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A Loaded Weapon
The Trump administration has gone rogue, suspending Habeas Corpus under the pretense of cracking down on “illegal immigration.” How this threatens the rights of every American
Hannah Arendt, a political philosopher who examined the nature of totalitarianism, observed after witnessing the Eichmann trial:
“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.”
Her analysis of what she termed “the banality of evil” speaks to how ordinary people can participate in extraordinary injustice through bureaucratic distance and moral disengagement.
Psychology offers some understanding of this phenomenon. Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, explains:
“Evil consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, or destroy innocent others — or using one’s authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to do so on your behalf.”
