I keep trying to figure out why people believe all these blatant lies. And I create all these circumstances of class and shattered ambitions, of comatose educational upbringing, of fractured real-world exposure, etc., to try to understand it all. And then oft times, most times, nothing fits. And then I think of Hannah Arendt's description of "the banality of evil." And how that description wrought her many enemies. She attributed to Eichmann what she termed “thoughtlessness,” an inability to think from the other’s point of view. Maybe these folks who bludgeoned to death a capitol police officer with a fire extinguisher or all of the other marauders hellbent on tearing up Congress were pure evil. Or maybe they have just been so forsaken and so low that their only way to go high is racial purity.
I keep trying to figure out why people believe all these blatant lies. And I create all these circumstances of class and shattered ambitions, of comatose educational upbringing, of fractured real-world exposure, etc., to try to understand it all. And then oft times, most times, nothing fits. And then I think of Hannah Arendt's description of "the banality of evil." And how that description wrought her many enemies. She attributed to Eichmann what she termed “thoughtlessness,” an inability to think from the other’s point of view. Maybe these folks who bludgeoned to death a capitol police officer with a fire extinguisher or all of the other marauders hellbent on tearing up Congress were pure evil. Or maybe they have just been so forsaken and so low that their only way to go high is racial purity.
I remain puzzled.