Worlds' Worst Oppressors

I've been working on a 4x4 series, four cards each of four different world tyrants/oppressors/dictators/demonical murderers of masses of people, starting with Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot and Pinochet. Since art and religion are useful to me in as much as they teach me how to live, how to be a better human being, I turn to both for lessons, instructions. I never really wanted to study history's atrocities but can't seem to escape it; I love to read what happened, and inevitably, it takes me to some place that leaves my stomach roiling, nightmares imploding, my daydreams intruded upon. Is it part of mental illness that drives me to this, a morbid compulsion which I have sensed from childhood when the story about the world and the world itself as I experienced it never fully jived. We lived with our parents' false tales, as they lived with the cleaned-up stories of their ancestral pasts. I want to get down to it, underneath it, not to make of mine an unhappy life--not at all, because I seek joy, love, happiness--but to be the examined life I believe I am meant to be. If God is a verb, as I believe is the case, then Evil, Satan, whatever the dark side is called, is also actively engaged in the world. There ARE scary monsters, there are full unfettered truths. I have a job to do, not simply create beauty but to unmask the ugliness, too.