Here is the blackest magic of their art: they’ve transmuted cruelty to virtue’s coin. The suffering they cause becomes the proof of their resolve, their strength, their righteous will. This is no simple hypocrisy, where vice pays homage unto virtue’s fair façade—this is deeper metamorphosis: where vice itself becomes the highest virtue, where causing pain becomes the moral compass, where the capacity to harm without remorse is lauded as the courage to be “realistic.” For they have drunk so deeply of this cup that sweet and bitter have exchanged their taste, that up is down and black is purest white. Not that evil walks among us undisguised—that, at least, we could recognize and fight—but that evil has put on virtue’s robes, and those who wear them cannot see the stains, or will not see, or see and call them righteousness, convinced with zealot’s faith absolute that they are heroes of a noble cause.

From what cruel kool aid they have they drunk, that they can speak such words and think them true?