders demarcated by arbitrary freaks of history, was morally superior to any other country, and had the right to assert its prominent position. That is the classic definition of nationalism- more recently we have seen broader nationalist movements, such as Arab Nationalism, the absurd idea that Arab speakers from Morocco to Iraq were united as one political, religious and ethnic identity, and should speak with one voice (this is the same idea that fuels the degrading and lazy notion of "The Arab Street").

But nationalism isn't always bad. In the last few months we have seen a new kind of nationalist resurgence, which seems to be at least partially inspired by the more benevolent half of American nationalism.

An explanation is in order. The classic idea of American nationalism is pride in the institution of democracy and the philosophy of freedom. Not in what America does, good or ill, but what America is, which is only good. Now, there is another kind of nationalism, the traditional kind, where America is something that is good and holy and one has to approve of whatever it does: a red, white and blue blimpishness that degrades and even contradicts the gentler version of nationalism (Anatol Lieven has a new book out on this. I have yet to read it, but have heard and seen him interviewed several times and feel it is worth checking out. His thoughts helped shape this section).

It is a gentler form of nationalism, this belief in institutions, but it should also be the stronger one, the one defended more fiercely. It is this version that the Bush Doctrine pledges to export to other countries, outposts of tyranny, anachronistic despotisms, and anyone else who wants to raise the flag of liberty. The problem is the domestic Bush doctrine systematically undermines the very institutions it correctly believes are worthy of exportation. Redefining torture (that vestige of autocracy) to make it easier, holding American citizens without access to lawyers or specific charges, grinding down the wall between church and state, trying to grant the President unlimited powers- these are symptomatic of the more virulent nationalism.
But, as of yet, the Administration does not hold sway in other parts of the world, at least not directly. And it is these parts foreign that we see the gentle, benevolent, but fierce from of nationalism growing, in a way that few would have expected.
Start with Lebanon. Following the murder of Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese began to take to the streets and demand that Syria leave, with surprising unity. An AP story in the Chicago Tribune talks of protesters holding "a copy of the Koran in one hand and a cross in another," an astonishing sight in a country still bearing the scars of sectarian civil war. The shock is doubled when one realizes that mass demonstrations against Syria were unthinkable even two months ago.

In addition, other Arab countries are joining in on the Syrian pile-on. Amr Moussa, former Egyptian Foreign Minister and current Secretary-General of the usually laughable Arab League is negotiating a withdrawal plan with the Syrians, though there have been a few twists and turns, and they have been filled with the kind of half-truths and complicated wordplay inanities that are the hallmark of dishonesty.

The other Arab countries joining in is incredible. In general, the Arab League and its member nations are slow to the point of absurdity to ever criticize a brother member. After all, one has to show solidarity to the outside world. If Arabs are taking the Arabs to task, it will just fuel the fire outside our neck of the woods. They were even loathe to say a word about the astonishing human rights abuses of Saddam Hussein.

This extended to the personal as well- the even the great Edward Said took Kanan Makiya behind the woodshed for airing dirty Arab laundry in public for his book "Republic of Fear" about excess cruelty of Saddamism (Makiya details the Said case, and the closed-door nature of Arab politics in full in "Cruelty and Silence"). After the fall of Saddam, Said “revealed” in Al-Ahram, the state-run weekly, that Saddam’s regime was “despicable one in every way and it deserved to be removed.” This would be more convincing if he hadn’t spent most of the previous six months coming up with every conceivable excuse to leave it in power. He talks of a “sense of anger at how outlandishly cruel and despotic the regime was.” This, it reads, was a surprise to the Arab people (Said's article is dissected in full on the old website.)

Were it a surprise, it was because of his efforts and the silence of other voices in the Arab world. But those are beginning to crack, as Arabs are rallying around the idea that Lebanon, and other countries, should be free to pursue their own destinies. But this is not a democratic Arab nationalism- this is individual nationalism in individual countries, giving sympathy to and drawing inspiration from each other. This is especially the case in Lebanon, where the Lebanese are not asking Syria to be a more benevolent Arab Big Brother, but merely to get out, and not let the door hit them on the way out.

In Egypt, too, there are louder grumblings about President Mubarak running for a fifth unopposed term, as the boredom and frustration with his tepid, half-hearted government is reaching new heights. Even Saudi Arabia had limited elections, a big step for a country that still has public beheadings. And one cannot forget Palestine and Iraq. The Palestinians voted overwhelmingly for Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate man who renounces violence is steering a course of intelligent, but passionate, pragmatism. And this all comes from Iraq, where the body politic rejected the notion of "vote and die," and also rejected the secular candidates of the occupying forces. So the election was not perfect, but it was also not a disaster.

There can be little doubt that Lebanon would be happening were it not for Iraq. Because people realized there were more important things than the phony banner of Arab solidarity and rallying behind dull ciphers like Bashar al-Asad. This Lebanese nationalism is very intelligently discussed on the very valuable beirut2bayside, located right here on blogspot. To read the relevant article, scroll down to where it says "The Wrong Nationalism," but one would be well-served by reading everything.

