World of Gonzo
America The Beautiful
America, what is that beautiful thing? If you believe the real old folks, the ones who were born in those misty years when, or just before, the country burned up like the chromers' corpses after I was done with them, it was Babylon burning. Blood spilling into the canals of the great city, citizens looting and rioting, and the beautiful burning of Manifest Destiny of burning down villages in Central America to distract from the first two. We see that in the holovids, the old flats, the books, and all the scars and skeletons that you see driving from Night City to Washington D.C. Now, for the undereducated ganger, booster, and creep who lives in the combat zone, they just see it as some long ago time, or just something talked about between the people who toss them out of society, or as the justification for this or that suit to talk about. Most of us see it in the government ran by the military, and their good old friends in Millitech. Suits and uniforms, uniforms and suits. Consider it legitimate, shrug at how it's just a dictatorship shared around the same circle of people like an abused junkie girl in a drug den. \
But if you've ever read Hemingway, you know what America was. You ever read Mark Twain, you know what America was. You ever read HST, you know America. It was a damn rough place, but it gleamed like a diamond covered in shit with a spotlight on it. The euros who wouldn't be caught dead now going to the US to settle down, their great-great-great-great-great grand uncle and his brood of four hundred children settled down and prospered, enticed by that diamond gleaming. Made themselves rich, got to live well, better than anyone else. Then everything went to Hell in a handbasket and hand grenade. Me? Well, there's a lot of things for old Gonzo to say about Old Glory. Seen a lot of it. I've driven from Night City to Washington, D.C. as a nomad, on every upper, downer, screamer, all arounder, that you can think of. I've seen the sunset in Santa Fe while on a stamp of acid. Oranges turned green and greens turned purple and turquoise to silver. Been on speed driving through Utah, those religious nuts and their big beehive of a religious commune. Heard old stories from an older nomad who swore he transported the first Stage Seven across the US from New York to Night City back in the '20s, in the middle of a Kansas night on peyote. Done all that and more. So I can go ahead and give my educated, drug-enhanced opinion: Just can't help but feel like a Roman traipsing 'round the ruins, shaking my head at how it all happens.
Here's how it goes: Some man in a suit or toga or armor sets everything up nicely, and everyone afterwards fucks it up. Yeah, now it looks like it's all together, but when you stare a skull in the face while you've ingested two stamps of acid in the middle of the Dakotas, knowing full well that this was some poor dumb bastard from the 1990s who likely had seen the good times, and died from either the wildfires, starvation, robbery, or just the plain old Wasting Disease, you wonder how it can ever be put back together, better than before. Hell of a humpty dumpty that fell off his big wall. Even when the President wraps themselves in the flag as they wade through blood to "reunite America", they're talking about an old dream, long since dead. You, dear readers, know I've talked about this. The flag, the stars and bars, the eagle, near everyone thinks it exists. It doesn't. Hasn't for near a century now. Blew itself open with a shotgun back in the '90s, and they're trying to reanimate a corpse. But so many people want that corpse to be up and about, even if it's a zombie that'll devour them.
Century before, before they were run off or executed like so many "savages" by corps who wanted their tropical resorts, their beaches, and their privacy away from the unwashed masses, primitive people in the Pacific Islands had something called, "Cargo Cults". They saw the planes whirring in the sky, schooooo, whizzz, bang! They dropped gifts like the gods they worshipped, and when they disappeared, these primitives tried to make their own things. Replicas of planes, radios, air strips. Thought they might get the boons and gifts if they had the stuff to make it. Sure, looked roughly the same on the outside, but nothing working on the inside. Didn't have the right touch to make it right. That's what's it like with all these gangs who put on patches of America, American flags, Americana. It all looks about the same, but it's just not right. Can't work like it did because the internals are all wrong. The Sixth Street Gang, one I've loathed with a passion for a long time, does this. They beat their chests, they make their salutes to the flag like Boy Scouts of Yesteryear and wants to be back into the Union. Meanwhile, they ship drugs, make protection rackets, and use the flag to hide all that. Perhaps they'd fit in just fine with the old US, when they killed themselves over the drugs they had brought in. The new one as well.
The "cyberpunks" of fifty, sixty years ago had the right idea. America needed a new dream, a new concept to work when everything else had been vaporized by the Gang of Four and Martial Law. Yet what did they do? Die, sell out, go into hiding, or make the NET a true pain in the ass to deal with. The corporations were here to stay, and have stuck around like a tick. So we're stuck here, hum drum and wondering what the hell we're doing.
Now, at least there's one small part of America that hasn't changed too much. Might call it a pilgrimage, like I did back in '72 for the centennial, but I'm headed to Vegas; it feels about the last shred of that old America left. Gaudy, decadent, ridiculous and covered in more than it's own filth, but it shines like a diamond.
So, my dear and devoted readers, I will be off to Vegas for a while. Need to find myself lost deep into writing, acid, tequila, and the last shred of America.
Slouching towards Gomorrah, otherwise known as Las Vegas,
Gonz.
Set between Chapter 3 and Interlude 1 of A Man With a Heart.
All credit belongs to BlackStar for writing these.