James von Brunn = Bodean Gazzer?
The more I hear about James von Brunn, the more I think about Bodean Gazzer.
Gazzer was the main villain in author Carl Hiaasen’s dark comedy ‘Lucky You’, published in 1997. Racism provides Gazzer with both the perfect excuse for his failings and the fuel to propel him forward. Every poor decision and unfortunate event can somehow be blamed upon minorities or the government, alleviating him of any personal responsibility.
The fervor of his hatred gives him strength. The seductiveness of his reasoning sucks in others. After all, they’re being offered a chance to be cleansed of their sins… by making those sins someone else’s fault.
Gazzer and his disciples have found a less painful way to hate themselves. Ironically, by removing the impetus to improve as human beings, their hidden self-loathing will only grow.
This kind of hate engine can ultimately lead to violence. The bitterness builds, along with the derangement of logic. If left unchecked, the self-proclaimed “patriot” may well implode mentally, taking a course of action that’s both self-destructive and harmful to the perceived enemy.
Some readers found the character of Bodean Gazzer to be way over the top. There were hints that Hiaasen himself might be prejudiced against “rednecks” and “white trash”. Having grown up in Florida, I know that Gazzer is neither one of these. These terms refer to those who take their worldview from the culture into which they’re born. People like Gazzer actively build their own paranoid reality… and there are more of them than you might think.
Now we have murderer and white supremacist James von Brunn, a sort of uber-Gazzer whose exploits and ravings far exceed anything Hiaasen has ever concocted. Despite this, the mechanism behind their madness is the same. We owe Hiaasen a debt of gratitude for so starkly revealing it.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.". Seemingly in response, Lord Byron declared, "Truth is stranger than fiction.". And it certainly is.