I have been reading Mirrors, by Eduardo Galeano.  I have come to believe that there is a thread of evil running through human history that will not die but must be fought against without stint or let.

In the middle of a series of disquisitions about slavery and its never-ending end in the 18th and 19th centuries, I came across this:

When Iqbal Maiz was four, his parents sold him for fifteen dollars.

He was bought by a rug maker.  He worked chained to the loom fourteen hours a day. At the age of ten, Iqbal was a hunchback with the lungs of an old man.

Then he escaped and became the spokesman for Pakistan’s child slaves.

In 1995, when he was twelve years old, a fatal bullet knocked him from his bicycle.
[pp. 190-191]

In 1995.

Evil.

Evil is not having sex with someone to whom you are not married or is the same gender as you.  Evil is not realizing your brain is not the same gender as your body.  Evil is not praying to some other deity than you and your neighbors.

Evil is cruelty to anyone with less power than you.

Period.

Not in my name, not in my country.  Speak up.