Unlike Oscar, I don't believe it is absurd to divide people into good or bad. In fact, I believe dividing people into good or bad is a Christian duty. All the same, I do get the larger point of Oscar's witticism. After all, bad people can be charming and, sadly, good people can be unbearably tedious. Wilde himself strikes me as a man of infinite charm, but I'll leave it up to you to decide whether old Oscar's charm veiled good or bad.
Wilde's witticism regarding good and bad bubbled to the surface of my mind shortly after I began watching some of the videos the Davos Crew have put up to support their big 2021 Great Reset Agenda pow-wow which, fittingly enough, is being conducted virtually this year because of the birdemic. The evil emanating from the Davos Crew's videos is too glaring and unmistakable to warrant debate, but what really struck me as I dipped into video after video was how unbearably tedious every single person in those videos proved to be.
And when I say tedious, I mean tedious in the fullest sense of the word. Every single WEF person I watched today was a mind-numbing, uninspiring, flat, dry, plodding bore. In terms of Oscar Wilde's witticism, the Davos Crew has the rather unenviable distinction of being the worst of both worlds - bad and tedious.
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting to encounter any alluring, cultured, and debonair Bond villains, but I figured our totalitarian overlords would trot out at least one charming person - at least one alluring, appealing figure who possessed enough of the old cult of personality to make the Great Reset and every other demonic scheme sound tantalizing.
No such luck. Instead of seductive Satanists spinning spellbinding soliloquies, all I found were painfully pathetic politicians and puppets prattling ponderous pedestrian platitudes.
It's difficult to imagine that these unexciting and uninspiring people now rule the world. Then again, considering the spiritual state of our world, perhaps it isn't so unimaginable at all. If anything, the insipid soullessness of our totalitarian overlords is a direct reflection of the insipid soullessness of the world. I guess the old saying is true - you get the leaders you deserve. And by all appearances, we deserve nothing but mundane mendacity and boring banality.
Think about it for a minute - these people are talking about reorganizing and reshaping every aspect of the world for the good of all mankind, yet they come off sounding less inspiring than a twice-divorced, life-weary, middle-aged parking lot attendant reading lines from a phone book.
The purposive evil we see today does not seek to convince or persuade. It no longer feels any need to hide behind charm. It presents itself exactly as it is - as bad and tedious - and by doing so, provides a little foretaste of the kind of soul-destroying hell they are preparing us for.
On the upside, the obvious lifelessness and soullessness of contemporary evil should give us cause for hope - it provides a perfect contrast to the life and soul of God's Creation, which may become more alluring and appealing in the hearts of many as the tedious totalitarian tragedy continues to unfold.
I've included three videos below. The first is attempt to repackage the Great Reset in five hip, colorful minutes (complete with a direct denial of the Great Reset as a global conspiracy), while the second is long-winded and interminable conference call featuring some editor from the Financial Times, a member of Canada's federal government (who claims to have won a national mandate for the Great Reset), and a handful of other Davos apparatchiks. The last video features St. Greta of Thunberg giving the Davos Crew disingenuous hell (sorry, couldn't resist).
I am tempted to say "Enjoy!", but there's no way . . .
Note added: The dislikes to likes ratios for these videos are skewed heavily in favor of the dislikes. The first video below has 4,300 dislikes and 481 likes, which is a nearly 10-1 ratio. Of course, YouTube will likely begin "fixing" these numbers soon, as Wm Jas Tychonievich explains here.