Reply #2: I don't think it's that incomprehensible. [View All]

[tomreedtoon]

I think it's an explanation that people don't really like to think about, and in fact actively deny (which I'm sure someone will do to this post). People are basically evil.

This isn't an Original Sin thing, and it isn't a plea for any kind of religion to cure it, because religion can't do that. It's based on decades of observing the human race. It is, in fact, when people try to deny their evil nature - when they insist they are "basically good" - that causes trouble.

Over on Salon, in a discussion of the Kennedy assassination, there's the conspiracy theorists who are still convinced in fixing blame. They think it's impossible that a "basically good" man could be killed by a normal human; there must be an Illuminati conspiracy behind it all. They invest a lot of emotional agony and specious proofs to deny that it was ordinary human viciousness, 'cause that would mess up their little minds.

(Incidentally, the article is about Robert F. Kennedy, a man who in many lights would have been a better President than JFK. There is no debate about who killed him. It was a basically evil terrorist, who is still a worshipped martyr throughout the Middle East. But nobody cares, because to note this observation - or Sirhan Sirhan's continuing fame - would show the cruelty of man too clearly.)