SCOTUS Dope, Hitler's Party Needle & Other Right-Wing Narco Delights...

Listening this morning to the great David Feldman discuss late Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s secret house deed, which insisted – in binding terms – that Big Bill could never sell his home to “non-white people,” I was reminded of a fun fact I learned about the very same judge, back when I was working for a certain muckracking pornographer in the Reagan Era. Turns out, for ten years Justice Partypants was strung out on placidyl, a disco orgy type-drug, popular at Plato’s Retreat. (Look it up.) Those who did the stuff say it made you feel “flippy-floppy…” Indeed, according to FBI reports, Rehnquist checked himself into George Washington Hospital, where he tried to escape in his pajamas and imagined that the CIA was plotting against him. Been there! I mean who among us, right? If anything -  and I never thought I’d say this – it kind of makes me like the guy. 

Not that it matters, but somehow I have always been fascinated by fascist drug use.

Entire books have been devoted to the subject. My favorite, Norman Ohler’s masterpiece, Blitzed, depicts, among others things, the sheer, soul-crushing Allied surprise over the Nazi Blitzkrieg. At first, no one could figure out how those determined Germans could just keep rolling, full tilt, without ever, you know, sleeping…. Turns out, of course, the tank jockeys and on-the-ground Wehrmacht were running on Pervitin, first of the go-go amphetamine pills Hitler’s chemists cooked up to keep troops, you know, super-awake. And which (imitation being the sincerest form of flattery) the US and England modified and started slipping to their own troops for that extra edge.War, as von Clausewitz never said, is just drug use by other means…

Hitler, of course, subsisted on a festive combo platter of morphine, amphetamine, cocaine, vitamin B12 and Bulgarian peasant stool. This last, according to der fuhrer’s personal croaker, Dr. Morell, was for that extra oomph: the wake-up get-up-and-go that only a syringe packed with extra-manly Eastern Euro power feces can provide.

I’ve never tried them – I’m easily squeamed – but right off the bat I have to ask, how do you know the shit’s pure Bulgarian peasant, and not stepped on with Slovenian insurance broker, or some Royal Family droppings? Word is, a lot of down-and-out dukes will do anything for a dollar. For those interested, UPS even has special mailers. They use them with Cologuard, those mail-in colon-cancer tests. So that men afraid of colonoscopies can drop a deuce in a little poop coffin and mail it off to trained professionals in Cleveland. (And imagine when your new mail-person delivers that to the wrong address. Fun!) Full disclosure, I tried going the Cologuard route and the results came back positive. Now that was a tricky day. Half the people I told laughed at me for trusting a product with a dancing colon in its commercials, half feigned appropriate sympathy – and then laughed at me for trusting the dancing colon people….  Suffice it to say, after two back-to-back rush colonoscopies, and some fun Up Periscope procto-visits in between, the whole deal was deemed a false alarm. My advice is, skip the crap-in-the-box, man up and –  to steal half of a much-better-than-it-sounds-here Maron bit - go get ass-raped by a machine like a real American.  

But where were we? The bottom line, knowing Hermann Goring was a morphine addict does nothing to redeem the man’s sins. If anything, it makes morphine look bad. (A hundred years ago, I tried it as a kick pill. I recall the things being tiny and purple, like mutant M&Ms. But more of a stabilizer than a main dish. Then again, who knows what extras Hermann slapped in his own special sauce? As pros will tell you, it’s not just the drugs, it’s the delivery system.

Similarly, the revelation, back in the day, that rightwing titan Rush Limbaugh did so much oxycontin he lost his hearing – say what? – left me with a weirdly hollow feeling.

There used to be a world where a budding young junkie could fantasize about Miles Davis, Lenny Bruce, Charlie Parker, or Keith Richards…. Then one day Rush ascended the Opiate Throne.

Though Keith, famously, never showed up with a hot towel when you were convulsing, it was nice – for about a minute-and-a-half – just to delude yourself that you were in the same club. (You weren’t.) And then, out of nowhere, it seemed like it was all about Rush, King of the Dittoheads, talk show god and spiritual confrere to our aforementioned chief justice, Billy “Snake-Hips” Rehnquist.  (Sole SCOTUS member, not to digress, who could limbo lower than Clarence Thomas. Which is probably explained by all those dyl-dyls. I’ve heard that Rehnquist, with a handful of Placido Domingos in him, loved nothing more than getting out on the floor and busting some Originalist dance moves. To others, he may have looked like a pasty white guy out of his mind on sideways narcotics. But I like to think, in some pill-fueled judicial happy place, he got to feel  like Bob Fosse in black-robe-and-Capezios.)

