A New Kind of Evil

    Lately there has been much talk about how The Dark Knight and our current President have so much in common, among them are:

• Both fight evil.
• Both are highly unpopular for it.
• Both have fairly large ears - although Batman's are fake and can be removed each time he takes off his mask.

   But let's focus on the type of evil that both these men fight.

   To do this I first have to take you back to the good ole' days, to those days of yesteryear that we call the Cold War. Ah yes, how we long for the days that the Soviets and the US had thousands of nukes pointed at each other.  We could each destroy every man, woman, child, and quite possibly cockroach in our opposing nations.  We told them that if they fired all their nukes at us, that after squaring up with God, our last act would be to respond in kind.  They then told us that if we fired at them first they would do exactly the same, minus all that God stuff.  This stalemate was dubbed Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

   Now what made MAD sane was that each country loved life.  We loved our God, our families, apple pie and baseball.   They loved...well...vodka.  But at least in that they found something to live for and it assured continuing life for both countries.

   Batman battles this kind of evil as well, it is known as the mafia.  The mafia will do anything to get what it loves, and what it loves is money.  They love all that that money can bring them; power, influence, respect, and an endless line of credit at Mafia Suits-R-Us.  The point is that they love life enough to want to live.

   I will call both the Soviet's and the mafia's brand of evil "sane evil".  Evil, no doubt, but with an ounce of self-preservation thrown in.

   Batman also does battle with the Joker, played and developed so well by Heath Ledger that Jack Nicholson’s Joker looks tame and sedate enough to be a supporting character in Sophie’s Choice.  Heath Ledger's Joker loves nothing more than violence, destruction, and causing others to fear.  He doesn't fear death.  He cannot be negotiated with.  He is insanity and evil all rolled into one; "insane evil".

   Does this parallel anything we are fighting today?

   Insane evil will not stop; it will seek to destroy all that is good.  It cannot be negotiated with, it can only be destroyed.  Batman and Bush know this and fight against it.  It makes them unpopular; the fight often causes people to blame them instead of the insane evil.  But they do what is right and fight on anyway.

   Those of us here in the US and in the west as a whole just want to keep on living our lives and loving our families.  That is not the case with the Islamic extremists, they want to blow up innocence, they think it brings them:

• Fame (blow up a few Israeli children and you can have a Palestinian elementary school named after you)
• Fortune (before we did away with Saddam, he would offer families of suicide bombers a large honorarium)
• Pleasure (supposedly in their version of Heaven, a smoking new arrival inherits  a large, freshly stocked brothel to call his own.  Do they still think it was worth it when they actually wake up in hell choking on hot coals?)

   It's time for this new kind of evil to be dubbed exactly what it is, insane and evil; insane evil. 
   And it must be stopped.