I wouldn't say that my dad has darkness at the center of his being.
At a certain point there's a real lack of political power in the US-- specifically, I am thinking of Mark Fisher's understanding of Capitalist Realism.
In that system, it feels as if nothing material will ever change, and so all that is left is the aesthetic and apolitical hatred of other groups of people.
My dad was a substitute teacher who mostly took care of the kids and went to church on Sundays and played trombone with a bunch of Shriners. He was never politically plugged in, he just was raised in a house that operated very much like the setting of Leave it to Beaver.
So for him, watching cultural changes and being outraged over them were pretty much the only surface on which he felt connection to politics, as far as I can tell. From my standpoint, those cultural markers are pretty much the main differentiation between liberal Democrats and the GOP. They are both centrist capitalist parties that need to maintain US hegemony through foreign wars and who are both owned by the folks who own the business of the US.
It's a shit substitute for action, but for a lot of folks falling into the tribalism of that culture war is the only possibility they see for political action.
And while I find his political aesthetic to be both self-contradictory and profoundly alienating I have enough awareness to see how people who aren't evil in their intent can take up one side of culture war instead of the other.
And as someone who finds the anonymously penned "Desert" to be a plausible understanding of the current ecological/economical/political climate, I am not sure that short of a wholesale rejection of the politics of the spectacle there is a lot to be gained from these aesthetics... even if I know where I fall and who I support in that game and whose defeats I will happily cheer.
But like I said, I think that's more a product of a shitty situation rather than some evil spot in someones' soul.