Episode 37: The Normalization of Evil in America

It could never happen here? Think again. It already has. Today the Republican Party formally blocked the investigation into the mob violence that Donald Trump inspired on January 6, 2021. But there was a reason for their opposition. You see, the mob violence and treason were perpetrated by white people. It is that simple and if you doubt it for a moment, ask yourself how Ted Cruz and Jim Jordan would have voted if the mob had been Black Lives Matter supporters, Mexicans, Asians, or Muslims. But for most of us, this reprehensible vote will be quickly forgotten. It is what the party of Donald Trump does. It embraces any kind of evil sanctioned by Donald Trump no matter how unthinkable. It is now the party of Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Gaetz called for a Second Amendment response to the people in  Silicon Valley who are interfering with Trump's spreading of the stolen election delusion. Greene has called for the murder of Nancy Pelosi and the execution of Democrats. Trump called her, “somebody that I just think is fantastic.” Public pronouncements by members of congress advocating "Second Amendment solutions" were unthinkable five years ago. Today they seem to be Republican mainstream political positions. We started down this path when Trump's people began to tolerate, shrug their shoulders, and nod when he suggested that his followers might want to "take care" of Hillary Clinton by exercising their (sic) Second Amendment rights. It all began when he correctly calculated that he could gain a foothold with racists and closet racists by fostering the rumor that a black American president was really a Kenyan Muslim. We became numb to indecency when people began to excuse Trump-style cruelty by saying, "Oh... that's just Trump being Trump." Years before he ran for president, he showed us exactly what he was. The problem wasn't that he hid the evidence or that he fooled us. The problem was that Donald Trump-style unapologetic cruelty was exactly what almost half of America wanted. 

Transcript

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart is most often remembered for his observation about hardcore pornography: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced... [b]ut I know it when I see it ..." It was a great point about the difficulty of defining such a concept because so often the conclusion that something is hardcore pornography is in the eye of the beholder. Except, of course, for the determination from the pulpit made by hardcore prosperity preachers who prey on their followers for money, own jets, live in mansions, and, ironically, represent a kind of hardcore religious pornography. You are correct if you guessed that I know religious pornography when I see it.

The same kind of amorphous observation might be thought to apply to the idea of “evil.” We all know it when we see it. 

The name Adolph Hitler immediately evokes an image of monstrous evil in decent people. And he is near the top of the list of evil men as being responsible for the most horrific suffering of innocents in the history of the planet along with Mao and Stalin. That result certainly qualifies him as evil. If we are to judge evil by the results that evil men accomplish, Adolph Hitler was unarguably an apex evildoer. Together with Mao and Stalin these men were responsible for the murders of 145 million people who they identified as “enemies of the people” a phrase that was resurrected by Donald Trump to stoke the fires of hatred at people who dared to write unflattering things about him or repeat exactly the utterances that he actually said. 

Certainly, if we are to judge evil by the infliction of human suffering, these are the worst of the worst. The unimaginable toll these men took in human lives is why many become offended and even enraged when commentators occasionally compare Donald Trump to Hitler. It is cogently argued that such a reference used against the political opposition for holding different, and even repulsive views, trivializes the atrocities committed by Hitler and the Nazis. It is a point well taken and made clear recently when the Georgia brain disease named Marjorie Taylor Greene compared mask mandates to the Holocaust.

As far as we know, Donald Trump has never ordered the death of a single innocent person. Not one. Ordering the death of innocent people is certainly an indicium of evil but it isn’t the whole story and you will get disagreement by men of goodwill on even that. Harry Truman was responsible for ordering the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children when he ordered nuclear weapons to be used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But if you happened to be a GI scheduled to participate in the invasion of Japan you could make an excellent and well-founded argument that Truman was a hero, and even a humanitarian. You see, I’m not so sure that the number of people killed is the only way to look at the phenomena. I think evil can be much more than a fortuitous numerical calculation. Counting the victims doesn’t help us understand what kind of a man would do engage in acts of evil. If we want to understand the nature of evil it is first necessary to get inside the minds and psychological make-up of the men who perpetrate evil. 

