[BraveMan]

Continuing with the "All Thompson, All The Time" theme this week on FR, here is yet another article. Love 'em or hate 'em, Fred has a unique way of interpreting the view through the looking glass.

Apologies if this has been previously posted; I looked & looked (still don't believe it hasn't already been posted . . .)

[Ciexyz]

That whole era can be summed up by the song "I went thru the desert on a horse with no name..." You listen to that song and say, what the hell is that all about? Weird shit.

[Allan]

Continuing with the "All Thompson, All The Time" theme this week on FR

All rather amusing to me.

I suffered through the dreadful sixties
but fortunately never heard of Hunter Thomson
until last week.

I didn't have a clue who he was
and I am rather thankful for that.

[GianniV]

Fred - only cowards live in the past. Quit romantizicing a horrible time in American history - drugs, sexual disease, rampant crime (see burning cities), creation of a welfare state, lack of respect for authority, etc.

These kids of the 60s were a bunch of spoiled brats. And now these divorce idiots have given America a generation of wacked out kids, who I can only pray will see the light and distance themselves from their parents' false notion of self-indulgence and self-importance.

[GRANGER]

It is interesting to observe the FR reaction to the news of Hunter S. Thompson's suicide. The saddest thing is the ignorant hatefulness expressed toward him by those who know very little about him. He was NOT a communist or a hippie. If any label applied, he was a Libertarian. He loved freedom and the rights of the individual. He held the 2d Amendment close to his heart. I grew up with him (reading him) along with many others. Although I am a life-long conservative Republican who won several medals in Viet Nam, I laughed at his pillories of Nixon. I celebrated his wedding with a beautiful woman >30 years younger, because I followed a similar flight path. But his love for this woman was what killed him in the end; he could not draw her any closer than the spirit of freedom he so loved. He was an American Original in the vein of Thomas Paine, Samuel Clemens, and H. L. Mencken. He will be missed.

[phoenix0468]

HST was second rate sober and only appealed to drug users and beatniks when he wrote high. He made no great contribution to journalism except that he wrote from a perspective of fantasy rather than fact most of the time. How can anyone truly believe that a person whacked out on 40 hits of LSD could be speaking anything but total bull ____.

[phoenix0468]

"The Sixties look drab now—unkempt Manson girls, the lost and unhappy, kids bleak and bleary-brained after waking up with too many strangers in too many sour crash pads. There was that. It was not a time for the weak-minded."

The first sentence describes the young adults of the sixties as weak minded, the last says it was not a time for it. Both are true, and that in and of itself sums up the failure of the sixties. If young adults would have been joining in and working for constructive change instead of "Dropping Acid, and Dropping Out" as the old saying went (I may have misquoted it, but it is close enough), then Vietnam would have either ended with victory or much earlier than it did. The same thing is happening today from the left. Instead of coming up with valid logical arguments against the war in Iraq, they keep attacking events, people, and organizations that don't jive with their thinking. If their is a reason for something being bad, such as the war in Iraq, then come up with a valid reason. Don't just say, "it's bad, people are dying, it costs too much, Mr. Bush this, and Sec. Rumsfeld that." I am sick and tired of beatniks, hippies, and commie sympathizers spouting crap to denigrate authority.

[gonzo]

I knew this sh!t would happen...............FRegards