Next to long-gone Rush, the only right wing drug pig remotely as effective as anti-drug propaganda - in today’s world - might be the Great One, Mike Lindell. Sometimes, if I catch myself daydreaming about crack (it still happens) I imagine the 3 AM weirdness of peering out my tinfoiled pay-by-the-hour motel window and hearing Pillow Mike in the bathroom behind me, tonguing a stem and gorpling Mormon porn. In my heinous fantasy, he’s one of those freaks who likes to lock the door, strip naked and smoke rocks in front of the bathroom mirror, breathing his own stank and striking poses. Like the life coaches say, “How you do anything is how you do everything…. “  

Side-note: The most dedicated crackhead I ever met, a two-time loser named Farnell from Bountiful, Utah, used to curl up in the closet with a .45, an empty guitar case, and a motel pillow. I’d look at him and think, This is what happens when you’ve led a Country Western life without any Country Western talent…. But (bunk segue alert) speaking of talent, can we talk about Joseph McCarthy being a secret heroin addict? Seriously. If the biggest talent any dope fiend owns is the ability to hide who the fuck he is, then Red Scare Joe was beyond talented. If  you don’t know the story – I read it in Johann Hari’s spectacular Chasing the Scream, which you should all run out and buy immediately – McCarthy had his heroin supplied by none other than Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who used his dark-side contacts to keep Sweaty Joe in pocket, thereby minimizing the chance he’d get jammed up trying to score. The first drug czar’s stint as secret pusher roughly coincides with his sadistic campaign to hound Ms. Holliday out of show business – and her own life. Which he finally did. Courtesy of Anslinger, Billie died chained to a bed, going cold turkey in Metropolitan Hospital in Manhattan. All she asked for, allegedly, in the end, was to see her two chihuahuas, Chiquita and Pepe, whose nails she always painted the same color as hers. Which I only mention – stay with me here – because I wonder if maybe MAGA fixers supplied rocks to Lindell, the same way Anslinger supplied dope to McCarthy, to keep Mike from getting popped by undercover cops, then blabbing about presidential “pillow parties” and Oval Office carpet-mining. The pillow king is nothing if not chatty. And he’s got plenty to chat about. When Ronny Jackson, 45’s Doctor Feelgood, was passing out party favors in the West Wing, half the staff was so loaded they started referring to the halls as “weave units” – not after Trump’s self-styled rhetorical weave-move, but because everybody kept bumping off the walls. After his drunky tenure as White House Chief Medical Advisor, AKA “Pill Daddy,” the Navy saw fit to demote Dr. Ronny from Rear Admiral to Captain. All good things come to an end, more or less.

The whole subject of Fascist Junkiedom, now that I’m writing this, may seem creepy. A sentiment I completely understand. Maybe I’m trying to make these people human. I mean, look at Don Junior’s coked out video behavior. For my money, DTJ’s sweat-sheened talk-too-fast cringe-giggle may be the most appealing part of his personality. (Also, since some of you asked, the rumors are true: I did bid two grand for a candid photo of Don Jr trying to get JD Vance’s eyeliner just right backstage at the Columbus Hilton ballroom. It's not easy nailing that lead-singer-in-a-Cure-tribute-band look. One wrong  move and you’ve got Alice Cooper with a bad haircut and shame beard. I, for one, believe America is ready for a Goth VP.)

More than anything, I’m forever gob-smacked by the biggest speed freak of all, Donald Trump. Some of my best friends in the world are Adderall buffs. (No judgement.) But MAGA Addy is different. MAGA Addy is Donald Trump posing atop the steps of Trump Force One, waving to a wholly unpopulated stretch of airport runway. As one does. Old Trump hands claim the man phanta-waves because he wants the cameras, the ones always aimed at him, to make it look like he’s greeting an adoring throng. But, just to add my unasked for two cents, I think the truth is probably sadder. I would bet he actually sees the imaginary throngs. To him they’re not imaginary. They’re as real as the Schnauzers stuffed between Wonder Bread slices in immigrant sandwiches.... In Trump brain, the airport is packed with swaying MAGA Ecstatics all the way to the horizon. And yes, we all know the ex-prez is not a drinking man. But has anybody else noticed how much he’s begun to sound like late-career Dean Martin, addressing rallies and sit-downs with that low-register, 4 AM at the Copa slur? At the debate, the ex-prez was so logy I half expected the ghost of Sammy Davis Jr. to scamper out and hop in his arms.

So what, in the end, does a minor foray into far right narco-dabbling even mean? Tough to say. I have no idea if contempo young autocrat enthusiasts, your big name Incels and podcasters, even operate, as they say, “in the opiate space.” All I know is that Ben Shapiro likes his vaginas dry. (Possibly shaken, but not stirred.) Then again, if young Republicans do consume some good-time brain-benders, I’m guessing, with no evidence whatsoever, that they’re maybe more legal Ketamine-centric. Y’know, plug into the drip, take your trauma to a wild party, enjoy the visuals and blink back in forty minutes to a remarkable new unchanged reality - and don’t forget to pay the therapist on the way out. Or something. Whatever works, God bless. I’m talking to you, young professional Victor Orban devotee. Hopes and prayers your Big Pharma contacts can keep any wayward fentanyl out of your K-hole. These days the stuff’s in everything but Muesli.

One last thing: I’ve got a Republican pal, mid-40s, works in Washington, who swears by the T-juice. The guy – call him Chuck – dick-shoots Testosterone twice a day to keep his precious bodily fluids in tip-top Brigadier General Sterling Hayden in Dr. Strangelove shape. The rigs make him nervous, cause he used to be a user. But now that he’s cleaned up that problem, he geezes nothing but man juice, and occasional ‘roids for the pecs and traps. As Chuck explains, “I used to see these old dudes at the gym with their balls drooping down around their kneecaps, and I’d say, ‘No way. That is not gonna be me.’ That’s when I jumped on the Testoste-bang. Now I’m taut as a Frenchman’s wallet.”

I have no idea what that expression actually means, but never mind. My friend’s happy. He’s hooked up. And he’s got a slot on the VP Vance comms team if the MIM (Men In Makeup) make it back to the White House.

Some people just know how to have a good time.