Thursday, January 2, 2025
We’ve had presidents shot, even our greatest, Abraham Lincoln. We’ve experienced the Twin Towers catastrophe. We’ve been through the Great Depression, fought a Civil War that killed about 800,000 people, our bloodiest war, ever. We’ve experienced (and still experience) racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and all kinds of injustices. We’ve had horrific school shootings and daily murders. It is the “banality of evil” that Hannah Arendt wrote about.
We need to fight it, never tolerate it, and do everything we can to prevent it and punish it. But we can’t continually be surprised by it. The difference today is that we have mass media that thrive on it. These are the “costs” of a free society.
We need to be realistic about our expectations. We will never totally eliminate evil, but we can constantly fight to reduce it.
The celebratory and peaceful Times Square celebration was followed by the unspeakable horror in New Orleans. Unfortunately, in this world, we can never let down our guard or decrease our vigilance.