SAINTS PRESERVE US

The Absurd Banality of Evil

In the wake of the deadly insanity that was Charlottesville last weekend, I’ve been contemplating the existence of the little twerp who inadvertently became social media’s white supremacist poster boy for America’s Crystal Night. Amaze balls, bro, LOL! You know the image, the cherubic kid, mouth agape, shouting out something obscene. He sports a Hitler haircut but is without the testosterone to complete the look on his upper lip. He lied to his mommy, telling her he was attending a rally in support of their country’s 45^th president.

His family name begins with the letter C and is followed by many consonants. This tells me that some of his forebears came from parts of Europe that were tragically intimate with Nazi and Soviet jackboots. This may constitute irony, like rain on a Nuremberg parade. His surname also suggests to me that his family never had a stake in the Confederate States of America’s rebellion against a duly elected federal government in Washington in the guise of states’ rights, code for the free and coerced labour that sustained an agrarian economy: slavery.

He’s a college boy and obviously bright enough not to enroll in the orange, odious vulgarian’s matchbook version of a university. He must be a big man on campus because he’s a member of Vanguard America, a sort of crypto-fascist ROTC. Like the Nazi Brown Shirts of old, they have uniforms too, but preppier: white polos matched with khaki chinos. Other than a JC Penny changing room, I suppose its members have to fit in somewhere.

These days everybody holds a grudge, has a complaint. Some are even valid. The cliché goes that winners write history, though the result is not always fair. Yet there are those in the rich pageant of humanity who deserved defeat, decimation. I can’t fathom how crazy a supposedly educated kid must be to align himself with the likes of Johnny Reb and Adolf Hitler, an in-crowd of two of history’s biggest losers who promoted ignoble and revolting causes. How could anyone, anyone, aspire to associate themselves with the likes of them? Well, this clean cut, contemptible little monster, a scrotum swollen with bilious hatred, has, and he’s going to grow up, get older and get more set in his ways. Right now, his future’s looking bright. And, as the president tweeted today, violent protests which include murder can help the United States “heel.” (The ultimate Freudian slip has since been corrected.)