I was reading a review of “Operation Finale,” the movie about the capture of Adolph Eichmann, which referenced Hannah Arendt's book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. It occurred to me that Trump whose reality show flamboyance and crowd-pleasing histrionics are unprecedented in presidential politics is so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring, the very definition of banal.
Trump thinks he’s a superstar. I hate to be the one to disabuse him of this delusion (as if he’d ever read this). He’s so predictable, so unoriginal, as to be dull. The only talent he has if you can call it a talent, is to rile up his Dunn and Kurgerized audiences with hackneyed lines like “lock her up.”
Hannah Arendt, who coined the phrase and concept of “the banality of evil,” was one of the most important political philosophers of the twentieth century and her writings are complex and thought-provoking. Her observations about the nature of evil and power, and about totalitarianism are especially relevant today not only in the United States but in Europe where there has been an upsurge in nationalism (See Paul Krugman: “Why it can happen here: We’re very close to becoming another Poland or Hungary.”)
Democratos provides an excellent essay about Arendt in a comment to the story I wrote yesterday thus saving me the effort of writing something else here.
My point is that when we look back in American presidential history we can’t find many presidents who committed truly evil acts: Trump’s favorite Andrew Jackson and the March of Tears is the first who comes to mind. The close second in my mind is another racist, Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Abraham Lincoln.
I think Trump is evil. Rather than list the reasons and expound on the nature of evil as it pertains to Trump I will defer to Marty Kaplan:
Is There Such A Thing As Evil — And Is Trump It? What is evil, actually? The dictionary definition has it as “profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, especially when regarded as a supernatural force.” by Marty Kaplin, the Norman Lear Professor of Entertainment, Media and Society at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.
We have all seen how Trump reacted to Senator McCain’s death.
President Donald Trump chose not to lower the U.S. flag to half staff for hours on Monday because he was angry about the glowing coverage of the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). According to the Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Trump resisted, and viewed the news coverage of the former senator’s death as over-the-top and more befitting a president, according to people familiar with the situation.” Alternet
This is obviously evil of another sort than having children ripped away from their parents, but is evil none-the-less. Both are different sides of the evil of the soul, a total self-absorbed lack of empathy combined with cruelty.
There are two readily observable Trumps. One is the narcissistic, self-aggrandizing, bragging, bullying, rage Tweeting, ranting and raving Trump lashing out at his enemies in public or private (lobbing grenades at Google today for example).
The second version is the sullen boiling inside Trump exemplified by his attempts to be stoic as he freezes out the world with his arms tightly crossed across his belly.
The only thing that might not be boring about Trump is that he contorts his face into more ugly expressions than a frightful shape-shifting alien, however even this is wearing thin.