Is it possible that people exist who are somehow worse than Hitler, Mao, and Stalin but have not had the opportunity or the inclination to act their evil out on scores of the innocent? For example, I think there are drug cartel bosses who can compete with and surpass Hitler on the evil scale. They can’t compete numerically, but they engage in unthinkable acts of hyper-violence and torture, and they do so, not because of any ideological views. They do so because they enjoy doing it. They do so because they are thrilled and stimulated by cruelty.

I believe the love of cruelty at the individual face-to-face level is the ultimate kind of evil. 

I have never read a historical profile of Hitler that indicated he ever visited a concentration camp and was amused by or applauded the horrors that he initiated. No one has said he ever sat around and laughed at the suffering or misfortune he caused. It would not really surprise me to find out that he did, but there is no evidence on that score. He implemented a depraved philosophy of extreme social Darwinism, but as the idiot, Walter Sobchak said in the Big Lebowski when told that his adversaries were nihilists, “Nihilists? I mean say what you want about the tenants of national socialism but at least it was an ethos.” I don’t know that I would rank nihilists as worse than Nazis, but Walter had a point. Hitler and the Nazis actually believed their depraved notion that they were paving the way to creating a better world. Did they cause an incalculable amount of evil and human suffering? Of course. But can you imagine people who are more depraved but simply not powerful enough to inflict their brand of evil on the world? Of course, you can. And if you can’t, Hollywood will help you out with characters like Hannibal Lecter.

Deriving pleasure, gratification, and even a kind of thrill that the perpetrator thinks is fun by inflicting suffering is, I suggest, the essence of cruelty. And cruelty is the pinnacle of evil.

And even with the idea of cruelty, there are distinctions to be made. What kind of human creature could be worse than Jeffrey Dahmer? Dahmer achieved his infamy by sexually assaulting, killing and eating young men. And yes, he derived sexual pleasure and satisfaction from doing it. He enjoyed it. And that satisfies the first half of my moral equation. But if you watch interviews with him, he talks about the factors in his childhood that “made him do it.” I do not here offer those factors up as any kind of excuse although I suspect that his hardwiring was so defective – that those decency wires were so terribly frayed and crossed -- that the responsibility must be shared with his designer. But Dahmer never tried to justify or claim he had a right to do what he did. People who plead variations of “The Devil made me do it” usually appear to be aware, on some level, that what they did was wrong and even horrible. They claim that they were unable to resist their urges. Which may or may not be bullshit and gets us into the whole free will/determinism minefield which I will leave for another day. But those people don’t brag about their evil acts. They don’t appear to be proud of what they have done. They don’t think it makes them great men. They do it because it feels good on some depraved level. It satisfies some terrible urge that they may have been born with a propensity for. 

If you want to get a glimpse of real-life evil incarnate, review the tapes of interviews with Richard Ramirez, a serial killer, rapist, and torturer of children and the elderly alike, who didn’t blame anyone or anything for his ghastly atrocities. He was proud of them. He considered them to be wonderful accomplishments. He was the embodiment of the worst kind of evil… the evil manifested in joyful and righteous cruelty.

I think that kind of deliberate cruelty is the worst kind of evil that we are capable of even imagining.  Cruelty isn’t in the eye of the beholder. It has objective qualities that everyone can agree on. In the excellent min-series, Mare of Eastown, there is a scene in a high school cafeteria where a boy throws food at a young girl with down syndrome and laughs at her despondency at being treated that way.  

It struck me as the kind of cruelty that was so awful that there wasn’t much to compare it to. It was the boy’s gleeful satisfaction in accomplishing suffering that struck me and stayed with me. He called her a retard. See what I did to that retard? Am I cool or what? Were you watching when I did it? There are people like that. His self-perceived “brave” act of cruelty makes him the center of attention and gets him laughs and the adulation of this followers… the kids that think it’s funny and want to be part of his powerful tribe. Kids that would never do anything like that themselves. Some of those kids know that what he did was terribly wrong. But they laugh and support him anyway. They empower him. Without his tribe of supporters, he simply would not do what he does. Because this kind of kid he does it for, and because of, their support. What he craves is attention and applause. He does it to please the crowd. 

