Fear and Loathing In The State of Jefferson

Fear and Loathing in the State of Jefferson

Cyrus Emerson

Copyright © 2018 by Cyrus Emerson

Published in 2018 by Cyrus Emerson

Cover illustration by Jesse Ambrose

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First edition: 2011

7 8 11 77 67 88 9 11

www.JustImagineItInk.com

Table of Contents

Part 1: MySpace:

Part 2: Inlandia Institute:

Part 3: Talent Poetry Readings:

This book is dedicated to Hunter S. Thompson

Part 1: MySpace:

December 27, 2005 to May 15, 2006

Introduction:

In 2005 this collection begins. America had invaded two countries after 9/11. As a recent Journalism graduate feeling as though the Bush Administration needed to go down, and with new tools like MySpace, the world’s leading social media site at the time, a digital platform opened the way for global publication without working at Rolling Stone.

Free to create the news as an individual without institutional control; borrowing from everything and everyone with a cyber notebook.

27 Dec 2005

Shhhh . . .

In the trees on Mt. Ashland we built a shelter. The wind cut through sharply, and I’m sure that without are jackets we would have been very cold.

Down the hill we could see younger energetic snowboarders taking jumps of a little kicker on a trail.

We smoked and talked of the weather, and the sense of survival that had over taken us. No longer are the trips to the mountain just about fun, they are a test, and a challenge for survival.

Could I live up here with a book of matches, a rifle, and some snowshoes? I’m not sure if I could, but the way things are going, it would be a good skill to pick up.

28 Dec 2005

A whisper turns into a rumor. Everyone seems to be picking up on the vibration. There is a beat moving through the woods. Wherever it takes us it must be better than this . . .

Anything would be better than this. Somewhere inside, there is hope, and a great man once said Hope is all we have.

So keep going, keep breathing, keep moving, keep working, keep trying for something, and never settle for anything less than happiness.

From the AP Wire:

"A federal judge this week ordered the federal government to continue spilling extra water over some of the dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers in spring and summer to help young salmon migrate to the ocean.

The order from the US District Judge James Redden comes as a result of his ruling earlier this year that the Bush Administration’s latest plan for operating the dams JEOPARDIZED THE SURVIVAL OF THE ENDANGERED FISH.

The National Marine Fisheries Service argued that putting the young fish in barges and tank trucks to get them around the dams was better for the fish, and allowed the dams to avoid the LOSS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN ELECTRICITY REVENUES.

But the judge rejected that idea.

Alan Moore of Trout Unlimited, one of the plaintiffs in the case, says he is happy to hear that the judge agrees with conservation groups and fisherman that the RIVER IS THE BEST PLACE FOR FISH."

To me this represents everything wrong with our society. We will kill off an entire species, or at least weaken their survival, in the pursuit of money.

Molly Ivins is a Genius

Molly Ivins is a nationally syndicated columnist and if you haven’t read her editorials you should. You’ll most likely be able to get them in your own hometown newspaper.

This is interesting and caught my attention.

Excerpt from Molly Ivins editorial in the Medford Mail Tribune 12-30-05:

The Democrats have a new strategy that may finally get the Republicans off the pot. They’re working to get a minimum wage increase on state ballots, including Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Arkansas and Montana. The theory is that putting a minimum-wage increase on the ballot does for Democrats what putting on an anti-gay marriage proposition does for Republicans—it gets out the base.

…In theory, this should scare the happy pappy out of the Republicans, who will then vote to increase the minimum wage the first chance they get in Congress, thus assuring an increase either way. Clever, eh?

Now back to another story we ran on the Jefferson Daily yesterday 12-30-05:

From the AP wire:

Governor Schwarzenegger [A Republican] is expected to propose a one dollar increase in the state’s minimum wage—after vetoing similar legislature this year.

Clever, eh?

January 2006

Public Service Announcement:

If you are a Democrat, or disagree with the current administrations policies in any way, you could be monitored by the NSA.

Cell phone users are the easiest to tap because the phone signals go through satellites, and no physical wire taps are needed. The signals can be intercepted in space.

All phone calls by environmentalist, animal rights supporters, hemp activists, peace activists, or anti-Bush policy sympathizers, are treated as terrorist threats.

The information gathered by the NSA can be used to create criminal files. These criminal files can be passed on to employers to keep you from being hired, or to block advancement. Criminal files can also be given to banks to block loans, and even your credit history can be jeopardized by the things you say to other people.

To protect yourself only use your cell phone for emergencies, and remember, Watch What You Say.

14 Jan 2006

These blogs are inspired by Hunter S. Thompson, I've been reading a lot of his work lately, and things today, are mirroring the things he wrote about in the 70s.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE SATE OF JEFFERSON . . .REDNECKS. . .NATIVE AMERICANS. . .JEFFERSONIAN HEMP LAWS. . .SHARKS. . .LITTLE GREEN PEOPLE

REDNECKS:

Locked in the Jefferson Public Radio Newsroom on a Saturday night, I’m trying to sort out the meaning of a Seattle Seahawk playoff win over the Washington D.C. Redskins.

