Sitting on the toilette recently, I was thinking about how maybe we all play a part in a communal human experience. Call it what you will: a universal soul, extending the collective unconscious? Perhaps, we should look at the history of mankind taking into account figures like Christ, and Hitler, along with your run-of-the-mill guy next door, and realize that collectively their individual characters have something to say about who we are as individuals. I was fine with the idea that the Brown Shirts, Edi Amin, and the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge speak to something about who I am as a human. I was. Yet somehow I was not ok with what I saw on The Bachelor.

Talk about the banality of evil. Or maybe it’s the evil of banality? Or maybe the stupidity of stupidity? Allsiknowis, I was only marginally bothered by the idea that I am a member of the same species as madmen, despots, and murderers. However, when I realized that I am also from the same tribe as the finalists for this year’s Bachelor, I thought, ‘It really is a shame that I share almost identical double helixes with a guy who shows what a good mate he would be, by allowing FOX TV to film him working out without a shirt on, and then later by striking a rugged pose as he pilots an enormous powerboat around a lake.’ Someone once said of humans something to the effect of, “Vanity: it’s all we know, and all we need know.” When I saw a big-gelled-up-pompadour-having cheesedick give a smarmy smirk to the camera and say, “I had relations with thirty women last year,” I knew it was true. Forget Kurtz and the jungles of Saigon. Just turn on The Bachelor for a true journey into the shallow heart of darkness. The horror, the horror.