Pardon my typos, I should go sharpen some pencils

Yes, and coming back from it from those surgically-sharp pencils just made you feel somehow taller and handsomer, as well as smarter (even they really just made you a bit smarter and ok a little better looking)

Nice! "Flood the zone.... with FLOOD ZONE"

- Italo Calvino, “Invisible Cities”

Never make or accept any excuses of course, and that's never my intent. But I think it's part of how they maximize the violent potential from people like that, and try to prevent them from having attacks of pesky conscience. Keeping them irrationally afraid of the people they are harming.

Yikes, I hadn't heard that part. Exposing people to cruelty that is not being done directly to them can sometimes can them more ready to enact cruelty and violence themselves, but it still eats away at their minds.