Uplifting News

Exactly. To these people, being ‘bad’ isn’t something you do, it’s something you are. (You may thank certain types of Christianity for this nonsense.)

So the thinking goes something like: ‘I’m a Good Person. And as a Good Person, I do Good Things and have Good Family, because I am Good.’ They feel (and it is always feel, not think) that Bad People are what cause the true downfall of society—mostly because they’re told that by their Good Authority Figures (you can tell the Authority Figures are Good because they lead/belong to a Church, and Churches are Good—as long as it’s the right church, of course).

This all means, of course, that since they’re Good, they can’t do Bad Things; they just make occasional mistakes.

(This is also where you get ‘The people I voted for are Good, because only a Bad Person would vote for Bad People, and I’m not Bad, I’m Good. So Trump isn’t Bad, he’s just misunderstood!’ nonsense.)

And, I hate to break it to you, but this behavior is very human. This is a version of Tribalism; my In Group is Good and everyone in the Out Group is Bad.

Edit: I think Sir Terry Pratchett said it best:

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.