The Vietnam War and Cultural Sadeism

This is a piece I wrote some time ago, working out how evil and leftism are connected. A key image that recurs to me again and again is poor, sad Vietnamese patriots--people who had thought they were fighting for Vietnamese independence for many, many years--locked into cages the size of dog kennels, fed rice with sand in it, and suffering in the jungle heat for years, until disease or grief ended their horrible existences. You see this brutality in Communist "revolutions" over and over. You see the hatred concealed by layers and layers of lies. It is wickedness, at root, in a more or less pure form. Hence Cultural Sadeism. I make my case in the piece. Parts are borrowed more or less directly from a Commentary piece, but I have actually read the books in question, and simply not found the time to source them properly. That process adds to the scholarly value of the piece, but little intellectually. I am in any event working on another piece on the Vietnam War, from a slightly different angle.