The French philosopher Simone Weil coined that phrase at the beginning of World War II. It's most often explained as 'evil is very common.'
Obviously, that's what we saw in Tucson yesterday in the shooting rampage that killed 5, including a nine-year old girl, a Federal district judge, and two Congressional staff people. And as you know, the target looked to be three-term Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
I'll leave politics aside for a moment, and not dwell on vitriol displayed by Giffords opponents or Sarah Palin's website.
Can we really be considered a civilized society when a mentally unstable individual can purchase a hand gun and an incredible amount of ammunition? In short, it's frighteningly easy for crazy people to purchase weapons in the United States.
Carrying a gun is a not a right. If folks want to hunt, fine. But if you want a hunting license one should have to take a drivers education style gun safety course, one renewed every 2 or 3 years.
And no one should have handguns except the police and the military. Actually, I don't think active duty personnel are allowed to carry side arms or weapons in the United States. Paranoid citizens who think they need to carry a weapon to protect themselves have more to fear from their fellow right-wing gun nuts than from their elected government or invasion from Canada, Mexico or Cuba.
The solution is not more security, the answer is outlawing guns. Only then will our society have real security from shooting rampages like the one we witnesses in Tucson.
But as bad as our gun culture is, the banality of evil in the U.S. is even worse. What makes it worse is that we put up with, and in the case of Palin's website or Bachmann's and Angle's support for an armed populace, cultivate that kind of evil.
We the people are supposed to strive for a more perfect union, but we will never approach perfection as long as we have elected officials, pundits, commentators, and journalists who demonize their opponents with the kind of vitriol displayed against Gabby Giffords and others.
Again, what may be even worse that the vitriolic speech - and the literal targeting of elected officials like Giffords on websites and grocery store sidewalks - is that that kind of speech can work. Politicians, usually Republicans, sometimes get elected demonizing their opponent. Not criticizing their opponent but demonizing them, defining them not as a Democrat or Republican but as the 'other.'
Look no further than the treatment of President Obama by parts of the right-wing base, or the birthers who heckled from the House gallery this week.
The challenge for our nation is that political leaders, especially Republicans, need to denounce that kind of speech, but I wonder if they can muster the courage to do so. Elected officials, candidates and the news media need to denounce and challenge and ostracize any candidate or group that practices that kind of demonization - year round, day in and day out.
Because it's not just during the election when this kind of intolerance for violent rhetoric is important. It's almost more important after or between elections. Remember, a majority of people in Arizona's 8th Congressional district voted for Giffords. But the hate and targeting of the Congresswoman lingered after election.
Politicians have to recognize that the stuff they say in an election lingers long after the polls close and the ballots are counted, especially the kind of vitriol spewed at Giffords. Words and images matter, especially to crazy people with guns looking for an excuse to eliminate a perceived enemy, a threat that was defined as a threat to America prior to the election but one that is now actually in office.
An insane or unstable individual can't stand by when someone they perceive as evil has been validated by the public. Their twisted sense of justice compels them to 'fix' something the electorate got wrong.
In the 1990s, the same anti-government rhetoric and paranoia about a Democratic president sparked the bombing of the Murrow Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and killed almost 250 citizens. Yesterday, that same paranoia about a Democratic president and elected officials resulted in a rampage that cost 5 people their lives, including a nine-year old girl.
When will candidates, especially Republicans, learn that their words have consequences - especially in a country awash in guns and unjustifiable but cultivated paranoia? How long are we going to cultivate evil for votes?
