Tales From the MoJo Road –
By Glynn Wilson –

Election Night 2024 is two days away and even 966 miles west of Washington, D.C. the tension in the air is so heavy it makes me seriously regret giving up my predilection for Xanax 20 years ago, about the time Hunter S. Thompson killed himself with a 357-magnum in his kitchen in Woody Creek, Colorado, near the haven for the rich in Aspen. A little weed and a few Flying Dog IPAs are not enough. These times call for hard drugs and hard liquor, only the house I’m hiding out in near Jonesboro, Arkansas is not exactly stocked up for that.

As I sip cup after cup of strong, dark roast coffee with brown sugar and half and half on Sunday morning and smoke pack after pack of cheap Montego blues while reading the New York Times online, it’s clear even the political public opinion pundits are still having a hard time explaining why half the people in the country seem quite willing to end American democracy as we know it to vote Donald Trump back into the White House, the biggest fraud and freak to ever run for office here or anywhere. Perhaps the only comparable figure is Vladimir Putin in Russia, but everybody knows elections in Moscow are rigged.

The U.S. election appears to be so close that in a last desperate act to try to prevent Trump’s election, Times criminal justice reporter Alan Feuer kindly points out that Trump has a “uniquely personal stake in the outcome of this election. If he wins, he may be able to wriggle out of many, if not all, of his four criminal cases. If he loses, he could end up in jail and lose his liberty, too.”

Yes, that’s what’s at stake for Trump, dictatorial power over a once great nation, or a prison cell or exile. But what about the rest of us? The other half of the country just wants Trump to be gone from the scene, either badly defeated, in prison or both, or just dead and gone.

“The presidential race appears to be hurtling toward a photo finish, with the final set of polls … finding Vice President Kamala Harris showing new strength in North Carolina and Georgia as former President Donald J. Trump erases her lead in Pennsylvania and maintains his advantage in Arizona,” the Times reports. “It has been decades since the polls have shown the nation facing a presidential race that is so close across so many states in both the Sun Belt and the Rust Belt. The tightly-contested landscape means the race remains highly uncertain as the campaign enters its final hours.”

Harris is now narrowly ahead in Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, which is good news, while Trump leads in Arizona, where the heat has obviously fried the brains of all the retirees who moved there for relief from the cold and the humidity of the South and East. Harris and Trump are locked in close races in Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania, and we won’t find out the results in Pennsylvania, Georgia or California on election night anyway.

“The results in all seven states are within the margin of sampling error,” the Times points out in a total cop out of calling the election ahead of time, “meaning neither candidate has a definitive lead in any of them.”

It’s going to be a long night. It might be better to sit this one out and watch a Netflix series or a movie instead, or maybe a tape of an old football game.

Ralph Steadman art for “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72”: NAJ screen shot

I recommend season two of “The Diplomat,” where the Prime Minister of England is accused of hiring a Russian thug to attack a British ship so he can win an election to keep the United Kingdom together and not lose Scotland, Ireland and Wales to independence.

Or maybe “The Big Chill,” where a bunch of friends gather to mourn the loss of a college friend to suicide while listening to the greatest hits from 1960s and ’70s rock and roll.

Or you could go back and read or watch the end of the Roman Empire for context. This could very well be the end of the empire, such as it is, of the United States.

As I read the final poll results before the election, a voice in my head asks: Should I find a church to pray in? Or head straight for the liquor store? Both exist less than a mile from here in opposite directions. (I’ll let you know later what I decided).

Meanwhile a little side note for planning purposes. The final painting and packing of the used Ford media camper van is now complete (pictures soon) so we are headed out on Tuesday for Little Rock, where we’ve been granted media credentials to observe how the Democrats in Arkansas react to Election Night news. It’s probably not going to be pretty, but it will be an interesting new experience in any event.

We’ve discovered an interesting park and campground near the downtown hotel by a lake, so no matter what we learn on election night, we’ll be camping with a waterfront view. It might be a small consolation, but at least we will be out of cotton country and the smoke from burning rice fields, which is playing havoc with the sinuses.

The plan for the day after the election is to head back north for a couple of days to Eureka Springs and Cassville, Missouri, where the cannabis gummies are legal and the Montegos come cheap. The plan is to check out a new state park campground on the banks of the Roaring River near Eagle Rock, where hopefully a visit with our Cherokee ancestors might help determine the direction of our trip from there.

Winter is coming, and until we know the outcome of the election, a definitive plan in direction is hard to decide. I do not believe Trump is going to win this election, in spite of what the mainstream media reports. Trump is going down for good, now or soon.

As for Hunter Thompson, a Bing private search reminds of his timely demise at the age of 67 – an age I hit in October – not long after George W. Bush was sworn in for a second term as president. He would have had a hard time living through the Bush Great Recession, or coming to terms with eight years of Obama in the White House, only to see him followed by the likes of Trump. He would have considered that the final and definitive “death of the American Dream,” something he had been writing about since at least 1969.

“He wanted to leave on top of his game,” his wife Anita Thompson, 32, told The Rocky Mountain News. “This is a triumph of his, not a desperate, tragic failure. He lived a beautiful life and he lived it on his own terms, all the way from the very beginning to the very end.”

Hunter Thompson’s Chilling Death

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