Redrum!

The absence of conscience is a remarkable feat in the history of civilization. One wonders if it's something that can be accomplished medically by way of lobotomy. After all, self-questioning is not part of The Art of War. Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, Karadzic, Putin, Erdogan, MBS, Orban and Trump are a short list of the tyrannical leaders whose ideology is ruthlessness. But what turns someone into a Stalin, Hitler or Mussolini—someone capable of genocide. Alex in A Clockwork Orange is a prototype of the psychopath who's able to commit rape and murder without a thought. It may say something that this character, who also curiously happens to have a soft spot for Beethoven, is no longer even shocking in the age of American Psycho (what's almost harder to read is a novel about an empathetic good Samaritan which challenges the willing suspension of disbelief). Was The Man in the Glass Booth capable of empathy?  Or for that matter Marjorie Taylor Greene? Notoriously the insurrectionists brought a gallows to hang Pence. Brad Raffensberger, Secretary of State of Georgia, received death threats, However, upon hearing the chants of a blood thirsty crowd crying "Where are you, Nancy? We're looking for you," do you feel a desire for retribution? Will you be happy if Trump goes to jail as unlikely as that possibility seems. Probably yes. Democracy had its revenge at Nuremberg where prominent Nazis were tried and hung which poses the question: what enables human beings to cross the line? When you think about it, is it not a contradiction in terms to execute a murderer? Remember “redrum?”

Read "The Empty Canvas" by Francis Levy, HuffPost