For what it's worth, here's my take on Banzin (whose name I had wrong for years, still to my shame):
He's getting old, like, actually old, and he's scared. Think about what people want as they age, what truly matters: a place to live, food to eat, care, and love.
When parsed carefully, Bob's posts hint at his primal fears, specifically that he will not have the resources to deal with his advancing age and with any medical issues
that crop up. Like gout and sepsis, for example, which has already claimed one of his feet.
When people get scared, it manifests in different ways. Some hit the bottle (and exacerbate their issues), some turn to faith, and others begin to live in service to others.
Bob's posts are sporadic throughout the week, are short, and bear absolutely no relationship to the typical dog's breakfast of issues on DU at any time. This means that Bob uses DU as an outlet for the fears and dreads that visit him throughout the day. In fact, since his first appearance, Bob cannot seem to construct a post without referring to the GOP (and lately, "GOPPERS"). Here indeed is a wordle I built two years ago of his cumulative posts to date:
We know now, of course, that Bob is not afraid of the GOP
per se. The GOP is to Bob what the Boogeyman was to us as children: a generic, shorthand platform for storage
of and reference to our fears and concerns. Bob is afraid that he will not be taken care of: notice that in none of his posts, ever, not even in passing does he refer to concern for any
family or friends. Merely for himself. Social Security, Medicare, and nothing else. His bleats about jobs, women, and minorities are pro forma only, since Bob hasn't worked in many years
and he lives in a place where the darkest thing anyone usually sees is the asphalt. Moreover, those of us who have seen his pictures have noticed that he generally wears a
scowl underneath that mop of yellowed gray hair.
Does this mean that we should humanize Bob, and try to look past his hysterical, fact-free posts to get to his larger concerns?
**** NO. If after all of these
years he won't humanize himself, why the hell should anyone else?
**** YOU, Bob.
