It had been more than four years since we had unleashed the Iraq and Afghanistan atrocities and by now even a hedgehog gets it ( the Russian saying) that we are in deep criminal shit. Bush understands that too but he can’t let go. Like a spoiled child he clings to his toy with fists and teeth. It is beyond his control. That’s the essence of evil: it takes over in such a way that a person controls himself of herself no more. And it never stops.

I remember the evil scenery from my childhood in the old country under the communist rule. There they practiced the collective discussions in schools. In case of some individual misdemeanor they would gather the children so that the culprit would hear from his/her peers. I remember that pretty girl grilled for hours for her diary where she wrote about some of her, say, not very pure desires. She sat there in front of us and the kids talked and talked and the evil stench grew and grew in that room like a smoke of Tak in Stephen King’s ‘ Desperation’. It grew because there was no end. Kids did not have the feeling when to stop and adults were encouraging them to become a pack of wolves instead of stopping that atrocity. And I stood up and I shouted that it had to be stopped, that they were all morons and that we should just give her the diary back and let her go. Yes, I shouted, she wanted that but we all wanted that and who the Hell were we to perform that Inquisition. And they stopped and next time they discussed me. But guess what, at the prom the most popular girl in the class invited me to dance and when we danced she said that I was the only boy who was a man on that day. Takes a big one to hear that from a woman when you are 17.

Evil corrupts. It turns everything into exactly the opposite. Say, religion is not a bad thing on its own. It ascends the spirit, makes a person feel human, special, imposes a sense of dedicated destiny. That is taken in moderation. But in a non- stop mode it becomes evil. It becomes the Inquisition, Witch Hunts, persecution of other people, mass murder, torture, fanaticism, Torquemada and Pat Robertson, La- Haye and Calvin, Iraninan Ayatollahs and Israeli Rabbies who encourage the transfer of all the Arabs.

Fanaticism is evil. That simple.

Evil creeps on you but it needs a soil to grow up. The US as a culture has that soil ( not that others do not have it). It is prone to evil through individualism, through the non- stop perseverance. Oh, how many times do we hear that! ‘Do not quit. Only losers stop, You can become anything you wish, do anything you want. Believe in yourself. Don’t stop, Don’t stop, Don’t stop. It is.. orgasmic..’. Yes, listen to that. Orgasmic, huh? What’s orgasm? A culmination of pleasure, a sheer thrill, a moment of total letting go of self- control… animalistic, primitive, powerful. That’s the key- it feels orgasmic to win, to gain, to push to the wall, to overcome, to conquer, to succeed, to let them see your power, to let them suffer, to see humiliation, to be merciful if you want but stern if you don’t, to decide the fate of others, to hire and fire, to promote and demote, to boss around, to express an overwhelming confidence, to have anyone and anything you want, to not be afraid to kill, to embrace violence, to become evil. That’s the thread which connects Bush and Cheney with Osama, Stalin and the lowest scum in the gangs on the streets. They are all there for a thrill.  It is orgasmic, better than sex to destroy a  country and then tell its people to tidy up, to go there as some Roman Proconsul to the province, to rule supreme, to feel  so good about oneself coming out at the podium  and telling how those people must change.  It is orgasmic to FORGET WHO YOU ARE. Evil begets evil and if Cheney could kill 400 birds in one day he surely could shoot a person in the face and he surely could kill a million people and feel good about that. But those who fought back could surely cut off the head of Danny Pearl and also feel good. The feeling is mutual: it does not discriminate. EVIL FEELS GOOD- remember that.

Not only it feels good but it can masquerade itself as a good thing. Freedom of speech is a good thing, right? Oh, how we here fight for it, how liberals of all kinds raise up in arms. Say when a Danish idiot published cartoons insulting the Moslem religion and there were riots and people died, how we defended his ‘right to the free speech’. We did not express compassion, we did not specify that freedom comes with responsibility and that only a malicious madman would mock someone else’s religion especially during the Iraqi war when so many Moslems had been killed. No, on the contrary, some people here even contributed to the mayhem calling Mohammed a pedophile and so on.

Pedophile… Evil is usually accompanied by ignorance and stupidity. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Romeo is about 20-21 and Juliet is less than 14. Her family wants her to marry Count Paris who is about 18 (Romeo calls him a boy) and her mom tells her that at her age she already gave birth to her, That puts her mother at about 26 years old. Looks like a family of perverts if we use the logic of the evil idiots above. Why the Hell they do not mind their own business and do not ask why is that in our High Schools it is OK for teenagers to have sex with each other but if it is sex with an adult ( much safer and surely less consequential) – it is a statutory rape and adult goes to jail. We thus encourage promiscuity at the very young age but we hypocritically deny the simple truth that experience counts and it is much more reasonable to have the first sexual partner who is experienced and will not hurt you. What we do here is evil and we know that but IT FEELS GOOD to think that we are moral and do not let our little kiddies to copulate with those lecherous adults. Mind you, I do not promote pedophilia. I promote common sense, careful monitoring and active participation instead of instilling fear and intolerance. Fear is evil. Pedophiles existed before and will exist further but it does not mean that all men are potential pedophiles and only wait for a chance to rape a little girl. On the contrary. Mohammed was not a pedophile- he did not know better. We know better. We know among other things that Evil never expresses a remorse. That Danish guy, he never expressed even a tiny bit of remorse. Our President never expressed even the tiniest. Gosh, if people died because of me I would have voluntarily go into seclusion for a year or so.

Evil likes the wrong usage of the tools. Scientific knowledge, logic are tools. They do not make us better. Good people put them to the good use, bad people make more evil. Usage of those tools in the ideological battles, to promote atheism, for instance by branding the people of faith as ignorant is evil. It destroys instead of unite, separates instead of bringing together. Really, people, who will agree with you on the premise that you are superior? Not a chance. They will point out and rightfully so that science without morals brings nuclear bombs, Iraq war, guillotine, gas chambers and Agent Orange. Atheism itself does not make a person better in any way; you are still prone to evil, only from the different sources.

Evil indulges in mockery. It gives a person a false sense of mental superiority. Take the so- called political correctness. We have people here who passionately attack it. They call it a PC- fascism. Poor idiots. They have never seen, never witnessed a triumph of the real fascism, when it wins, when it overcomes. They never experienced being humiliated, pushed around, constantly reminded that you live at the mercy of others. Hey, whities! You do not like that you have to restrain yourself? You do not like that you cannot call the black people names, that you have to watch yourself when you talk about them, cannot make judgments about their minds and brains, that they can fight back? Imagine them doing that to you! Imagine the BET channel talking about the whities non- stop, assessing you, men and women alike, your physique, your mental health, your minds, your butts, your sexual prowess NON-STOP! Evil, right? So why then you do not embrace the simple concept of the necessity to be careful, caring, cautious, to be adults, for goodness sake? Why don’t you thrive to become better so that all those restrictions should become just a part of an everyday life? Until that great day comes let’s acknowledge our bigotry and keep the laws on the books. Just in case. Folks, self- restrain is the only purely human quality which separates us from animals; there are none other. You lose control and evil is there at your service.

To all the ships at sea and all the ports of call I beg all people to be careful. There is only one vaccine from the creeping evil. That vaccine is self- awareness and the capability to assess oneself honestly. And then the miracle happens, the one mentioned by great Ernest Hemingway in The Movable Feast:

‘ They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds re covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.’

Good luck.