Something akin to those emotions awakened in me, today, upon hearing that Andrew Breitbart had died. Once the obvious jokes ran dry, and I was alone with the part of my soul that doesn't find such humor at all funny -- lonely, small speck of me that it is -- I had to step back and decide to approach this matter with some measure of decency and humanity.
Not that this would be at all easy; frequent readers of the rANT Farm will know that Mr. Breitbart was not one of my favorite people, for reasons that are pretty easy to ascertain. In my personal cosmology of American politics, he went from being someone beloved by people I did not like to being someone that I didn't really like, either.
And that's putting it mildly. I have some folks that I don't agree with but can at least respect, and some that I can't respect but at least can agree with, odd as that sounds. Breitbart, however, inhabited the abyssal plain populated by those persons I didn't respect, didn't agree with, and, to top it all off, didn't even like that much.
Why? Not because of his opinions, which I usually didn't agree with even at the best of times. Not because of what he did, which was odorous, noxious, and sometimes downright unethical. But because of his way of doing things, which, frankly, reminded me of some larger, older kid prowling the playground, looking for weaker and smaller people acting above their station so he could give them a good pasting.
A bully, in other words. Also a liar, and a friend to liars, but predominantly a bully.
What was scary about his bullying was that he seemed to believe that he was actually the good guy. Somehow, using the internet to put down, punk, and pown liberals, leftists, progressives, and manifestations of the federal government that he didn't like was a noble endeavor, rather than the sorry lashing out of someone who really needed a good spanking, or at least a chill pill.
Some bullies actually do harbor fantasies of inherent rightness, while others know that their actions are wrong, but somehow can't stop themselves from doing them. As someone who once suffered from behavioral problems, I can sympathize. But I worked through them, with help, and eventually got better.
Breitbart? No chance.
In fact, sad as it is to say, the man didn't seem to have an ounce of similar self-awareness in his whole, hulking frame. A bull in the online china shop, he started crashing into things early and often, and didn't seem to care about the shards left in his wake. It was all for the best in his desired best of all possible worlds, in which the "functional left" would be excised like cancer and left to fester in sun, unable to do more than stink and attract flies.
His friends ate that kind of talk right up. His admirers cheered him on. And those who got trampled underfoot were left to cradle their busted noses and wonder, between tears, why this strange person -- almost a human caricature at times -- was standing over them, laughing at their pain, and insisting that they somehow deserved this
But while we may bury a monster, we also have to mourn them. For we all have our monsters, locked away for safekeeping, and raging inside. Sometimes they squeak out around the edges, sometimes they roar forth like vomit. Sometimes they come to stay and never quite leave the couch.
Sometimes, they lock us up for safekeeping, instead.
My own monster comes to call, every so often. I like to think he's invoked for righteous reasons, too, but often time I look back at his handiwork and wonder what I was thinking, letting him out like that. Like a naughty puppy let loose in a room full of pristine things, you turn your back at your own peril, and have no one to blame but yourself when the sofa's chewed, the vases are broken, and there's a pile of stinky stuff on the floor.
Another tie-in to the past: the reason our Scoutmaster made the point of bringing up that fellow Scout's death was because, less than a few months prior, we'd been at the same campground that he'd fallen to his death at. We, too, had played on those rocks, and in those caves. And one of us, when told by an adult to be careful, had laughed and run off, as if being told to avoid eating redcap mushrooms or lighting flatulence.
His death could have been our death -- his tragedy our own. The fact that I didn't like him very much was eclipsed by the fact that, good or evil, he was just as mortal as the rest of us. The supernatural force of pain I'd attributed to him was no match for the lurking forces of bad luck, bad timing, or, maybe, karma.
And karma really doesn't like it when you push your luck around her.
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