“Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good.” - Eric Hoffer (Author of the True Believer)

Years ago in a criminology class we eventually got onto the subject of serial killers. We were given an assignment to write a paper from a list of serial killers to choose from, each of us choosing a different case, we were given extensive information on our subject. I chose "The Candy Man Murders" having never heard of the case before. It revolved around Dean Corll and two other men, Elmer Wayne Henley and David Brooks, who brutally tortured, raped, and murdered at least 27 children and young men (Henley insisted there were more). Henley eventually killed Corll, shooting him six times. Henley is still alive and will come up for parole again in 2025. Brooks died on May 28, 2020, from COVID-19 complicating several other illnesses. It was in this class that I realized that there is true evil, not supernatural evil, but evil that resides inside humankind.

At this time, I also began to understand how dark and deadly belief can be.

I have dealt with 5 murderers, three of whom were involved in the same murder, they felt remorse yet were more concerned about what was now going to happen to them. The two other men were kept in solitary confinement, one was kept there because of trying to commit self-harm, he was almost insane from what he had done. The other we nicknamed “Paperclip,” no one was allowed near his cell with paperclips, staples, or pens, which he would twist and swallow so that the prison would be forced to take him to the hospital and have them removed. He did this at least three times that I knew of. He had no remorse and actually felt that it was unfair that he was locked away.

There are some who do not care about life at all, they live in their own ideology believing that life is the way that they believe it is and not the way life really is.

"The fanatic is perpetually incomplete and insecure. He cannot generate self-assurance out of his individual resources - out of his rejected self — but finds it only by clinging passionately to whatever support he happens to embrace. This passionate attachment is the essence of his blind devotion and religiosity, and he sees in it the source of all virtue and strength — He easily sees himself as the supporter and defender of the holy cause to which he clings. And he is ready to sacrifice his life." - Eric Hoffer (Author of the True Believer)

Superiority Complex: an attitude of superiority that conceals actual feelings of inferiority and failure.

A cowardice, racist, white supremacist, who had the intention to foment a race war, incited his cult followers to trespass, murder innocent people, and to murder a man who was elected as Vice President of the United States, while all the while he himself did not participate, yet instructed his cult followers on how to carry it out.

Who do you think I’m talking about?

I am talking about Charles Manson. His cult followers murdered Sharon Tate, who was 8½ months pregnant, along with three friends and an 18-year-old visitor who was shot 4 times as he begged for his life. Sharon Tate and Sebring were tied together by their necks with rope which was slung over one of the living room's ceiling beams. “The coroner's report for Tate noted that she had been stabbed 16 times and that, ‘five of the wounds were in and of themselves fatal.’ The baby died inside his mother from lack of oxygen.” They also wanted to assassinate Gerald Ford.

If you thought that I was talking about Trump then that shows that it was your own understanding and intelligence that put that together. If you did so, and are a Trump supporter, then you are without excuse, your own conscience has condemned him. If not, you should be ashamed.

So the next time you see a MAGA cap, think of the red as the blood that was shed for this psychopath and the slogan as forcing Americans back into the race predicaments of the sixties.

And, in the coming years, when we see this type of personality wearing jackets printed with “I don’t care, do you?”, or we see hate and violence toward others who cannot be anything but who they are, maybe we can be reminded of our past and know where it will lead again. Or, hopefully, it will remind us that we are all in this together, and we need each other, and hate will not fix anything.