baffling to me how it is deeply ingrained in the ideology of many that there must exist a class of people who are ontologically evil and deserve whatever punishment is doled out to them
Unfortunately I don't think it's so baffling—it's so much simpler. That's what it boils down to. It's so much easier than grappling with complex questions of ethical behavior and one's own potential for doing harm and causing pain. Wrestling with tough questions like "Am I a good person? am I doing good?" doesn't matter any more: "doing good" now means simply being a cop, hunting and hurting the Evil™ people from whom all Evil™ flows. It's a remarkable ethical simplification, and I'm not surprised that it's so widespread an idea. ~Chara
