Ask A Doctor

“Boom! Boom! Just like that. The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now ― with somebody ― and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives. It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerrilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.”

This how Doctor Hunter S. Thompson described the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. The founder of Gonzo and one time candidate for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado wrote down his thoughts and concerns in an essay published on ESPN.com, of all places. How did this polemic show up on an entertainment/sports network's website? As the Doctor once said himself, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." 
Hunter died in 2005. He never got to fully appreciate just how weird things would become. We can now look back at what he wrote then to appreciate just how much he understood: "This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won't hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force."
Sixteen years burning down the road, we've got another goofy child-president who is still trying to manage a war that might not ever end. Because this is a war of fear and loathing, something Doctor Thompson wrote about most of his life. Trying to find the bad guys turned out to be pretty difficult because, at times, they were us. The merciless fanatics on both sides continue to wage this war as if there could be a winner. Maybe it hasn't been long enough yet, but here's something else Hunter wanted us to remember: "Yesterday's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why."