Objective Villains

Objective Bad Guys.

When I was a kid, I always liked the bad guy on the Jonny Quest cartoon who was named Dr. Zin. I liked him because he was objective. He was evil and he knew it. He even introduced himself that way. "Yes, Quest! It is I! The evil Dr. Zin!"


You have to admire that. I mean, I doubt Adolf Hitler went around introducing himself as "the evil Chancellor Hitler". So, I liked this particular toon villain. Dr. Zin was honest about it. He was an evil, grasping, greedy, ambitious asshole, and he knew it. And more than that, he was okay with it. (Yes, there's the possibility he was just being a sarcastic jerk to Dr. Quest, but I like to think not.)

The Objective Dr. Zin.

And you have to wonder if soldiers on the "bad" side ever wonder about what they're doing. Yeah, maybe they have the best weapons and outnumber the other side. But what happens when they start to ask just what the hell they're doing on foreign soil laying waste to a culture they don't understand and have never encountered.

I guess all of this is one reason I don't bother too much with such bizarre concepts as nationalism and patriotism.