Not working, blogging

The revolution grinds on in earnest.

Watching Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson I am reminded yet again that our lot is one that has been railed against since way before my time. HST flipped his lid after the '68 DNC - the sight of Chicago cops clubbing hippies, with the blessing of the Democrats and Chicago Mayor Daley was too much. Fast forward to Denver and St Paul this year, or RNC-NYC in 2000.

Spot the difference.

Here we are forty years later. Hunter did as much for journalism and the mainstream as he did for the counterculture and acid. The parallels between the freak-out 60s psychedlic culture and the acid-eating doof scene of today are so obvious that comparison is vapid and unneccessary... but where is our Hunter, Tim Leary or Merry Bunch of Pranksters? We have the hedonistic individualism, the drugs, the music... but where the fuck are the people? I guess the only difference is that seemingly everyone was doing it in the 60s, whereas now it is just one of a myriad of splintered interest-specific subbacultchas.

The political and the psychedelic were much more connected back then. Since the emergence of rave culture (and its derivatives in the years since) the psychedelic experience - or whatever you want to call getting high and dancing like a muppet - has become an almost exclusively apolitical ritual. Sure, there is a sense of oneness and unity on the dancefloor, in the mud or wherever it may be, but the vast majority of the punters are there to get munted, forget about the ugly world they're forced to inhabit and maybe get laid. There's no tuning in; just turn on and drop out.

What would Hunter do? He blew his fucking brains out, such was his disdain for the zeitgeist.