Behaviors Never Celebrated in Public

This being the Internet, I can find people who offer apologies and excuses for nearly any form of outrageous poor behavior.

But I notice I've never yet seen people openly and publicly celebrating certain forms of behavior as behaviors in which they themselves have engaged, and "proud of it!"

I've never yet seen anyone bragging about how they spread malicious gossip about a neighbor or a co-worker behind that person's back.

I've never yet seen anyone celebrating their own cheap tawdry mean-spiritedness.

I've never yet seen anyone boasting of lying and cheating and betraying a loyal friend.

I've never yet seen anyone gloating over how they inflicted intentional hurt and twisted the knife in their neighbor's ribs, always with bland deniability, always just a step beyond the reach of justice.

People do these things all the time, blatantly, flagrantly. And they're often shameless and unrepentant in public. But not shameless enough to boast openly of having engaged in such behavior. No, on some level they still realize that they deserve the burning molten lava of judgment raining down on their evil heads. Or if they don't even feel sorry for their sickening behavior, at least they know better than to brag of it openly. They know better than to cry "Look at me! Look at what I've done!"

I for one refuse to condone such folk. I mean, I have a life to live, I can't devote the lion's share of my energy to hounding them and bringing them to bay and then repaying them in cold iron as their evil behavior so richly merits. I leave that up to the righteous judgment of a just God, on a day when the sun will smolder like a dimly glowering coal in a burnt umber sky.

But in the meanwhile, I refuse to pretend that black is white. I refuse to gladhand and backslap the haters in our midst. I decline to condone those who willfully make themselves channels and conduits for an unbridled and shameless evil, at the expense of their innocent fellow man.