Here’s a behavioral hypothetical that ethicist and philosopher Peter Singer uses. A well-dressed young hedge-fund broker is walking through central park and comes upon a little girl drowning in a shallow part of the lake. He’s the only one around. He thinks about going in and saving the child but then reconsiders because he is wearing a 5K$ suit and 900$ shoes on. The child isn’t his and he didn’t have anything to do with putting her in there. Let somebody else save her. 

Take a moment to consider your appraisal of this man. In this instance, the man’s heartless cruelty is his inaction rather than anything he does. If you had an account at his firm, would you move your money elsewhere? If your daughter were dating him, would you approve?

Let me add a small fact to these two stories. Years later, the high school bully and the hedge fund guy become very successful. The bully becomes a popular rock star, and the hedge fund guy becomes a respected market analyst for CNBC. They are each being profiled for an interview broadcast. One on 60 minutes, and the other by CNN. During their interviews, they recount the stories I just told you about and laugh about them. They tell the stories of the drowning girl and the food thrown at the down syndrome child to entertain the viewing audience. They not only think they did nothing wrong – they think the stories are funny and will get them more laughs because of the audience they are reaching.

If you assemble a group of people at a CNN or FOX town hall from a cross-section of Americans – rich, poor, Republicans, Democrats, Christians, Jews, Muslims, young, old, black, white, and Asians – and ask how many of you are disgusted by the behavior of these men? I would wager that every single person would raise their hands and agree they had witnessed acts of gratuitous cruelty and say they were fearful of what kind of person would behave like that. These men acted as if they had a right to be cruel and heartless because of who they are.

Now I’m going to give you 2 real-life examples of the behavior in my stories. Both are believable because they are descriptions of the incidents from the real perpetrator’s own mouth.

“I was at Mar-a-Lago and we had this incredible ball, the Red Cross Ball, in Palm Beach, Florida. And we had the Marines. And the Marines were there, and it was terrible because all these rich people, they’re there to support the Marines, but they’re really there to get their picture in the Palm Beach Post… so you have all these really rich people, and a man, about 80 years old—very wealthy man, a lot of people didn’t like him—he fell off the stage,So what happens is, this guy falls off right on his face, hits his head, and I thought he died. And you know what I did? I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away,” said Trump. “I couldn’t, you know, he was right in front of me and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him… he’s bleeding all over the place, I felt terrible. You know, beautiful marble floor, didn’t look like it. It changed color. Became very red. And you have this poor guy, 80 years old, laying on the floor unconscious, and all the rich people are turning away. ‘Oh my God! This is terrible! This is disgusting!’ and you know, they’re turning away. Nobody wants to help the guy. His wife is screaming—she’s sitting right next to him, and she’s screaming…I was saying, ‘Get that blood cleaned up! It’s disgusting!’ The next day, I forgot to call [the man] to say he’s OK,” said Trump, adding of the blood, “It’s just not my thing.”

It just wasn’t his thing. I guess he was speaking about decency and compassion. Not his thing. That, of course, was Donald Trump bragging about his cowardice, his indifference to suffering, and his commitment to total selfishness to a national audience on The Howard Stern Show. He bragged about it. He was proud of himself. Where a normal human might well carry the shame of his cowardly and heartless behavior for the rest of his life, Donald thought it was just a good story and that it was funny. A rich guy who was more concerned about bloodstains on his shoes, clothes, and his marble floor than helping a human being in mortal danger. There was zero risk to his health and safety. Zero. But his vanity and being inconvenienced is what motivated him. But wait, it gets worse. The scene where the high school bully mocks the Down syndrome girl and calls her a retard? Do you remember this Trump performance in front of a crowd of admirers?

