Rush Limbaugh. Henry Kissinger. Lindsey Graham. All of these are individuals who did a lot of damage who have recently died, and people were dancing in the streets when it happened. I am not one of those people who thinks that death sanitizes a reputation, actually far from it. Usually, when people die who have caused me pain, I acknowledge the death, but it takes very little from me. After all, none of the things they have done can be erased, and none of their deaths has materially made my life easier because more decisions are made locally than on a grand scale.
For me, bad people dying does nothing for me because by the time they die, I have done one of two things. If possible, I have removed myself from their proximity so that I am not affected by who they are as a person, and I do my best to start removing them from my memory. Second of all, I avoid people who have maintained a different history that would invalidate my own because when I am in a process of healing, I avoid distracting anecdotes and gaslighting. Politicians and celebrities who die are not the center of my universe because I already have a life that is focused on my little circle, not on those who have deliberately chosen to isolate themselves with resources, power, or distance.
Back in the day, I had a series of horrible roommates who kept financially exploiting me even when I did my very best to create boundaries and distance. As a person of faith, I would pray for their success to avoid becoming bitter, but that did not prevent them from being disrespectful people. Once they were out of my life, I would hear about their misfortune from various sources, including job loss. Funnily enough, that did nothing to keep me employed, raise my income, or strengthen my network, even when I was in the worst of circumstances and in desperate need of change. In my opinion, vindication is a shallow pursuit because if nothing changes after my position has been validated, I have gained nothing from the downfall of others.
On a more positive not, creating heroes and idols does little to fix life, either, because human beings are merely human. There is nothing from thinking positively that guarantees good behavior from other individuals because everyone has a bad day. Additionally, putting people on pedestals creates a lot of pressure for folks who might have just felt generous during a specific time period. Real intimacy and positive relationships are cultivated, not installed, and through that nurturing, more goodwill is fostered. Goodwill is not created through manic devotion but honest engagement, and that changes lives.
The obsession with performative gestures has obscured the fact that little has changed, which is one of the reasons that we make big deals about awful people leaving their mortal coils. At the end of the day, it is more important to make our own lives reasonable because people outside of our networks deserve ostracization, not flourish. No, I have no desire for any of these individuals to come back to life for further damage, but because most of them were already socially isolated, there is no point in further worrying about them, for good or for ill. An evil machine is an evil machine; whoever functions as a cog will be replaced, and that is the worry more than anything else.
Chasing A Dying Empire 