And it can go to pretty dark and scary places, as we have seen in the Armenian Genocide, the USSR, The Soviet Famine in Ukraine , WWII, The Nazi's systematic genocidal murder of Jews, Slavs, political opponents and ethnic minorities(it's often not appreciated that the Nazs exterminated 13 million people of which an estimated 6 million were Jews) , the Japanese in WWII with the Rape of Nanking as a signature event of sadism, The Cultural Revolution under Mao, Pol Pot's Cambodian Killing Fields, and the machete murders of a million or so Rwandans hacked to death on Bill Clinton's watch(one has to wonder who paid him to look the other way)
It’s a folly of the age. If we are blessed, the folly will fizzle out once it manages to incur enough absurdity on its own power. But to read about historical follies (even those which didn’t lead to horrific genocides) is to gain a lot of perspective.