Counter-culture icon Hunter S. Thompson shot himself dead in Colorado two Sundays past. Though he never matched his Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, old Hunter, mescaline and all, was one of the greatest American journalists of the century. He reported on Hell's Angles, Hispanics, American Indians and all sorts of other stories conventional media shied away from. And what's truly interesting is that his work explains where we are today-not only as a campus but as a nation, in the midst of another questionable war and governed yet again by an equally questionable administration nearly 35 years after Richard Nixon's agents were caught in the Watergate hotel.
That hackneyed quote of Hunter S. Thompson's, \We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave,"" illuminates the '60s. But it was the pessimistic conclusion of that quote that encapsulates the American scene from the 1968-2005: ""With the right kind of eyes,"" Thompson wrote, ""you can almost see the high-water mark-the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.""
Thompson knew the revolution of the 1960s. He called it a fight against all that was ""Old and Evil."" The motto was ""never trust anybody over thirty."" Then again, Nixon told his men not to hire anybody over thirty, as younger men obey orders more readily. Thompson always recognized the contradictions. He celebrated yet mourned the 1960s, as he knew the decade represented a quashed revolution. He killed himself at a time when that fact cannot be anything but clear.
Years before we were born, our Madison campus knew the revolution of the 1960s as part of the movement against an old, bankrupt order. Today, however, that order sits in all the highest seats of the land, and it seems as if most Madison students are as resigned as any other students: less than one in five voters in November 2004 were under 30, for example.
Part of the reason for this lies in the above Hunter S. Thompson quote. The ""wave"" was the fight to end the Cold War and Vietnam. There was progress. Black students now attend the University of Mississippi without soldiers' presence. In theory, female professors can earn what male professors earn (despite Harvard President Larry Summers' doubts).
Hope and progress aside, there was, as Thompson pointed out, a backwash-a great reaction to the ferment of the 1960s. One reverend, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, and decades later a different reverend, Jerry Falwell, sprouted up. Nixon invented his ""southern strategy"" of pitting black against white as a way to win the Oval Office. Two decades after JFK was elected it was Ronald Reagan's Morning in America. Justice Thurgood Marshall was replaced by Clarence Thomas while George H.W. Bush rode Willie Horton (the black man who raped the white woman) into the presidency. Recently, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney carried over ninety percent of the South's majority white counties while finding time to warn the rest of us about mushroom clouds.
Thompson saw the evidence for his fears not just in history, but in the cultural air we breathe. We are governed by men who fear sex, gays and a Janet Jackson button come undone if not those ""Jeff Gannon"" websites; men (plus Condi Rice) who seek to shape and stabilize the world with tax cuts for rich folk, war for poor folk and corporate mergers for all.
In Thompson's America too many of us fear mullahs, nuclear terrorism, anthrax, those who speak black English and Spanish, assertive women and dissenters. The Cold War is over and Sept. 11, 2001 will soon be four years gone, but they still tell us we are ""safer"" but ""not safe;"" to be afraid but ""keep shopping;"" to cheer democracy (which is ""on the march"") but ""watch what we do, watch what we say;"" that we need to spend another $82 billion on war.
On campus here in Madison, the very notion of a public higher education is being challenged as the state continues to find difficulty in funding its flagship university. In many ways, the promises of the '60s are being rolled back on every front. From Reagan to Bush, we are in the midst of Hunter Thompson's wave. Only it is retreating from the high-water mark. Perhaps many Madison students are resigned or ""don't care"" because it seems like the ""Old and Evil"" will never be washed away.
In part, though, the story of the '60s backlash should show us that, in the words of Ecclesiastes, Pete Seeger and his admirers, the Byrds, there's ""a time to love and a time to hate."" In other words, things change. That's an obvious, even glib, assertion. Yet it is profoundly optimistic: things often change for the better. Slavery, child labor, gender-restricted suffrage and Jim Crow were all abolished. If none were replaced by something perfect, it is equally true that all were replaced by something better. We may live in fearful, bigoted and war-mongering times, but change comes. It's too bad Hunter S. Thompson won't be around to see the next wave.
