My father took me to see “Bambi” about five blocks from our house. What I remember quite vividly was Bambi innocently following his mother to eat, as any youngster would. A gunshot. And the look on Bambi’s face. 

I knew exactly what happened. That set me off. I screamed. I cried. “It’s just a story!” Dad said. I did not care about that or the other people in the darkness. My father quickly led me out. 

Only years later did I learn Walt Disney had a problem with mothers. He killed them off in “Bambi,” “The Fox and the Hound,” “The Little Mermaid,” imprisoned her in “Dumbo” or completely left them out in many others – "Cinderella," "Tarzan," "Peter Pan." Cinderella, of course, had a stepmother and she was evil. 

There’s a video meme now making the rounds online of people scaring each other at home and work. The reactions are very funny. At the age of 3, one of my boys would warn “Wah coming.” He said Wahs jump out of dark corners to scare you, yelling “Wah!”

Bambi was not scary. I’m talking horror, something so awful you can’t even look at it. Or wish you hadn’t. Or didn’t see it, but your imagination filled in the blank too vividly.

Such moments come in all shapes and sizes in our lives. Everyone has their own horrors and finds their way through. We had some in the news recently. As part of a truce with Israel, Hamas returned four bodies it said were Israeli hostages who died after their terrorist raid Oct. 7, 2023. 

The terror group took 240 civilian hostages that day, killed some since, in addition to more than 1,200 that awful day

One of the returned bodies was an old man. One was a spare body lying around, not a hostage. And two were little babies. The murdered mother's body was returned separately later. Saturday a few more survivors were released.

Hamas turned them over to the Red Cross in front of large, celebratory Gaza crowds dancing and singing joyously, which my RedState colleagues detailed here and here. The ghoulish pep rallies made my childhood horror seem trivial.

It is hard – actually, impossible – for civilized people to conceive of such barbaric joy fueled by high-octane hate. It makes some of us revengeful, angry, or beyond. That’s the point of terror, to suck out reason and take control by imposing an unimaginable horror and inchoate fear on victims and anyone who hears of it. 

They might claim an alleged purpose. When I was studying in Paris in the 1960s, terrorists seeking Algerian independence would occasionally blow up a sidewalk café. Today’s suspected motive is religious hatred. It’s all just blind murder.

In more recent times, the objective of terrorism seems mere murderous lashing out, mass killing for mass killing’s sake. Winning social acclamation and a family pension for blowing yourself up on a bus. Or driving a vehicle into holiday crowds to kill in New Orleans and Germany.

When al Qaeda’s Khalid Sheikh Mohammed videotaped himself cutting off the head of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, it was to shock us with murder. Pearl had done nothing wrong. He was Jewish.

The Sheikh was also the mastermind of 9/11 that killed some 3,000. He’s now living safely in federal custody with an on-again/off-again plea deal to avoid his own execution.

To us, frankly, these people look crazy. It seems impossible that anyone would seek alleged martyrdom and an afterlife for killing innocent strangers.

There is, of course, no explanation of different cultures and religions that can excuse any of this. So, how do we handle individually the horrors thrown at us that are no longer extraordinary events?

I try to recall there is Grace in the world, too, which needs extolling whenever possible, though its media coverage is sparse elsewhere. 

But many Americans, even in elective office, have trouble recognizing that pure Evil does exist in this world. And fail to preemptively plan to prevent or muffle it because that’s somehow rude, racist, or worse.

I have a friend, a former prosecutor who opposed the death penalty. Until one case where a man punched a little girl so hard in the abdomen, it split her open. My friend decided that some forfeit their right to live in a civilized society.

Judging by the number of horror-movie sequels, I gather some people enjoy them. You know, the blonde in a nightie exploring an abandoned mansion during a midnight lightning storm holding a candle that blows out.

That’s fake surrogate horror that you pay to experience vicariously. 

How about real horror? What about bus bombs that scatter real heads and limbs in a downtown street? ISIS was proud of its execution videos, throwing bound people off four-story towers, shooting women in ball fields for exposing their hair, assigning youngsters to shoot infidels in the back of the head.

I saw one online video of half a terrorist lying in a street after his bomb exploded prematurely. There was nothing left of him below his belt. Yet, he was alive and talking.

There’s no correct way to face the horror of inhumanity. Some people look away when confronted with modern horror. I get that. They change the channel to escape it. I hustled away as a little boy. 

I’ve changed over the years, though. I did flee my perceived horror of orphaned Bambi a long time ago. I now force myself to bear witness to some of these horrible things that so brutally assault our senses and values. 

When ISIS burned that Jordanian pilot alive in a cage 10 years ago, I watched the whole agonizing scene, his silent cries and collapse. My witness changed nothing. But I felt he wasn’t alone then.

Now, we can see Russian soldiers executing Ukrainian prisoners who’d surrendered. It’s important to know the profane horrors that civilization is up against.

It is searing, I admit. But it has become my personal act of defiance, a tiny way to fight back, at least symbolically. Perhaps meaningless to others. These perps want to intimidate through fear of horror. They get nothing from me that they can see. I walk away. Like giving them the middle finger.

I was surprised as a rookie foreign correspondent near the end in Vietnam. I spent much of an afternoon squatting with a refugee family on a dusty roadside near Camranh Bay. This was their fourth time fleeing home, so they knew what not to bring. 

Their baby had died in their arms while they walked some 200 miles. Do they ignore the artillery fire not far behind and take time to perform a real burial to ensure his little soul would get to Heaven? Or do they place him under leaves in the shade, save the other children? And live forever with that guilt and memory?

At the end, I asked one of the little girls if she was scared. She said, "No." Then, she vomited in the dirt.

When it appeared in print, the story was sanitized. I was told people don’t want horror at breakfast. I said neither did that family.

Maybe that was just one squeamish editor who had a dumb day. I suspect not. That was a major newspaper looking away.

We all have our own way of handling horror. Mine now is defiant. It is to embrace this horror, as foul as it is, to hold it so close and tight it cannot breathe. And cannot pass beyond me.

Except, that is, for “Bambi.” I will never watch the rest of it. Nor will I see the upcoming new “Bambi: The Reckoning.” It’s not a fairy tale. British filmmakers describe their updated version of Bambi as a horror movie. 

To me, it always was.