A correspondent tells me that my posts are unbalanced. Too much yin and not enough yang – or maybe it’s the other way around. Anyway, he has a point. I shouldn’t publish post after post about great humans without exploring the dark side of the naked ape. Otherwise my human readers might get complacent, which would do them no favours.
So after much thought, I have compiled the following short-list for the ignoble title of “Most Evil Human That Ever Lived” (MEHTEL):
[] Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany
[] Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union
[] Captain Black, Mysteron agent
Now some may argue that Hitler and Stalin are in a league of their own because of the millions they killed. This oversimplifies a complex reality. Hitler and Stalin couldn’t personally have killed millions of people. One should rather say that they and their supporters killed millions of people. So when it comes to assigning guilt, the foolish humans who followed these dictators and elevated them to the status of living gods must share the blame. The responsibility for the millions who died must be divided fairly amongst the millions who helped to kill them.
Once these facts are understood, it becomes apparent that Hitler and Stalin were morally not much worse than a gangster like Al Capone, even though the damage done by Scarface was insignificant by comparison. Like Hitler and Stalin, Capone and his gang also killed those whom they considered enemies. Now just suppose that in addition to being a gangster, Capone had been a brilliant orator with a seductive political philosophy who had lived in a lawless country thirsting for a strongman to put the house in order. Don’t you think that millions of people would have flocked to his banner? Don’t you think that he and his followers would have exterminated their perceived enemies just as ruthlessly as Hitler and Stalin?
We need to examine these issues carefully before making snap moral judgments about Hitler and Stalin.
Now let’s turn to Captain Black. In one important respect, he was much worse than the dictators. For unlike Hitler and Stalin, Captain Black was a traitor – and a traitor to the entire human race, not just to a particular nation. And not content with being an agent of menacingly hostile aliens from Mars, he had the nerve to retain the uniform and rank of an officer of Spectrum! The barefaced cheek of the man! Even Kim Philby had the decency to assume the rank of a KGB colonel on defecting to the Soviet Union.
Some may argue that Captain Black doesn’t belong on the list because of the low number of casualties he inflicted, but this would be a total misunderstanding of the Mysteron approach to warfare. Their strategy is to probe the enemy carefully, sending their agents to prowl about spookily in alleyways, treading on any stray cats that get in the way, until they have amassed enough intelligence. They will then launch a massive, overwhelming attack that delivers a knock-out blow from which there is no hope of recovery or retaliation. The entire human race will go phut in a single afternoon, leaving the Earth empty for colonization from Mars. Any resistance from that point onward would have to come from the animals, which is not a prospect I would relish. This clip, which may distress cat lovers, gives a taste of their vile treachery.
Well, I‘ve had my say on the candidates for the title of MEHTEL, and as you can see I have my own biases and preferences. I throw it open to the floor for debate.
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