A villain is judged evil partly by whether their evil nearly succeeded

Evidence

It needs to be remembered that these remarks are made soon after the conclusion of the ground war in Iraq. Briefly, I have no difficulty asserting that he is evil, and that the commander of the Allied forces is not. This is so even though we assume for a moment that the Allied forces killed more civilians than did the Iraqi forces. The discussion to back that up would involve reference to Hussein’s indiscriminate gassing of fleeing Iraqi Kurdish tribespeople, quasi-random launching of Scud missiles, and so on. Certainly Hussein will be enshrined within the institutional memories of those determining what sorts of conflicts American military must be prepared to fight. We will be, and probably should be, prepared to fight evil nations for years to come. It is also likely, however, that Hussein will not be as great a figure in the pantheon of demons as Hitler because he fought so ineptly. Perhaps complete evil needs to almost prevail. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4042

Categorization

• SEED: The notion that ‘complete evil needs to almost prevail’ for a villain to enter history’s pantheon — worth a short essay on how retrospective villainhood is measured by near-success, not body count.