Look who got COVID. Ha!
"It should hopefully go without saying that we should not applaud or cheer the health misfortunes of others. Let's please not lose our humanity."
Dan Rather tweet
There is something emotionally satisfying about a person getting his just desserts. We have a rich choice of words for it: Poetic justice; Ironic reversal; Comeuppance; "Hoist with his own petard." Our feeling mixes a sense of justice and glee. We understand that cruelty is wrong, but fairness is right. Just desserts gives us an excuse for glee at the misfortune of another. Shakespeare's Prince Hamlet reversed a plot to have him assassinated and arranged that the false-friend agents for his death be killed instead of him. Shakespeare did not hide from the glee.
For ’tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard. . . O, ’tis most sweet.
There are websites awarding "Darwin awards," given to prominent opponents of vaccination who get COVID and die. Ha! A QAnon star had tens of thousands of fans. "The vaccines kill, don't get it!" she told fans. Then she died from COVID.
This story in thehill.com includes a frequent feature, a too-late expression of remorse. You were right, I was wrong. "I wish I had gotten it!”
A solitary citizen, persuaded not to get vaccinated, dying quietly, does not trigger the emotion of righteous justice. One feels impatience, maybe pity. They died because of gullibility. Many are Christian. It became Christian to refuse this vaccine. People have told me this joke a dozen times in the past few months.
A man in a flood is sitting on the rooftop of his house and prays to God for rescue. A rowboat approaches. The man says, no, God will save him. A short while later a motorboat approaches. No need, the man yells, God will save me. Then a helicopter hovers over him. No, God will save me, he says. The man drowns and finds himself standing in front of St. Peter. "Why didn't God save me?" Saint Peter said, "We sent a rowboat, a powerboat, and a helicopter. What were you waiting for?"
The joke expresses frustration. They are misguided victims.
The most satisfying of these stories involve anti-vaccine influencers, an emotion reserved for people in government, social media, talk radio, and maybe just people displaying aggressive lawn signs and bumper strips. They aren't victims. They are perpetrators. They sowed it, reaped it, and sold it to others. They perpetrated both suicide and murder, and did it proudly, in our faces.
My emotion of glee, of what Hamlet called "sport," comes unbidden when I hear of their misfortune. I feel righteous. I recognize it as an all-too-human emotion, but as Dan Rather wrote, it lacks humanity. We risk losing it. I am embarrassed by how I feel. I know better. I was brought up to understand that cruelty is wrong, and death a matter for sorrow. Dan Rather's comment shames me. He is right. I should be sad. But I feel what I feel. They are hoist on their own petard.