Ahhhr… I don’t know what I said… I don’t remember, I don’t remember… aahhh he’s going like, I don’t remember

Go watch it again on YouTube. Watch him imitate the reporter who suffered from a horrible neurological affliction by spasmodically contorting his face and shaking his hand like a man with Parkinson’s or cerebral palsy. He thought he was being funny and clever. He did it for laughs. If you say or even think oh, that’s just Trump being Trump, for once I completely agree. And the high school monster in the cafeteria was just Billy being Billy and the hedge fund guy was just Brandon being Brandon. Hitler, on his way to power, was just Adolph being Adolph. 

What makes a man behave like that? What makes a man brag that he is so praise and worship-worthy that he has the right to sexually assault women? Overlooked by everyone in his famous grab ‘em by the pussy comment to Billy Bush was how he prefaced it. He said, when you are a star you can do anything, you want. Yes, it appears that you indeed can. 

The great poet Shelley wrote a sonnet about powerful rulers, their hubris, and their pretensions to greatness.

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: 

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Despair because you will never measure up to my greatness. You should all worship me for I am King of Kings.

When I was a child, the absolute worst thing my mother ever said to me -- the phrase that made me think there was no recovery or redemption from what I had done was the simple phrase “Shame on you.” It shook me to the core. It meant that what I had done had brought shame upon myself. She wasn’t wishing shame on me. She was simply stating that it had happened. I had stolen a piece of candy from People’s drug store. She saw me with it and made me take it back to the store and apologize to the cashier. I still remember my shame. And any child in whom a basic sense of decency had been imparted, would cower and hide in his room knowing that he had done something that his mother would forgive but that he would have difficulty forgiving himself. 

I wonder if people still use that phrase… shame on you. But there is something that, of course, is worse. Much worse than doing something to bring shame upon oneself. You see, in order to feel shame, you must first have some innate sense of decency. Joseph Welch famously asked Joseph McCarthy “at long last, sir, have you no sense of decency.” McCarthy did not answer. There is no need to ask that question of Donald Trump. The answer is obvious every time he doubles down on some public atrocity and attacks those who are offended by his stark indecency. The man is devoid of anything that even resembles decency. 

Long before Hitler ever began his Final Solution, there were people who applauded his public pronouncements of hate and gave him the power to do evil to so many. The people who let the beast out of the cage and pointed him towards their imaginary enemies. Here’s a newsflash: The problem wasn’t Hitler. He was one little oily, loud, morally worthless, man. The problem was the millions who embraced him. Hitler didn’t have any magical powers of mass hypnosis. He wasn’t a supernatural force of evil. He wasn’t even a great speaker. He was just a man who knew how to legitimize the fears of the masses, direct them towards the weak and defenseless and tell them they were do something to make Germany great again.  

I direct my mother’s shame on you to every one of you who enjoys or shrugs your shoulders at Donald Trump’s gleeful cruelty, his indecency, and his inability to ever feel shame. Shame on you people who know evil when you see it and choose to ignore it because you think it will get you something. Shame on you who curse evil on a regular basis, who claim to believe in righteousness, kindness, compassion, and decency but who supported, worshiped, bowed down to and admired, the unparalleled public cruelty and evil of Donald John Trump. You people empowered evil. You people fed the beast in the hopes that the beast would devour your imaginary enemies. In so doing you willingly did the beast’s bidding. Donald Trump and people like him do not frighten me. They disgust me but they do not frighten me. It is you people I fear. Together you became a heartless mob who embraced evil by signing on. 

Faust made his deal with Lucifer to gain power over the lesser demon, Mephistopheles. At least Faust got something in return. What did you people get? Was it worth selling your decency for? Donald Trump’s gleeful cruelty with the old man, the disabled reporter and with Billy Bush…? All of that was real. All of that happened. It wasn’t fake news. You saw it and heard it. And if you are the kind of human being who can shrug your shoulders and dismiss it because he says he will protect you against immigrants and people of color, then you are exactly what happened in Germany. You are the explanation for how it is that good men empower the worst kind of evil.