It’s hard to forgive, but the judgement of history is sufficient as punishment in this temporal realm. But history requires memory and corroboration and the cooling of passion and partisan poison. So cool heads must pervade for the common good. We have suffered a terrible disaster and we risk endless repetition unless we change our ways and the structure of our incentives. The Mesopotamian mythology of the afterlife, involved a voyage or gauntlet of seven judgements, through which the soul must pass to reach immortality. Each of these gauntlets or tests was administered by a terrible demigod or devil which would eat the soul if it failed to measure up. One of these was responsible for punishing bad kings or rulers who hurt these subjects. Who failed the public good.
It’s hard to forgive, but the judgement of history is sufficient as punishment in this temporal realm. But history requires memory and corroboration and the cooling of passion and partisan poison. So cool heads must pervade for the common good. We have suffered a terrible disaster and we risk endless repetition unless we change our ways and the structure of our incentives. The Mesopotamian mythology of the afterlife, involved a voyage or gauntlet of seven judgements, through which the soul must pass to reach immortality. Each of these gauntlets or tests was administered by a terrible demigod or devil which would eat the soul if it failed to measure up. One of these was responsible for punishing bad kings or rulers who hurt these subjects. Who failed the public good.