Bravo Glen!
This is the ultimate result of failing to take responsibility for one's own happiness: abject misery and depression. What will he do when Bush leaves office in a couple years? Where will he divert his hatred? He worships hatred; it has consumed him; he has become that which he hates.
This is guy is one sick puppy. Not someone you would want to meet in a dark alley (or anywhere else). But you hafta kinda feel sorry for someone whose life is so empty that the only thing that makes him feel truly alive is pure, visceral hatred for his fellow man.
Undoubtedly things will end badly for him. Hopefully, if he stays alive long enough, things will get so bad at some point that he will have an epiphany like:
"Whoever is President has an almost negligible impact on my day-to-day life. Each fellow human deserves respect for his character as reflected in his actions, never merely for his political affiliation. I am in charge. I can decide to find happiness. I will take responsibility for my own actions."
Great post. Great essay, really. Can't really disagree with too much of it, insofar as you prefaced it, rightly, with sufficient warning that you're just analyzing the Grushka of cyberspace. My sense is, however, that at bottom you've chosen to render this analysis, contrary to what you've said, to highlight a part of the leftist psyche that you find lamentable. And you're right, and that's not unfair.
On the Nietzsche thing, though, it's interesting how widely applicable that slave morality thing can be in spite of Nietzsche's very specific intention for it. Nietzsche meant for his description to apply only to systems born of Judeo-Christian morality. It's not clear at all that Grushka's festishization of evil rises to this narrow characterization. But it might well do so.
It's funny, the confusion this can let loose in contemporary American, where the line between Christian and authoritarians has become blurred, because it's no longer clear (to me anyway) that fundamentalist Christians actually care that much about sin or are using it as an instrumental means to power and control. Insofar as it still has the effect of humbling powerful people, it might be the same. But then I don't get all the war and power stuff that's become likewise a part of who they are.
I'm sleepy as can be, so I apologize if my ruminations here are jumbled. But kudos on some great writing. I hope more people have the patience to wade through it.
Meanwhile, someone as obviously sharp as yourself probably shouldn't be associated with anything even tangentially related to LGF, which is how I came to this blog.
Oh, and I think the above commenter missed an important point, but I'm not certain. He seems to have missed that yours was an analysis of Grushka, not the guy. We don't know if Grushka's offline existence will end badly. It might, but I've had thoughts like his plenty of times without writing them down (because they're kind of nuts), and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be just fine.
I suspect "psychotic" is a better description than "psychopathic." A psychopath is someone who has no feelings of empathy; a psychotic lives in a radically disconnected fantasy world.
If you fly into Canada you get a much different reception than if you drive in. If you drive in, the worst they'll have to do is buy you a tank of gas to get you out of the country. If you fly in, the immigration formalities are a lot more formal, and they stamp your passport with a time limitation. I was taken aback the first time myself, and that was long before 9/11. Is it possible grushka wasn't prepared for this?
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