If there’s one lesson stories have hammered into me, from The Stand to Lord of the Rings to every myth where darkness overreaches, it’s this: evil never actually wins. It blusters. It intimidates. It looks unstoppable right up until the moment it cracks. But it always cracks. Not because good is stronger in a physical sense, but because evil carries the seeds of its own destruction. It rots from the inside.
The pattern is almost boring in its predictability. People who chase power for its own sake eventually turn on each other. They hoard. They lie. They rewrite reality until even their closest allies can’t keep up with the script.
And when you build an empire on fear, ego, and denial, you don’t need an external enemy, the collapse comes from within.
You can see this dynamic in fiction, but you can also see it in the real world. Some people look at figures like Donald Trump or Nigel Farage and feel a kind of dread, as if these movements are unstoppable forces reshaping the world in their image. They seem loud, confident, untouchable. They surround themselves with loyalists who repeat every line, defend every contradiction, and insist that what we saw with our own eyes never happened.
But here’s the thing: that’s exactly what the villains in stories do right before the downfall begins.
When leaders demand total loyalty, they create an environment where no one can tell the truth, not even to each other. When they insist that reality must bend to their narrative, they force their followers into impossible contortions. And when the lies stack too high, the whole structure becomes unstable. People start to notice the cracks. They start to whisper. They start to question why they’re defending the indefensible.
And once doubt enters the room, it spreads.
We’re watching that happen now. The public is waking up. Former allies are stepping back. The contradictions are too big to ignore, the scandals too frequent, the excuses too thin.
You can only gaslight a population for so long before people start comparing notes and realising they’re not the only ones who feel something is off.
In stories, this is the moment when the henchmen look at each other and realise the villain isn’t invincible, he’s just loud. This is when the inner circle fractures. Not because the heroes stormed the gates, but because the villain demanded so much loyalty that he left no room for honesty, competence, or stability.
That’s why evil never wins, because evil is unsustainable. It burns too hot. It consumes too much. It demands too much from the people propping it up.
And when it finally collapses, as it always does, it’s not the triumph of some perfect hero. It’s the simple, stubborn truth that people eventually see what’s in front of them. They recognise the lies. They recognise the harm. And they choose something better.
Hope doesn’t come from pretending everything is fine. Hope comes from recognising the pattern and knowing how the story ends.