Allie Ward

And me, as a non-academic, as a non-scholar, as someone who's just like, my horrified face is lit up by the news on my screen, you know, I can't help but want to apply these to things I see happening around me.

And I look at things like an AI video of Trump's Gaza comes out with this, the rubble of what is now Gaza, Palestine.

being cleared away to make a Riviera of gambling.

And I'm seeing things like a Fox News commentator who retained his job saying that people who are unhoused should be subject to involuntary lethal injection.

Or involuntary lethal injection or something.

Just kill them.

And I see things like that.

My brain wants to say people who say that are evil, obviously.

What we're talking about, though, is the crusade for purity to clean up this area and make it a glittering Western front of commerce.

The idea of cleaning up the streets by mass murder of unhoused people.

It's like, that doesn't even seem political at that point.

And right now I'm just ranting, but...

Mercedes, our lead editor, sent me a really interesting piece of data about how often the term evil comes up in official congressional papers on the right versus the left.

And this was from a September 2025 piece by Lindsay Cormack, which showed that in congressional emails to constituents over the last 15 years, the word evil has occurred 2,490 times.

And this was from a few weeks ago, so maybe it's more.

But 89%.

Of all the mentions, the word evil came from Republicans, 11% from Democrats.

So when you hear someone in a powerful position use the word evil, just listen closely to the context.

The right uses it much more than the left.

So evil, we all use it, but maybe incorrectly, maybe when better, more realistic adjectives could be used like homicidal or detrimentally callous or in violation of humanitarian laws.