It’s been 20 years since Hunter S. Thompson died, but his political writing is as relevant as ever — and not just because he has reached that rarest of pop cultural immortality: “The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical” is currently playing at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Va. 

The man who helped put Rolling Stone magazine on the map; who wrote indelible books like “Hell’s Angels” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas;” who inspired one of “Doonesbury” cartoonist Garry Trudeau’s most popular characters, Uncle Duke; who has been portrayed on film by Bill Murray and Johnny Depp; well, he finally gets the “Hamilton” treatment, but with more guns, Wild Turkey, drugs and peacocks.

But how, ahem, in tune with our current politics could he be, more than 50 years after he wrote “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72” and having died without tweeting even once? 

The musical’s writer, Joe Iconis, spent 18 years developing it. 

In an interview with Signature’s director of artistic development Anika Chapin, Iconis said Thompson never lacked resonance.

“For a long time, it felt like the show needed to directly speak to the moment insofar as politics or current events. It eventually became clear that there’d be no way to keep up with the rapidly evolving realities of America in the third Millennium. So instead of chasing the latest breaking news, I made it my mission to get to the heart of the issues that have plagued our nation for the last 10, 20, 30, 100 years. The more I pulled my focus out, the more I realized that no matter the specifics of the latest atrocity, we’d been there before.”

Taking a look back at Thompson’s own books, the gonzo journalist was not only on point for his own time, but was eerily prescient. 

• He would not have been surprised about the efficacy of grand nostalgia narratives and myths to motivate disaffected people to engage in outlaw behavior: “To see the Hell’s Angels as caretakers of the old ‘individualist’ tradition ‘that made this country great’ is only a painless way to get around seeing them for what they really are — not some romantic leftover, but the first wave of a future that nothing in our history has prepared us to cope with.” — Hell’s Angels (1967)
• He would not have been surprised about reports of heavy drug use by a high-ranking public official: “The age of [Chief Justice William] Rehnquist was about to begin. On Thursday, he was endorsed by a 13-5 vote of the Judiciary Committee, despite last minute revelations by his former personal physician that only a few years ago he was dangerously addicted to what, in the trade, they call ‘downers.’ That is not a bad rap in Phoenix, or even in Washington. A lot of people get into downers; there are worse things — there is crack, there is Black Tar Heroin, there is PCP; if nothing else seems to work, you can always load up on a big syringe of Ketamine, a powerful animal tranquilizer for large cats and medium-sized primates, like chimps, gibbons and baboons. It depends what you want. The judge — known as ‘Bill’ to his friends in Phoenix — wanted only to get relief from chronic back pain, which led to serious insomnia and caused him to need pills. So what? There are some days when we all need pills. Rehnquist is presumably human, and if he needs a strong drug to sleep peacefully at night, who is going to tell him he shouldn’t have it? Not me.” — Generation of Swine (1988)
• He would not have been surprised that a president would claim a mandate and use that to stretch the boundaries separating branches of government and test the rule of law: “We’ve come to the point where every four years this national fever rises up — this hunger for the Saviour, the White Knight, the Man on Horseback — and whoever wins becomes so immensely powerful, like Nixon is now, that when you vote for President today you’re talking about giving a man dictatorial power for four years.” — Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 (1973) 
• He would not have been surprised by the bewilderment of people who thought history was moving their way, only to have it yanked in another direction: “And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave … So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” — Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

Iconis told Chapin, “Many people think I’ve peppered Richard Nixon’s material with quotes from [our current President] and I absolutely have not. Weirdly, I’ve had to massage certain lines and lyrics, especially Nixon’s, to make them less on the nose.”

Just to be clear: “The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical” is not a drag, or a civics lesson or preachy or propaganda. It is “both timely and timeless” in Iconis’ words, as all good art is. 

One more quote from Thompson, the material of whose life makes it insightful, immortal and really, really funny: “Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is. They are addicts, and they are guilty and they do lie and cheat and steal — like all junkies.” — Better Than Sex (1994).