The Banality of Evil

"The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered… in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.” — C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

(headsup Insightscoop)

The phrase "Banality of evil" is usually misunderstood as saying evil deeds such as genocide are banal and not evil.

But Hannah Arendt was talking about the phenomena of plain, ordinary folk discussing doing evil deeds coldly and routinely, as if it was just a normal ordinary thing.

Discussing murder over lunch as if it were nothing.

As in the Wannsee Conference.

or the Planned Parenthood videos of selling dead baby parts.

Me, I wonder: Since these are late term abortions, why were the abortions done? If for fetal abnormalities, the tissue would be useless, since often DNA etc. is bad.

If for social reasons, then I suspect a lot of them were done on minority teenagers, and one doubts they were asked to donate the parts, because the information that they would be killing a baby that looks like a baby would horrify them...

Often teenagers blank out that they are pregnant, (which is why they get late term abortion instead of the simpler first trimester abortions). They then blank out that it looks like a baby. They just want the problem to go away...

which is why we see teenagers, even in today's world, who come in the office or emergency room in labor and insist they couldn't be pregnant...

and of course, to deliver baby parts that can be used for scientific research, it often means doing a more dangerous method of delivery for the mom, or risking the "complication" of a live birth...but no one is discussing this either.