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Comment by lm28469 | Hacker News Reader

> the assumption that this is plain malice designed to let the state rob a few more individuals of their freedom makes much more sense

That's a lot of work, a lot of malice, a lot of hate, from a lot of people, for a very meagre result.

If that's how you view your government you must live a really painful existence

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It's just people "doing their jobs" and trying to get ahead.

That's the banality of evil.

Lest we forget the very systems enabling this behavior of banal evil were created and maintained by perhaps the most evil of them all.

The word "lest" is meant to come after something else. It means "for fear that" or "or else" or something similar. So it's not clear what you're trying to say. I don't know what "very systems" built by "the most evil" you mean either. Is it supposed to be obvious what you're referring to?

It's from a poem in 1897.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recessional_(poem)

Oh, okay.

I clicked the link and remain confused. The poem does have in common the term "lest we forget", but apparently nothing else. It's also used in a grammatically correct way in the poem, but not in your post, since it's not following anything.

> for a very meagre result

Power is not a meagre result. For those people who live by it, it is the ultimate goal, and they will use any means to obtain and expand it, no matter the cost to others.

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