The Banality of Evil

 The Banality of Evil

By the time this letter is published, Trump will have been acquitted by the U.S. Senate in his, so-called impeachment trial.  I say, “so-called” because in a 51-49 vote, the Republican senators decided that no witnesses would be allowed.  Neither did the Senate “trial” push for subpoenas on House requested documents.  In a normal trial, both witnesses and documents would be offered as evidence.  Thus, the Trump exoneration is based on a witness free and evidence free show trial, notwithstanding the well-focused fact-based, historically, and constitutionally informed case provided by the House Managers.

 It has been widely accepted as a foregone conclusion that the Senate would acquit the president.  It was just as likely that the Senate would not issue subpoenas on the requested documents or support the call for witnesses, though faint hope of the latter was dashed with the no vote of Lamar Alexander and Lisa Murkowski.  This was not the case because the House Managers failed to make a compelling case in support of the two impeachment charges:  abuse of power and the obstruction of Congress.  It was, rather, that regardless as to the evidence, the senate Republicans would not budge in their craven support of Trump. 

Thus, in his contortionist illogic, retiring Senator, Lamar Alexander acknowledged that Trump’s private effort to get dirt on Joe Biden through the shenanigans of his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was inappropriate.  On this first charge of abuse of power, he acknowledged that the House Managers decisively proved their case.  For Alexander that obviated the need for additional witnesses. Despite Alexander’s disapproval of the president’s “inappropriate” behavior, this did not rise to the level of removing him from office.  Asked why the president relied on his personal attorney rather than work through official channels in probing into the issue surrounded the Bidens, Alexander suggested that the president didn’t know how to do that.  Given Trump’s three-decade history of skirting around the law, the multiple irony of Alexander’s comments should not be lost.  The good Senator issued the coup de grace in stating that despite Trump’s “inappropriate” behavior, he intends to vote for him in November. Perfect! 

 Senator Ben Sasse, from Nebraska, who earned a Ph.D. in history from Yale University and is the author of The Vanishing American Adult, could offer nothing more than, “Lamar speaks for lots and lots of us.”  Asked whether the president acted inappropriately, Sasse (that profile in courage) failed to respond.  Senator Marco Rubio, from Florida, took it down a notch, acknowledging that while Trump’s actions on pressuring the Ukrainian president to participate in his own domestic political scheme was impeachable, remains opposed to removing the president—or even in allowing for witnesses and documents—simply because the impeachment process is overly partisan.  Here is Rubio’s actual statement:  "New witnesses that would testify to the truth of the allegations are not needed for my threshold analysis, which already assumed that all the allegations made are true."  Further explaining his stance on the impeachment trial, Rubio stated that just because an offense is impeachable does not mean that a president should be removed from office. One only can assume that Rubio will also find his way to supporting Trump for re-election.

The philosopher of totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, has written cogently of “the banality of evil” in referencing the ethical responsibility of technocrat, Adolph Eichman, who organized the transportation of victims to the Nazi concentration camps.  The question posed by Arendt is whether it is possible to do evil without being aware of participating in evil.  As Arendt described it:

 “I was struck by the manifest shallowness in the doer [ie Eichmann] which made it impossible to trace the uncontestable evil of his deeds to any deeper level of roots or motives. The deeds were monstrous, but the doer – at least the very effective one now on trial – was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous.”  (Aeon, “What did Hannah Arendt really mean by the banality of evil?”).

 I am not comparing Alexander, Sasse, and Rubio to Eichman.  I am raising the specter of the banality of evil—in which the very existence of the Trump presidency is an apt characterization—and its implications for the viability of our democracy.  Specifically, I contend that Trump’s desire to trash Biden through the assistance of the Ukrainian government is an act of evil, even if he is unaware of the implications of his behavior.  Assuming that is the case, then rationalizations designed to allow such behavior to stand are similarly evil, irrespective as to the moral awareness of those taking such a position.  Though the situation is not remotely as dire as it was in Germany in the 1930s, what is at stake is the continuing viability of US democracy in a political climate that is becoming increasingly authoritarian.  Core civic values that have sustained the republic from its foundation are now being eroded by the very institutions designed to uphold them.  When the history of this period is written, Alexander, Sasse, and Rubio, as well as that paragon of partisanship, Mitch McConnell, will be viewed as among the complicit.   

For whom the bell tolls if not for us in these most perilous times? 

2020