Evil for Profit

 The question I ask myself every so often is how many people are actually evil.  

If you are an educated person some things should be obvious to you, such as Climate Change, yet some who should know better still deny it.  It could be self interest like when some scientists continued to defend cigarettes when they knew better because they got paid to do so.  This is evil but it was more evil to be the ones paying them.

Take the big lie about the last election.  Outside of the fact that it shows gullibility in this country may be at an all time high, there have been enough bipartisan reviews to show anyone who cares that there was no widespread voter fraud or changed ballots.  Still some persist in using it for political purposes or to keep audiences watching.

If the fact that they have ulterior motives a mitigating factor or a contributory one?

The evil of the lie is unlikely to benefit anyone long term but it keeps the true believers watching the shows they put on instead of fleeing to a rival who promotes the lie.

Years ago I had a house guest who after dinner wanted to watch Fox news.  He was almost salivating over what new outrageous thing they were going to do.  I didn't know the right channel and he missed his dose of evil ranting that night.  It reminded me of shock radio in that they got as outrageous as they could to bump up the ratings.  Now they have competition with even more outrageousness.

Its a spiral towards big lies and evil for profit.