Salon’s Chauncey DeVega has an interesting interview with the director of the Einstein Forum, who is also a former philosophy professor at Yale University and Tel Aviv University. The interview centers around the question: is Donald Trump “evil?” SPOILER ALERT: He is.
As Susan Neiman explains, the quick and easy answer is yes, as Trump has shown a lack of morality in any reasonable form. His “concerns” and motivations seem entirely wound up in power, with a complete absence of factors like “compassion” and “justice.” After explaining that she has spent a lot of time trying to figure out what exactly makes up Trump’s “soul,” she explains that history and a person’s actions can show us a clear guide to evil.
In the end, what matters in determining evil is not the state of one’s soul, but the effects our actions have on the world we live in -- which is why having good intentions but not significantly acting on them is never enough. And here it is just unquestionable that what Donald Trump has done is evil. We all have our lists of least-favorite things he has done so far (though, mercifully, he hasn’t achieved as much as he would like). But what is absolutely clear is that Trump has made open and violent racism acceptable. Perhaps even worse, I fear, is that he has made it acceptable not to have values at all -- except grasping for power and money. I worry about the effect his example will have on young people who are already uncertain about whether or not any value but power and money is real. Unfortunately, so much in the culture tells us that we should be embarrassed to believe in ideals of goodness, justice and mercy.
It is important to remember, again, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It turns out that Adolf Eichmann was a man with evil intentions, though the historical record was not available when Hannah Arendt wrote "Eichmann in Jerusalem," but Arendt was right in principle: It doesn’t matter if your intentions are banal; what counts is the effect you have on the world. Even if, as I pray, he is restrained from starting a war, Donald Trump has made the world worse already. The very fact that a man without a visible conscience, education or sense of decency could become the most powerful man in the world has opened up possibilities that should have been kept in Pandora’s box.
It’s a pretty dark interview and meditation. But Neiman believes there is hope in the resistance. Ironically, it’s our “moral majority” that must trump the banality of voters like evangelicals, who have clearly sold their souls away to an orange-colored God.
Everyone should be focused on the midterm elections, which will be crucial. We could get rid of this particular evil if the Democrats could take back Congress. At this moment in time, preserving the rule of law (and the Supreme Court, and a few other institutions) is more important than anything else. Another crucial lesson from German history: The Nazis would have been stopped if the left-wing parties -- who together won the majority of votes in the 1933 elections -- had been united. Instead, they fought each other. Americans with moral values need to unite around those values, and not let ourselves be divided by differences of race or gender or minor political differences. What we are facing now is not a political problem but a moral one.
Our country has always had many divisions and it’s a sure bet we will continue to fight amongst ourselves on the left. And that’s okay—as long as we all agree on the need to get rid of fascism.