“The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.”
“from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”
“For the love of God, Montresor!” “Yes,” I said, “for the love of God!”
cask
Revenge is perhaps the strongest vice in my soul. I come by it honestly. I think it’s an ingrained family trait. Revenge and spite are as native to me as breathing. And I feel the urge for revenge at all levels of existence. I equally despise the rude coworker and the oligarch who despises and demeans the deplorable masses. And what my heart craves is revenge. Not fairness or justice or an apology. I long for Nemesis to strike down hubris. And strike it down out of all proportion to the offense.
Of course, the opportunity to indulge such a passion rarely occurs without the necessity of paying a very high price for the privilege of stabbing from hell’s heart. But the desire is still there even if the intellect steps between the doer and the deed and declares the price too high.
And so, when I think of the contempt that our elites feel for us my instinct is to imagine a way to hit back at them. So, for instance, when they revel in the pain they inflict by flooding a town in Ohio with twenty thousand Haitians or a suburb in Minnesota with Somalis my sense of outrage wants to see Martha’s Vineyard or Bel Air or Weston Massachusetts suddenly overrun by meth addicts and Congolese.
And not because it would be a teachable moment whereby these people would learn a lesson but rather so they would become the victims of the same dysfunction that they so carelessly wished upon the fellow citizens that they despise so heartily. But I realize that this is just a fantasy. The wealth and power these people possess preclude them from suffering the consequences they so richly deserve. It would take the dissolution of the United States to bring about the “comeuppance” I crave. And so, I would be wishing for the toppling of the very place that I live in. It would be like a Roman citizen rooting for Atilla the Hun during the fifth century.
And yet, there are documents that preserve that very sentiment by a character out of history. That was exactly what the Greek historian Priscus recorded back in 450 A.D. I guess the question comes down to whether revenge is more important than safety. Or maybe whether honor is more important than food.
And the funny thing is, I’m beginning to lean toward honor. Being a despised freak in the Left’s menagerie is getting to be less and less tolerable. If the Russians and Chinese finished off World War III, would I really be worse off than I am now? The rational answer is yes. Even surviving Doomsday in Southern New England is a very doubtful proposition. Forget about thriving. Making believe that isn’t true would be delusional. And yet, a part of me says, “let’s get on with it.”
Well, the dark night of the soul is upon me but don’t worry nobody has shared the codes for the nuclear football with me. So, sleep deeply oligarchs. Your time is not yet up.