preservation of misanthropy

(originally published Aprille 2, 2011.)

"If you feel like screaming, tearing your hair, and rending your garments over ignorance, incompetence, semiliteracy, and the curious pride so many Americans take in all three, you have Tourette's Misanthropy. If you want to take slothful, rude, careless, unpunctual people by the lapels and shake them until their teeth rattle, you have Tourette's Misanthropy. If you get the urge to kill when you hear plangent elegies about 'babies having babies' in the inner cities, and then open a woman's magazine to find an interview with a famous movie star about the joys of her unwed motherhood, you have Tourette's Misanthropy. If you spend the evening snapping and snarling at your spouse because your newspaper contains an op-ed calling Martin Luther King’s plagiarism 'textual appropriation' and 'voice merging,' you have Tourette's Misanthropy. Don’t worry about it, don’t feel guilty about it, and for God's sake don't waste your money on a psychiatrist to find out what’s wrong with you, because there is nothing wrong with you. Remember, you are right, and they are wrong."
~Florence King from With Charity Toward None: A Fond Look At Misanthropy (via Brian M. Clark)