“My soul resides in the depths of depravity,” wrote the retired Canadian news leader, reflecting on her life.

“Retribution: once I thought it was my acting duty, now I see that vengeful moralism only leads to atrocities.”

She sat at the end of a dock in an alpine lake. The country side was the only safe place for such a public figure. For years she was loved and revered, a journalist fighting for their side, but her final publishings ended in disaster.

“I sit here, waiting for my death, writing about my inner thoughts, and peeling the mask off from my time in power. Maybe the world will forgive me, maybe they will see that power deludes even the humanists among us.”

She knew it was only a matter of time until the mob came for her. And just as that thought appeared in her mind, she heard shouting in the distance. It grew second by second.

“I wrote a book, it’s locked in the safe under the floor panels in the kitchen,” she went on, “by now you have killed me, but please read what I have written, for I fear the mob I once led will rule.”

With irreverence, she looked over her shoulder and saw the seething crowd nearing the start of the dock.

Her last words: “History is filled with despotic acts in the name of a moral mob; it’s a grave mistake to join because, eventually, the mob turns on us all. There is no such thing as our group vs theirs — that is a contrived dichotomy and a pernicious one at that. ‘The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being,’ all individuals have a chance to be good. I wish I hadn…”

And the crowd erupted in uproarious thunder.