because it's am untidy universe. All this free will running around.

But the bad guys don't always win, and the good guys don't always lose. Quitters always lose, though, no matter what their moral position.

I once tried giving up, and letting things slide, just so I could get some rest. I regretted it. Never again. In the long run, I didn't even get the rest I'd hoped for. Things fall apart fast when you let the bad guys take the initiative. There are no guarantees of success if you fight, but there's just no upside to quitting. None at all. So you may as well fight tooth and nail.

I'm thinking the bullies you grew up with were smarter than the ones I gre up with. Mine all went on to be petty criminals and convicts, or to die young in stupid drunken accidents. I might have gone to a wake, just to gloat, but I decided it was beneath me.

Still, the evil bosses I used to run into have to have come from somewhere. Few of them have struck me as happy people. I think they just take out their (usually) secret frustrations out on those who don't resist. The universe is trying to tell them not to be such assholes, by screwing up their personal lives, but they're just not listening. The guilty don't get off scot free, and I'm fine with that. But the innocent suffer, too.

My heart bleeds for the truly helpless, who cannot defend themselves. But not for those who can defend themselves, but won't, for whatever reason. I tried that for a while, in my younger days. Never, ever again.

Turning the other cheek is fine and noble, until you run out of cheeks.