I think it's worth recognising that death will always divide us. There are deaths that are intensely positive/negative for me that you don't and can't feel in the same way I do. This is a source as much as a symptom of enmity. Yet the only universal enemy is death itself.
When one dances on another's grave, be it literally or performatively, one is inviting those who feel strongly for the dead to hate you. There's no getting around that. It's the price of doing business in the market of mortality, sorrow, and grief.
But all the same, violating a heuristic taboo (e.g., 'don't speak ill of the dead') is a legitimate way of signalling value (e.g., '...unless it's important'). It's a way of saying: 'Look what this fucker made me do! I only stoop this low as a monument to their awfulness.'
It's not exactly protesting the Vietnam War by self-immolating, but there's a similar logic in play. The moral bankruptcy of centrism is most clearly encapsulated in its refusal to acknowledge such gestures for what they are; every exception to the rule must be treated 'equally'.
This gesture of bureaucratic bad faith in some ways it exceeds the affront of one's political enemies, who at least *respect* your hate enough to hate you back. Those who insist they are friends but that your anger somehow disappoints them simply refuse to understand it.
They cannot understand that anything might *matter* enough to break their petty taboos, let alone make more radical political demands. This is a sign of a complete inability to understand what moral and political demands *are*. It is an anaesthetic for the conscience.
If you're going to hate, hate openly and honestly, because you owe your enemies that much. They'll hate you back, and you can go about the process of contestation that determines the political destiny of the issues you're invested in.
There might be limits on such contestation that you both abide by, e.g., a written constitution, or the Geneva convention, but you both see that the petty bureaucracy of those without a care in the world is entirely besides the point, which is the world itself. 🖖
P.S. I always recall this completely sincere joke from @frankieboyle about Thatcher (). Unless you've seen up close the sheer extent of the misery she wrought for across multiple generations, you won't understand.
It's like asking the Irish to stop mouthing off about Cromwell.
Here's what I was listening to on the fateful day:
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