It is the constant curse of good people that they fail to understand the actions and motivations of evil people. We cannot fathom how a mind works that is completely devoid of morale, empathy and kindness, and is incapable of feeling guilt, remorse -- or love. I can imagine that for a person such as Vladimir Putin, there is nothing but anger and hate inside him, but I can't imagine what that would do to a person. We can safely assume that there is nothing good inside him waiting to reveal itself, but the lack of a good side makes him alien to us. He knows this, and he has learned to exploit it.
The United Nations is a wonderful thought, but like most organizations built by good people, it is open to exploit and abuse by evil people. Russia's permanent position in the Security Council makes them untouchable. The Constitution of the United States did a better job with safeguarding against evildoers, but the pox on the nation that was Trump showed that there are loopholes, many of which are still wide open. Correspondence from Thomas Jefferson in the Federalist Papers discuss the possibility of someone ruthless, corrupt and thoroughly evil being elected to office, but he didn't imagine that an entire party of evildoers would emerge and try to seize power by deception and skullduggery, and by gradually chipping away at fundamental human rights in the name of self-defence against imaginary threats, using blatant lies to fool uneducated people to believe they would be best served by voting for the fascists.
Yes. Fascists. Many Republicans are fascists. The Republican party promotes a largely fascist world view. Putin is a fascist. Many parties on the rise in Europe have either an openly or covertly fascist agenda, using democracy only as a means to rise to power by deception, never to relinquish that power again if they attain it.
The National Socialist party in 1930's Germany rose to power by democratic means - more or less - but rapidly used their majority to impose totalitarian rule and brand political opponents as criminals and traitors. It appears we learned nothing.
But then again, we don't understand evil. Evil, however, has us figured out, and they are walking all over us, mocking us for our gullibility and our failure to stand up to them. We must not allow this to continue. Here, I could say that we must find a way to get into the heads of evil people and find what makes them stop doing their evil deeds, but I am convinced that they will stop at nothing except their own death. Sadly, good people can't really bring themselves to calling for the murder of another human being, not even a thoroughly and unspeakably evil person, because we can't seeem to come to terms with the fact that such people exist.
This is our curse, and it will be our undoing, time and time again, unless we find a way to lift it.
