Robert Anton Wilson died yesterday just a few days shy of his 75th birthday. Beloved by the e-liberty Internet hordes, magicians, dope fiends, gun nuts, conspiricists and other political artists, RAW’s death was immediately noted by Boing Boing, Reason, 10 Zen Monkeys and not a single newspaper or wire service beyond this web-only column at the Panama City News-Herald site.
That’s to be expected. (The weekend should see at least a few print obits, we hope.) Wilson was a cult writer’s cult writer with the kind of fans who re-read his Cosmic Trigger and Illuminatus! series as an anual ritual. He was also a Discordian pope, Crowley scholar, Playboy Magazine editor and California gubernatorial candidate. He was and is a principal proponent of a kind of techno-hippie-mystic-2nd Amendment libertarianism that is worlds away from the Cato stereotype yet incredibly influential in Silicon Valley and electronic media. And unlike the “political thinkers” who clog Washington’s green rooms on Sunday mornings, Wilson was hilarious … on purpose.
Learn about the Guns & Dope Party’s platform, after the jump.
Wilson once described himself as a libertarian who didn’t “hate poor people,” which does away with the central objection most libertarian-leaning liberals have with a political movement pretty much owned by people who think they’re acting out some brave Tyrannosaurus Rex vs. the Herbivore drama by not giving a dollar to a hungry bum.
His platform for the mostly fictional Guns & Dope Party went like this, in part:We advocate:Ostriches play a similar role to Jesus in the GOP or minorities in the Democratic Party: The leadership doesn’t really care about these symbols one way or the other, but it provides a handy identity for the party loyalists. Here’s some campaign propaganda from the RAW site:
1 guns for those who want them, no guns
forced on those who don’t want them (pacfists, Quakers etc.)
2 drugs for those who want them,
no drugs forced on those who don’t want them (Christian Scientists etc.)
3 an end to Tsarism and a return to constitutional democracy
4 equal rights for ostriches.
And here’s a little Poor Richard’s-esque homily: Little Tony was sitting on a park bench munching on one candy bar after another. After the 6th candy bar, a man on the bench across from him said, “Son, you know eating all that candy isn’t good for you. It will give you acne, rot your teeth, and make you fat.”RAW Essence [RAW Data]
Little Tony replied, “My grandfather lived to be 107 years old.”
The man asked, “Did your grandfather eat 6 candy bars at a time?”
Little Tony answered, “No, he minded his own fucking business.”
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