Frontier Partisans

The Adventurers, Rangers and Scouts Who Fought the Battles of Empire

Hearts of Darkness

December 28, 2017, by JimC

…The wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance…

 — Marlow on Kurtz, Heart of Darkness

“We are the most heavily-armed bedroom in America, I can promise you.”

— John McAfee

“I just picked up the gun and said, ‘I’m going to kill you. And he took it as a threat.’”

— Samantha, one of John McAfee’s seven girlfriends in Belize.

Sometimes they go batshit crazy out there on the wild frontier.

I’m pretty sure Craig Rullman is chortling with glee right now. All he had to do was leave a few breadcrumbs leading to a rabbit hole and…

…Here I am writing about John McAfee and Heart of Darkness.

••••

John McAfee, if you don’t know him, invented the anti-virus software that bears his name, making him a very, very rich man. He likes guns, teenage girls, the tropics and cryptocurrencies. He’s either a Tier One whack-a-doodle or a Tier One bullshit artist — or both. He’s been a murder suspect, a fugitive and a candidate for President. Currently, he’s pumping the living shit out of Bitcoin.

Last month, Newsweek did a story on him and his wife (a Miami prostitute) evading cartel/Belize government kidnappers and dumping a mag into an attic and a crawlspace because… Oh, just read the story.

And watch the video.

A Belizean journalist said that McAfee set himself up there like Col. Kurtz living in his heart of darkness. And the sandal kinda fits — though the persona he projects is a much jollier fellow than the literary Kurtz, or the cinematic Col. Kurtz played by a morose Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now.

Heart of Darkness and its progeny Apocalypse Now give a horrifying glimpse of what can happen when a person goes so far up a literal and metaphorical river into a wilderness that they move beyond human accountability. The narrator of Heart of Darkness, Charles Marlow, describes the ivory trader Kurtz’s Congo compound, surrounded by heads on stakes:

…there was nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there. They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him—some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can’t say. I think the knowledge came to him at last—only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude—and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.

Hollow at the core. The perfect description of the extreme narcissist. Given enough money and power or remoteness — a lack of restraint on the gratification of various lusts — an extreme, malignant narcissist might plumb any depth.

His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines. 

At 25:03 in the video, we see McAfee dancing out of a department store behind his wife Janice. Damned if it didn’t remind me of someone…

His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.

 

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Comments

  1. RLT says

    December 29, 2017 at 12:44 am

    WIRED did a great piece on McAffee maybe 5 years ago. I remember reading it and thinking that if I was that journalist, there’s no way I’d sleep under the same roof as that man. McAffee has been in my peripheral ever since.

    Reply
  2. Paul McNamee says

    December 29, 2017 at 6:53 am

    I’d like to make a profound comment but I think “batshit crazy” sums it up well. 😀

    Reply
    • Tommy says

      January 9, 2018 at 10:11 am

      Yes it does Sir!

      Reply
  3. Matthew says

    December 29, 2017 at 7:03 am

    I’ve been to Belize. Nice country if you have to hide from the law.

    Reply
  4. Craig Rullman says

    December 29, 2017 at 9:00 am

    “In the long term Bitcoin moves above $500,000 within three years. Bets?” McAfee tweeted on 17 July 2017. In his reply he added that if it doesn’t: “I will eat my d*ck on national television.”

    Reply
    • JimC says

      December 29, 2017 at 9:16 am

      While attached?

      Reply
      • Paul McNamee says

        December 29, 2017 at 9:26 am

        Imma make some popcorn!

        Reply
        • Keith West says

          December 29, 2017 at 4:41 pm

          Make some for me while you’re at it, please.

          Reply
  5. john roberts says

    December 29, 2017 at 12:44 pm

    The guy talks like Al Swearingen. Proof that if you have enough money you can act totally bugfuck and get away with it.

    Reply
    • JimC says

      December 29, 2017 at 1:05 pm

      “I’ve got to see how much juice San Francisco Cocksucker’s got!”
      Al said it...

      Reply
  6. Keith West says

    December 29, 2017 at 4:41 pm

    Joseph Conrad nailed it with that book.

    Reply
  7. Matthew says

    December 29, 2017 at 5:05 pm

    You know I think McAfee would make a good pulp villain.

    Reply
    • JimC says

      December 29, 2017 at 5:59 pm

      I think HE thinks he’s a good pulp villain.

      Reply
  8. Saddle Tramp says

    December 29, 2017 at 9:47 pm

    [Who] needs an anti-virus? McAfee needs an anti-virus but it ain’t been developed yet…

    Reply
  9. Saddle Tramp says

    December 29, 2017 at 10:13 pm

    McAfee also shares strong characterristics of one Ginger Baker. See the film BEWARE OF MR. BAKER and you may agree with me. Megalomania, narcissism, too much cash and any other devil’s brew to feed it all to and you have a dragon by the tail and one helluva a ride…
    At least Bill Gates is distributing medical anti-viruses (hopefully for the good)…
    Back to the bad now. It’s much more fun!
    I think you might agree.
    Take a quick look:

    https://youtu.be/wqrigN8jxj8

    Reply
    • JimC says

      December 29, 2017 at 10:13 pm

      Holy crap — that’s on the money!

      Reply

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