"The surest way to manipulate someone into condemnation of their friends and families, and into abandonment of good conduct, is to convince them without their realization that they have something to fear." -

Agree with this post to a certain extent. I believe that many of the people who took these evil actions were simply following their true character and acting hatefully because it was allowed/acceptable behavior and encouraged by tyrants.

This being said, I also believe we all possess an evil nature since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. Each of us is capable of unspeakable evil. We don’t all choose to follow our nature even when it is allowed, but we all do wrong.

So, I propose that we recognize/differentiate who chose to destroy others and who were just willfully ignorant and simply obeyed the tyrants and avoided doing good (assuming we are those who used our brains and sought to help others) . With those two groupings we should forgive the willfully ignorant who did no overt harm to others, but remember to lower our expectations of them in the future.

That leaves those who did overt harm to others. If they admit their evil behavior apologize and repent (do an about face and start to work to make whole those they harmed), we should forgive them, but recognize that they may not be strong enough to resist the temptation to repeat their evil behavior in the future. (Forgive them, but don’t be too quick to afford them the opportunity to repeat their bad behavior, by placing our trust in them) .

If they were in positions of authority (e.g. FauXi, CDC, FDA, the “news” media, your doctor, etc… ) and did great harm to those they were supposed to help, they should be removed from those positions of trust, if they refuse to admit their evil deeds, make restitution (where possible) , and publicly apologize to each person they have harmed: those people should be tried for their crimes and/or at least be never trusted again until they have fulfilled that list of requirements (admit, apologize, make restitution) .

IMO, there will be no healing of this nation until we who were harmed by those who did the bidding of the evil tyrants (like FauXi, Obiden, etc… ) can forgive those who were weak and ignorant, but who didn’t overtly seek to harm others and until we even forgive those who purposely and overtly harmed us, but who truly admit/confess, apologize and try to make restitution.