Everyday Evil

Recently, I saw the movie Hannah Arendt. I found the movie gripping and very relevant to issues today. People have long recognized the sentiment that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing. The movie wrestles with that concept at several levels.

A concern I've had -- especially since the Iraq War -- has been the growing sense of responsibility for the irresponsible actions of my country. In 2007, I published a set of haiku Mia Lando about my growing distress that my country was doing things that I could never condone. At the same time, I have continued to pay taxes. I voted for Obama. Yet he has continued the same murderous practices as his predecessors. How am I not culpable? How are we all not culpable?

Hannah Arendt wrestled with how to judge the behavior of Eichmann, who was simply a good bureacrat. He organized transportation as efficiently as he could. He argued that the fact that the outcome of his efficiency was genocide was irrelevant to his culpability. He argued that it wasn't his role to think about that. They hanged him anyway, of course. Arendt described his inability to think beyond the surface of his actions as the banality of evil.

But Arendt also described how the actions of the Jews also contributed to the outcome -- and this another place where I saw parallels with issues of today. The Germans had created an environment in which Jews were made to feel hopeless and that no matter what they did, it could amount to nothing. This helplessess contributed to the inability of the Jews to organize and save themselves. I believe that the same thing has been done to the poor in the United States.

The poor have been convinced to blame themselves for their plight. They have been taught that, if they were worthy, the economy would reward them with opportunity and wealth. And they believe that if they have neither opportunity nor wealth, it is their own fault. But the wealthy and powerful have designed an economy that will leave many people out. And will continue to leave more and more out in the future. People blame themselves and fail to organize when they should be blaming the ones that have ruined and stolen their future from them. They fight among themselves for scraps when they should organize and take what is rightfully theirs from their oppressors.

Much of the movie was actually a bit tedious: at least an hour of the movie was devoted to closeups of the actress smoking. But watching a movie where someone was thinking was still a welcome change from most of what passes for cinematography in this day and age.