The Great UnReason of 2020: The 'Curious, but Quite Authentic, Inability to Think': Remembering Hannah Arendt.

...As we reflect upon the readiness with which most of America (to say nothing of that many more millions in countries throughout the world, including the Western world) have acquiesced in what amounts to a sort of internment that has been imposed by their governments upon them in the name of keeping them safe from getting sick, it is imperative that we familiarize ourselves with Arendt’s insights, for there can be no question that “the curious, but quite authentic, inability to think” that first grasped her attention in Eichmann is as ubiquitous and glaring today, in our midst, as it has ever been.

It can, and already has, led to incalculable pain and suffering. It is no stretch to call these evils. Consider all that has occurred over the last six or seven weeks or so, since the dawn of The Great UnReason...

The inability to think of the average American has left him unaware of the world-distinguished epidemiologists, virologists, microbiologists, bacteriologists, and other medical experts whose views contravening the official account of COVID-19 have been suppressed by Big Government and Big Media (One list of these specialists and their remarks can be found here)

Thank you for the post. It might be one of the best articles I’ve read on the current phenomenon. The fact that it discusses Nazi fascism makes it a little more difficult to use the way I often use articles, giving them to people who need to do some thinking. They might think I’m calling them a Nazi! Some of them are, but some aren’t. However, it’s precisely what many people who understand that American freedom is critical to everyone’s health are wondering, how is it that so many people can go along with these things????? This provides insight.

'Eichmann wasn’t the incarnation of evil that she expected to encounter. His actions were monstrous, yes; but he was remarkably ordinary or “banal,” to use Arendt’s term of choice.’
What struck Arendt was Eichmann’s “curious, but authentic, inability to think.”

“However monstrous the deeds were, the doer was neither monstrous nor demonic, and the only specific characteristic one could detect in his past as well as in his behavior during the trial and the preceding police examination was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think.”
‘his “only personal distinction was a perhaps extraordinary shallowness.”’

We witness such extraordinary shallowness every day in the hatred and mendacity of the enemies of President Trump. Some call it “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

’Eichmann showed no will to think beyond the clichés—the memes, bumper sticker slogans, and hashtags—of his day.

This is the danger that groupthink and mendacity pose for America.

It is the responsibility of the free press truthfully to inform the people. Mendacity, including disinformation, distortion, and abandoning truth for propaganda, violate this responsibility.

‘the phenomenon that she witnessed in Eichmann she knew was one that is endemic to human beings generally.

‘Arendt knew that there was nothing unique at all about Eichmann. Quite the contrary: He was ordinary, all too ordinary, to paraphrase Nietzsche. But this was the problem.’

This is the problem that the American People have today.

We laugh at the Nazi excuse that “I was only following orders”, but Eichmann and others believed that it should have mitigated their guilt.

I sometimes think that Hannah Arendt’s classic “The Banality of Evil” could have been worded “The Evil of Banality”.

We are seeing both at work right at this moment.

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