In her magisterial account of Adolf Eichmann’s trial for war crimes, Hannah Arendt tells the story of the Allied search for lesser criminals. Even after the story of the Nazi death camps was well-known, investigators were astounded to learn that the majority of Nazi war criminals had simply returned to their homes after the war and resumed their lives without<\/i> any public opprobrium whatever. Indeed, their families and friends rationalized that it had unfortunately been necessary<\/i> to kill the Jews, because they were dirty and carried diseases and raped children … on and on ad nauseum<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Even after the needless death of tens of millions of people all over the world, and the ruin of their own country, an extraordinary number of Germans simply could not face the truth that they had been gulled by an amoral cynic — Hitler — and participated in mind-cracking barbarisms.<\/p>\n
I was reminded of that dismal story as I watched this morning’s round of television news shows and the attempts to discuss the Senate health care bill — the bald evasions of legitimate questions, the subject-changing, the plain lies. The Republicans are not the Nazis, of course, but they have utterly abandoned the indispensable elements of civilized society — ordinary decency, common sense, and reality itself. We are in uncharted waters, and piloted by madmen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In her magisterial account of Adolf Eichmann’s trial for war crimes, Hannah Arendt tells the story of the Allied search for lesser criminals. Even after the story of the Nazi death camps was well-known, investigators were astounded to learn that … Continue reading