[Vince Ferrer]

The phrase "banality of evil" comes to mind:

Evil is never "radical," ...it is only extreme, and... it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension... It is "thought- defying"...because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its "banality."2 Hannah Arendt, 1964

[summer]

Thanks for that post. This question in the article really gets to me: How could these utterly unremarkable men, forgettable in any other context, have so tyrannized their 25 million countrymen that they remained unchallenged for 35 years?

There seems to me some analogy, on a much smaller scale, with what happened in the airplane with that shoe bomber, when all the passengers rushed him after realizing he was a threat. When a country has 25 million people, how does a dictator stay in power for more than a quarter of a century? I think this is why so many countries around the world express negative feelings about GW - he is rocking the boat, and the result may be many millions who rise; not just one airplane full of passengers.

[summer]

RE my above post - I may not have expressed that as well as I wanted, but I think you get my drift.

[Ronly Bonly Jones]

Evil is never "radical," ...it is only extreme, and... it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension...>>>

I daresay Hannah Arendt doesn't know what in Hell she is talking about. Or at least didn't at the time she wrote this. (One way or 'tother, she does now.)