Is Anyone Really Surprised By This?

Author Hunter S. Thompson, famous for his counter-culture writing ("Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas") and as the inspiration for the "Uncle Duke" character in Doonesbury, committed suicide this evening at his home in Colorado. His sports writing for ESPN "Page 2" had become increasingly erratic over the last year, with lots of political angles that convinced me he had gone off the deep end. From his April 10, 2003 column:

Three journalists have died in Baghdad so far, and not one of them was killed by Enemy Fire. They were shot down like dogs by U.S. military personel, killed and wounded and mangled by Americans, who drive American M1 Abrahms battle tanks and eat all-American pie, just like the rest of us. American troops are killing journalists in a profoundly foreign country, under cover of a war being fought for savage, greed-crazed reasons that most of them couldn't explain or even understand.
What the hell is going on here? How could this once-proud nation have changed so much, so drastically, in only a little more than two years. In what seems like the blink of an eye, this George Bush has brought us from a prosperous nation at peace to a broke nation at war. And why are we killing innocent people at point-blank range on the other side of the world -- with big guns and big bombs that kill everything in reach?
Indeed, there is something going on here, Mr. Jones, and you don't know what it is, do you?
Bob Dylan said that, and he is still right, now more than ever. Hell, there is nothing really new about American enforcers -- especially cops -- killing and brutalizing innocent American citizens. It happens with depressing regularity. But at least the bastards used to have the decency to deny it.
That is a big difference, sports fans, and that is why I feel so savagely depressed tonight. When the Pentagon feels free -- and even gleeful -- about killing anybody and Everybody who gets in the way of their vicious crusade for oil, the public soul of this country has changed forever, and professional sports is only a serenade for the death of the American dream.

Checking in with the moonbats, it looks like they were able to get up to 29 posts until someone brought up the likelihood that the Republicans had him killed and tried to make it look like a suicide...

Going deep...