My connection with the game goes beyond being from the Northwest in our current troubles as a country in world affairs. It goes back to those three years when I lived in Virginia and learned about the power that runs our country. At that time, I spent many weekends watching Washington Redskins games.

NATIVE AMERICANS

What a trip . . .

A Seahawk has killed a Redskin in the consciousness of the American mind, on national television, to an audience of millions who all stood in horrific amazement.

How had this happened? Not since the early 70s had anyone seen such a miracle of sorts. But there was no way to ignore it, it was like gravity, or a mathematical equation, the proof was beyond doubt . . .

To understand this miracle we must first examine its roots. These roots run deep into the psyche of the American mind. A soil of untold stories and a national myth like George Washington cutting down the cherry tree.

Hemp is evil. This seems to be a quote from George Orwell’s 1984. Coincidentally this is also the last year in which the Seattle Seahawks won a playoff game. Since that year a long drought of futile seasons has followed. Depressing losses in such spectacle that Seattle has become synonymous with suicide. But this is getting away from my point about the history, I must continue that thread.

Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country. -Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States

JEFFERSONIAN HEMP LAWS

It is widely known that Jefferson was a supporter of hemp and that he drafted the constitution on hemp paper, and yet we find ourselves in a society that is clearly anti-hemp.

To dive into this cultural divide, we must admit to ourselves that money and capitalism are very important to all of us. These are American values that we can all agree upon.

Considering the importance of money we can dispassionately see the sense of anti-hemp legislation and propaganda. William Randolph Hearst owned the largest media conglomeration in America in the early 1900s. He had large timber interests, and through a partnership with DuPont, he organized a campaign to make hemp illegal. (DuPont was ready to monopolize the textile industry with fossil fuel driven production lines, and hemp was a direct competitor, watch the Hemp Revolution)

Hearst used his media empire to rebrand hemp as marijuana in the cult classic film Reefer Madness. This gave it a Mexican feel, something that the large white powerbase didn’t like. When legislation went though Congress to make marijuana illegal most voted to do so even against their own interests because they didn’t know marijuana was hemp.

So now that we have got that out in the open, and we’re on the same page here, let’s move on . . .

SHARKS

In the 1960s, in an age of turmoil, the oil industrial complex was coming to an end. The television made information more accessible and Richard Nixon lost a presidential election in 1960 because of his appearance on television.

The power base was eroding, holding on to grass so that they would not fall of the edge of the earth like some drunken Irishman. Blessed by the Shock and Awe of a Kennedy assassination on film, the Sharks sunk to the depths of the ocean, and waited for a chance.

Four years of Lyndon Johnson’s failures as a president and the Sharks were back at it again. Hell, LBJ didn’t even run for office.

So they were back, that skeleton in the closet profiting from anti-hemp legislation. Those evil thugs that created Reefer Madness were once again strengthening their grip on the heart of the country. The evil thugs that had been in power since the middle of World War Two when the best and brightest were fighting a war abroad and the weak and incompetent were sitting at home running the country.

Maybe that is why they keep sending us to war? With the gorilla out of the house the chimpanzee has the run of the whole situation. He uses the gorilla to defend himself and yet secretly plots to have the gorilla killed off so that chimpanzee’s can rule the world.

Yes the Sharks were back. Promoting their New World Order, one that would make George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and any other great mind roll over in his or her grave.

I think the success of Hitler must have been a great influence. A common man using every means of the media to create a society that mindlessly follows orders. What a great thing to do in the minds of these Sharks running the country. Wouldn’t you want absolute power if you had power . . .?

I can’t answer that because I’ve been oppressed since the day I was born. I live in an occupied country. Occupied since the day John Kennedy died, or maybe occupied since the day hemp became illegal, or maybe the day Columbus landed in the new world. Then again, maybe the day money became more important than God, Family, Country, Friends.

The seed to all of this can be traced back to Julius Caesar riding a chariot through Rome after being proclaimed emperor, yet even that does not fit the bill, it must have been because of Alexander the Greats’ conquests through Asia. The bastard couldn’t even name a successor. He gave it to the most-hungry and evil of characters to fight over.

Some would probably say it’s a Biblical tale, like Cain and Able, or Adam and Eve, but wasn’t Alexander around before the publication of the Bible. Isn’t his story a real story, of a real man, that lived, and can be documented? Aren’t the pyramids more real than Noah’s Ark?

Back to Nixon and this mean streak that assumes power. There seems to be a migration here, from the Greeks, to the Romans, to the Europeans, to the Americans, a migration of power and greed; a soldier’s spirit