There is a new strain of apologetics in the mediasphere, stories that strive to mitigate November's electoral trainwreck for the Democrats by invoking near occult powers of malevolence.

FORBES

Then, with a look of unadulterated malevolence on his face, he reached out with one of his crutches and tapped the man sitting next to the driver on the shoulder.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Legends'

That was followed by a three-year appeals process, during which the court appointed new lawyers to argue that their clients had been railroaded through the incompetence of the old lawyers, while the old lawyers continued arguing that their clients had been railroaded by the malevolence of the government.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Gitmo does not cause terrorism

That question, of course, is often posed with respect to what the West's leaders and their peoples could possibly have had in mind as first they ignored, then tried to appease, the rising power and growing malevolence of Adolf Hitler and his fellow totalitarians.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: What were they thinking?

Yet many people feel that kid-on-kid malevolence has become a kind of epidemic, given the prevalence of cyber-bullying and, in particular, the unnerving stories of teen-age suicides that have dominated the headlines in recent months.

NEWYORKER: Kids at Risk