In a world full of polite monsters and monstrous policemen, I’ll take the cannibal who appreciates good Bach over the G-man who butchers the constitution with a straight face. At least one of them has standards.
Let’s be clear from the jump: if I have to be trapped in a room with a renowned sociopath—and this is just the reality of modern life—I’m picking the one who’d pair my liver with a nice Amarone over the one who’d pair my liberty with a righteous press conference. I’m talking, of course, about Dr. Hannibal Lecter versus Mr. James Comey.
With Hannibal, the contract is simple. Don’t be rude, don’t play Mozart poorly, and for God’s sake, if you’re a talented flautist, maybe keep that to yourself around dinner time. His evil has a kind of brutal integrity. He is a Darwinian gourmand, a fiend for quality. He once killed a census taker for being “tedious” and allegedly ate the man’s liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. You understand the logic. The man was tedious. In Hannibal’s world, being a bore is a capital offense, and frankly, in our age of endless Zoom meetings, part of me gets it.
His is a twisted, blood-soaked meritocracy.
The cellist who played out of tune didn’t just offend his ears; he offended the very principle of excellence. He was a musical heretic. And Lecter, in his own way, became a gustatory Grand Inquisitor. There’s a clarity there. A purity. You know where you stand with a man who considers rudeness a greater sin than murder.
Lecter admired Clarice Starling’s moxie, her dogged pursuit of the truth, even though he knew that very pursuit might be his undoing. He treated her with a perverse respect. He was the antagonist who made you better, sharper, just by playing his game.
Then we have James Comey. America’s Substitute Teacher.
The Human Press Release. A man whose aura of sanctimony is so potent it probably has its own gravitational pull and a dedicated X account.
Comey didn’t just stumble into controversy; he curated it with the precision of a museum archivist. Long before his masterclass in legal semantics during the Hillary Clinton email investigation—where he performed the political equivalent of a magician sawing a woman in half, declaring her both guilty and exonerated in the same breath—he was a key figure in the Clinton White House’s protective detail.
As a federal prosecutor in the 1990s, he was involved in the investigation into the Clinton Foundation’s predecessor, Whitewater. The case saw convictions of the Clintons’ business partners, but the big fish swam away, unscathed and unindicted. Comey was there, in the legal ecosystem, a rising star in a system that seemed to have a different set of rules for certain surnames.
His entire career feels like a long, slow walk to the podium to deliver a statement that is technically correct but morally anemic.
He is the guy who would watch you drown in a lake, then hold a press conference to explain that while your demise was “extremely careless,” no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case for murder because you technically failed to exhibit the requisite “intent” to inhale water.
He treated America like a less-interesting Clarice Starling. He dangled information, played mind games, and positioned himself as the lone, principled knight in a corrupt kingdom. He knew his actions had consequences, that his grandstanding could bring down administrations or elevate them, but he did it with that same stoic, “I-am-the-sheriff” demeanor.
By contrast, Hannibal appreciated Clarice’s moxie; Comey seems to appreciate only the sound of his own voice reading from a prepared statement about his own principles.
Hannibal’s evil is a grotesque thing of beauty. It’s a Gothic cathedral built on a foundation of bones; you can’t help but admire the craftsmanship. Comey’s evil is a suburban office park—soulless, beige, and entirely concerned with procedure over people. One will eat you because you insulted his intelligence. The other will bury you in a mountain of legalistic paperwork until you suffocate, and then he’ll write a book about how the process was the real victim.
Lecter’s cannibalism is at least authentic. He consumes you. He integrates your essence into his own. It’s a perverse form of respect. Comey’s brand of consumption is far more insidious. He consumes your trust, your faith in institutions, and the very concept of non-partisan justice. He leaves the corpse of the Republic on the floor and then spends the next three years giving interviews about what a fascinating specimen it was.
When Hannibal Lecter escapes from his high-security cage, it’s a cinematic triumph. You half-cheer. When James Comey escapes consequence, it’s just another Tuesday. You sigh and check your blood pressure.
So yes, give me the devil I know. Give me the psychopath with a taste for the finer things, the one who believes in merit, even if his meritocracy ends with you as a pâté. I can respect a monster with a code. I have nothing but contempt for a bureaucrat who mistakes his self-regard for a moral compass. One is a wolf, proud and predictable in his hunger. The other is a wolf who’s learned to wear a shepherd’s sweater and lecture the flock on the importance of baaing in the correct key. I know which one I’d rather have to dinner. Just don’t ask me to play the cello.
