I was in love with a fictional character -- something she might herself liken to a perpetual drag-act impression of a nice conservative woman -- who she knowingly constructs in order to be loved by people who would react with horror to her true nature.
Her thinking and behavior -- her praise of fighting, suffering, partisanship, anger, punishment, and general thuggery -- stripped of the seemingly endless layers of irony and misdirection, resemble nothing so much as the timeless drunken white trash battle cry "You ain't better'n me!" She displays a self-loathing desire to see everyone dragged down to her level: kindness replaced by cruelty in the hierarchy of virtues, logic by willful irrationality, peace by real violence, civility by endless conflict, meritocracy by a winking awareness of special privileges and by an indulgent love of corruption and decadence.
I was in love with a fictional character -- something she might herself liken to a perpetual drag-act impression of a nice conservative woman -- who she knowingly constructs in order to be loved by people who would react with horror to her true nature.
Her thinking and behavior -- her praise of fighting, suffering, partisanship, anger, punishment, and general thuggery -- stripped of the seemingly endless layers of irony and misdirection, resemble nothing so much as the timeless drunken white trash battle cry "You ain't better'n me!" She displays a self-loathing desire to see everyone dragged down to her level: kindness replaced by cruelty in the hierarchy of virtues, logic by willful irrationality, peace by real violence, civility by endless conflict, meritocracy by a winking awareness of special privileges and by an indulgent love of corruption and decadence.
(post is archived)