Criminals and Hypocrites

I can tolerate a straightforward lawless or criminal person. A thief, a contract killer, an extortionist, and what have you, I am okay with. What I cannot tolerate--and indeed wish I could hire said contract killer to assassinate--is a con artist, someone who does evil under the pretence of good, someone who does good for the sake of evil. For a criminal merely does evil for the sake of some good.

But there are more con artists in spirit than there are textbook con artists. I insist, there are con artists at every level of government. There are con artists in real estate and banking. Nearly every person who thinks himself a good person is a con artist. "Whoever says of himself he is not a sinner is a liar."

I can always find the good in an allegedly evil person. I can rarely find the good in an allegedly good person. I say, if you want to cut a man's throat, declare his offense in the public square and in the public square, by all means, cut his throat. But he really needs his own throat cut who would condemn, in the public square, throat-cutting but then behind closed doors or in some obscure shade goes ahead and cuts his enemy's throat anyway. And that, precisely, is what the politician, the tycoon, the attorney do.

We are all hypocrites. The question is what kind of hypocrite we will be. We can be a hypocrite for good or a hypocrite for evil. Hypocrites for evil abound; they are what we commonly call a hypocrite. What we need more of are hypocrites for good. Those dastardly villians who will cut your throat on the public square but then pay your funeral home costs; who sells you heroin but will then cut you off when you start to become a danger to yourself, because he just kind of likes you for some reason; who, to your face, tells you to go fuck yourself, but behind closed doors tells his associates that you're "all right."

But he who really needs a good throat-cutting is the insufferable Society Man who tells you how much he respects you, and then behind closed doors plans and plots for your demise and death.