this variant, however, cannot be attributed to individual misconduct, as it deals w/ governance & policy; clearly the badness is flowing down from on high. but how is it generated? it would be Unjust were it simply benign incompetence, so instead it must be malicious conniving.

clearly the universe is Just, so it cannot be that incompetents end up in position of power; there must be something more, some order to the chaos. no, its that they're not incompetent at all, but rather lying to us about their goals!

much easier to deal with a concrete enemy

if one were to accept that the chaotic & ineffective governance was a function of error rather than planning, well, that would mean that our societal coordination systems are deeply flawed

there's few problems more terrifying than that of decentralized coordination failure

how does go about dealing w/ a dysfunction fractally pervade every layer of society? how to ensure good outcomes when there is no one in charge?

accepting this requires accepting that there is no sure-fire way for Good to defeat Evil; that there is no one battlefield, even

whats even more terrifying, for many, is that there might not even really BE any Good or Evil, that the world is but shades of gray; that mostly everyone does what they think is good for them and theirs, that there is no grand conspiracy of Evildoers

better to deny such a world

this is the tragedy of the conspiratorially-minded; they so deeply need the universe to be fundamental Good, filled w/ intrinsic meaning & order, that it drives them to perceive agentic phantoms, w/ tendrils pervading every sphere

better an all-powerful enemy than none at all