I posted what follows a day or two ago in the Philosophy group, which brought on a tidal wave of people telling me that evil, or the idea of it, is A. Inappropriately (for this site) religious or B. Completely subjective or C. Non-existent. I wasn't really looking for that particular debate, but what the hell. I was up for it to a degree. But only to a degree; you can't be the person I am, with the history I have, and not think evil is real. My intention was really more political and socio-cultural than philosophical, or semantic, even though I don't think you can completely separate any of these things. But as I say, my intentions were political, so here goes: I'm re-posting it in Politics. As I had thought it was needless to say, but some of the philosophically minded didn't get, I was thinking of 45 and his supporters when I wrote the post.

I have always thought that A. Evil is a bad thing by definition and should not be supported or empowered. And I had assumed, without giving it all that much thought, that B. Most people agreed with A. I still don’t see a problem with A, although I am not a philosopher; perhaps I have overlooked something. But both history and the condition of these disunited States at this time show that B is wrong and incredibly naive. But has anyone made a convincing argument against A? Not that I know of. Someone from among its opponents should work up the nerve, or whatever it takes, to try. Unless—and here, I think, is a distinct possibility—the current iteration of anti-A is coming from a place beneath argument or logic, namely a deep-seated death wish for both oneself and all of humanity. Whatever you think of Friedrich Nietzsche, he did sound a warning about nihilism, and he wasn’t wrong.