It is not just in the Arab world that this is happening. In Africa, the young NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa's Development) has been surprisingly bold in criticizing fellow African leaders. There was always a pact of sorts among the post-colonial governments never to say ill about another post-colonial government, as that would be giving aid and comfort to those who think Africa can't develop on its own in the modern world. There was some merit to this, some understandable wagon-circling, but the distressing irony is that this siege mentality and back-slapping blindness did incredible and tragic damage to Africa's development. It was hard enough to deal with the evil legacy of colonialism without further handicapping themselves with cruel and greedy natives.

But the leaders of NEPAD are sick of that. The most visible leader of NEPAD is Thabo Mbeki, but for my money the finest man they have is the Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade, a long-time dissident and fierce champion of democracy. He is not talking of a united Africa, except as a loose body of countries helping the people become free of the generation of corrupt and cruel leaders that sprung up since the white man pulled up stakes and fled into the night. A longer discussion of African leaders is important, but beyond the scope of this article. Suffice to say, in a few corners of that blighted continent that realize nationalism is about letting the people have a say in the workings of a responsible government, not about having a manly image around the world and playing to the fears of history.

You see this in a few other places as well. The recent revolutions on the Ukraine and Georgia were for responsible governance where a vote counted and institutions meant something. They were about national pride- but in the sense that people wanted a nation to mean something rather than just a flag and ancient battles. Were it just nationalism, in the traditional sense, the flag-waving, chest-beating old-guard kleptocracies would have waltzed away with victory. And nowhere was this more true than in Serbia, where the people resoundingly rejected violent nationalism in the revolution that toppled Milosevic.

Now, this does not represent a pattern where one can boldly say that freedom is on the march. The situations are too disparate to tie them together. There are different battles being fought in every one. But it does put paid to the parochial idea found on both the isolationist right and left that Western-style models of governance and ideas of responsibility are confined to America.

I know this responsible nationalism threatens the idea that the nation means less in a globalized world, but that is nothing to be afraid of. Nations just fading away, as envisioned (terrifyingly) by Kaplan or (wonderfully) by the most wide-eyed globalists, was probably not going to happen, and if it did it would more likely be the Kaplan-esque nightmare scenario of The Coming Anarchy. Who needs that? If the world can develop good clean governments, that would be a welcome alternative to a continuation of politics as usual.

Followup

A larger and more sober retrospective on his body of work will be forthcoming sometime in the next week or so, when I find time to really digest him again.

Hunter S. Thompson

Ye fucking Christ, as the man himself would say, were he still around. But he isn't. Hunter S. Thompson killed himself today. Here is a link to one of the stories about him. I am sure it will change as the day goes on- as more information comes out, as we get all the gruesome details, as the morgue-lovers and sycophants obsess over the details of a death that was, like all death, sad and personal, with the intimacy and horrifying solitaire nature of suicide. We'll gawk, but we won't really know.

This gibberish I am about to spew will be out of tone with the rest of the essays: more personal, more emotional, sadder. How can anyone feel differently? Hunter S. Thompson is one of the main reasons I want to write. I picked up his books in high school- the first one was "Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie," about the 1992 presidential elections. I realized later that, for all its high points, it wasn't his best work. But it didn't matter. I woke up while reading it, and realized, this is what I want to do.

The next book I grabbed, rushed to, was "The Great Shark Hunt," a collection of essays from the 60s and 70s. This was Hunter (and he is always a first-name guy) at his finest: he is best known for "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," which is a masterpiece, but it isn't his finest journalism.
And that is important- so very important. Hunter was a journalist. He tried to experiment with the style- you'll hear how he invented "gonzo journalism" a million times in a million obituaries- but that sadly obscured the heart of his works: the desire to gnaw at the bone of truth, to push aside any hypocrisy, any falsehood, any easy, truth-obscuring cliche. His essays in "The Great Shark Hunt" rank among the finest pieces of American journalism ever.

A personal aside: Hunter is who made me want to write. I have shaken off the tendency to try to write like him, because that is impossible. The desire to sound like Hunter has undermined many writers far more talented than I. But there is always something of Hunter there. There always has to be: his ferocious lust to get to the heart of the matter inspires every shallow imitation I produce. Every essay, at least in part, is a humble, non-imitative offering to the man. There are very few times when I don't imagine what he may have thought of an article, and many words have been scrapped because of his imaginary disapproval.

And this is important: this is what great writing does. Like so many others, I feel as if I knew Hunter. I feel his style, his beliefs, his artistic and moral aesthetics, affected nearly every word he ever wrote. Hunter was one of the few writers who you could feel his life on the pages; he encouraged you, prodded you, forced you to feel things deeper, harder, clearer. You did feel as if you were inside his head- he spilled it onto the pages, and his words bled out of the books: onto your table, your desk, spilling over your face. There was no way to read Hunter without coming hard against the man. Reading Hunter was to set yourself on a collision course with on of the most unique and idiosyncratic voices in American letters.

