The Banality of Good

"Escherich, whose Gestapo boss likes to humiliate him, seems unmoved — until he sees the Obergruppenführer and other officers torturing Quangel by smashing their schnapps glasses on his head and something snaps. He puts a pistol to his head with the parting words: “I’m your only disciple, Otto Quangel.”

That may be literally so. The postcards were almost all handed in to the police by terrorized Berliners. But humanity is Quangel’s disciple. For the “preposterous comedy” continues here and there and terror still poses the existential dilemma: decency and its (mortal) dangers or conformity and its comforts?"

What a bleak fate for humanity.

The Banality of Good

Mr. Cohen, While it may be quaint to admire the courage of a working class family who in its own quiet way stood up to the Nazis over 60 years ago, you may want to take the time to ask yourself similar questions about the vileness of America and how you live with it. How do you live in a country knowing that your country has been responsible for the deaths of millions of people in wars spread out around the globe? How do you live with the "shock and awe" of dead Iraqi children? Perhaps you could explain to me the moral difference between the Nazis attempt to extinguish the Jews and America's racist wars of conquest in Vietnam or Iraq? Don't you understand that the psychological mechanisms that you use in order to look away from the vileness of the system you live in and in which you prosper, are the exact same mechanisms many Germans used to ignore the deportation of their neighbors? Collectively, we have been brainwashed into believing that the deaths of innocent men, women and children are simply part of building a world that is "free from terror." From my perspective, I don't see any moral difference between your acceptance of your vile system and the average Germans' acceptance of their vile system. Perhaps there is only one substantial difference. You don't have to risk your life by sending postcards. You can scream your disdain from the highest mountain top and no one will touch you. And yet, you remain silent.

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