To a dispassionate extra-terrestrial observer the human race must appear very strange. Every so often there appears in their midst a cruel monster who murders thousands, occasionally millions, of them. then, when it appears that the monster is about to be brought to justice, thousands of humans leap to the monster's defence! They are very good at finding reasons for excusing the monster or letting him off the hook:

- Other powerful humans invoke geopolitical expediency for defending the brute. Often, it turns out, the monster could not have committed his crimes without their help and support in the first place.

- Others appear to endorse the concept of a 'strong leader'; I recall that many Russians wept genuine tears of grief on hearing of Stalin's death, even though he may have tortured and imprisoned them and even slaughtered members of their families.

- Others piously intone that "the death penalty is wrong" and even suggest that we should 'forgive' the monster for his crimes. I note, though, that they seldom ask the surviving victims of the monster's cruelty what they think ...

I think that our hypothetical observer would speculate that one of these monsters would eventually succeed in wiping out all of the human race and that that race had an inbuilt flaw, a blindness towards such large scale criminality and barbarity, which would eventually make such an outcome inevitable.