...Myself

There is a giant bug crawling along the wall directly behind my desk. When I first moved to this place the sight of these giant, flying roaches filled me with terror. Scrambling for a shoe, a book, a recent copy of the LRB - on second thought, no, not that - I would rush to quash the intimidating insect, usually missing on my first try. There I would be, weapon dropped, hands madly mussing hair and shirt, sure that the "straggling caitiff" was somewhere on my person. Eventually the creature would show itself: on the floor or lower on the wall. Then I would pick up my weapon and steady my hand and nerves. It is important to keep your eye on the bug as you are hitting it. Whack.

After awhile, I get used to the bugs. I start to use the flat of my hand to kill them. But this evening I leave the bug to pursue its course along the wall behind my desk. "I bear the creature no ill-will," as William Hazlitt wrote of a spider "crawling along [his] matted floor" (in 1823), "but still I hate the very sight of it." This is progress. I'm settling in, getting used to things.

"The spirit of malevolence survives the practical exertion of it. We learn to curb our will and keep our overt actions within the bounds of humanity, long before we can subdue our sentiments and imaginations to the same mild tone. We give up the external demonstration, the brute violence, but cannot part with the essence or principle of hostility." (Hazlitt, "On the Pleasure of Hating")

How very apt these words seem today - in any number of contexts. Hitchens has recently claimed the mantle of Orwell. Zizek, in perhaps a more risky identification, wants to "repeat" and "reactualize" Lenin. "As Lenin himself would have put it," Zizek writes, "'fidelity to the democratic consensus' means the acceptance of the present liberal-parliamentary consensus, which precludes any serious questioning of how this liberal-democratic order is complicit in the phenomena it officially condemns, and, of course, any serious attempt to imagine a society whose socio-political order would be different." Fair enough. Lenin would certainly rile up the slumbering democrats who pass for "left" in this country. In addition, his party politics would present a formidable challenge to the better organized right. But I'm not Lenin. And I cannot write like Zizek - at least not for more than a sentence or two (probably). They will continue to crawl on their bellies, these democrats. Shoes won't keep them away for very long. And books, forget about it. But if they (and many other things, people, etc. soon to be detailed) are good for nothing else, they are good for hating (as Republicans have been for oh so long). This can be fun: a great source of pleasure. It does not have to be purely negative or wholly unproductive. "Without something to hate," exclaims Hazlitt, "we should lose the very spring of thought and action."

Such is a present case for taking up Hazlitt. I'm for hating (but not hate). I'm making a list, in fact.