And that is what makes his suicide so harrowing. I have no idea what happened, but I cannot get this scenario out of my head: Hunter, alone in a room, drunk, pondering, feeling the intensity which surrounded his life, which was his unavoidable curse. God, the humanity in his writing, the depth of emotion. He is caricatured into a grotesque archetype of waste and excess- and he helped play up that role- but at the heart of his work was a human being possessing a terrifying involvement with life. I hate the thought of him alone and suddenly overwhelmed by a burst of deep, unknowable sadness, and pulling the trigger without a second thought.

Hell, in his novel, "The Rum Diaries," a mediocre book with some outstanding sequences, the narrator speaks of The Fear. What is The Fear? Who knows. It is a unnamable, clawing, atavistic emotion that no one can describe. The feeling that things aren't right- not that something is going badly, but that there is a fundamental flaw with the whole situation, and it can only be grasped at in certain moments, when the world turns at a strange angle, and you are seized by this awful feeling, but can't describe it. It has you, but you don't have it. The Fear. Hunter had it all the time, and I weepingly envision it being the last thing he felt.

This isn't the first time he talked about suicide. The introduction to "The Great Shark Hunt" in heavily involved with it. He talks of having a nice typewriter, a new one, and of being a 40-year-old writer in America. I will quote the end at length.

I feel like I might as well be sitting up here, carving the words for my own tombstone...and when I finish, the only fitting exit will be right straight off this fucking terrace and into the Fountain, 28 stories below and at least 200 yards out in the air and across Fifth Avenue.
Nobody could follow that act.
Not even me...and in fact the only way I can deal with the eerie situation at all is to make a conscious decision that I have already lived and finished the life I planned to live- (13 years longer in fact)- and everything from now on will be a new gig that ends tonight and starts tomorrow morning.
So if I decided to leap for The Fountain when I finish this memo, I want to make one thing perfectly clear- I would genuinely love to make that leap, and if I don't I will always consider it a mistake and a failed opportunity, one of the very few serious mistakes of my First Life that is now ending.
But what the hell? I probably won't do it (for all the wrong reasons), and I'll probably finish this table of contents and go home for Christmas and have to live for 100 more years with all this goddam gibberish I'm lashing together.
But, Jesus, it would be a wonderful way to go out...and if I do you bastards are going to owe me a king-hell 44-gun salutr (that word is "salute" goddamnit- and I guess I can't work this elegant typewriter as well as I thought I could)...
But you know, I could, if I had just a little more time.
Right?
Yes.

Well, Hunter, there you go. You'll get your goddam 44-gun king-hell salutr, all right. You'll be trumpeted for gonzo, for Las Vegas, for your obsession with drugs and guns and Las Vegas, for marking the debauched excess of the Kentucky Derby as the decadent and depraved slice of American filth it is. Your work in the 80s, distressingly sub-par, will be fairly glossed over. Your later work on ESPN.com/page2 was in the tradition of your best sports-writing- getting to the dark heart of the sports culture, of the violence around it, while still maintaining a love for the purity of athleticism.

But I worry the true darkness of your life will be passed over. You were taken by The Fear, and you saw it everywhere, and with it you captured America as well as anyone ever has. You are always described as "counter-culture" and you were, but that is such an easy term, lumping you in with Abbie Hoffman and a slew of others. You were not oppossed to things for the sake of oppossing them- you deeply felt the hypocrisy that tore apart the nation as it ate up individuals. Your tragedy was never being able to convince yourself that things could be better- you never comforted yourself with idealism. You saw the darkness everywhere.

I'd raise a gun for you Hunter. You liked guns, you liked the noise of guns, the rush of drugs, the thirll of lights and explosives and abandoning responsibility. Of taking life to the very edge. But that was always to run from The Fear. It wasn't hedonism, as I fear your obituaries will imply. You were not some hippie free-spirit. You were a spirit as chained to emotion as any which ever picked up a pen. You weren't oppossed to everything- you were a writer deeply versed in literature, and deeply affected by its power. You were a slave to The Fear, and it was evident in all your writing, and it seemed to catch up with you on a cold Aspen night.

You wrote of Hemingway's suicide. Of the bleak despiar of the Idaho town of Ketchum in which he put a shotgun to his head, and I can't help but think you had the same thought running through your head as you got ready to pull the trigger in a rush of emotion. "Perhaps he found what he came for," you wrote of Hemingway, in what could be on your tombstone, "but the odds are huge that he didn't. He was an old, sick and very troubled man, and the illusion of peace and contentment was not enough for him...So, finally, and what he must have thought the best of reasons, he ended it with a shotgun."

Hunter couldn't escape his fear. He couldn't escape the madness he saw in the world. He always had his reasons for everything, good and solid reason obscured by the insane force of his personality, but reasons rooted deeply in humanism and literature and a torturous sensitivity to the cruel rhythms of the world. And, finally, he put a shotgun to his brain, and destroyed his mind. Ended everything. For what one can only assume were the best of his reasons.

RIP, Hunter S. Thompson. One of the heroes.