There is no understanding evil. There is only

[Minstrel Boy]

opposing it.

People shake their heads, "Why would they do this?" Because they can't fathom a reason, they deny its happening.

When Polish Jews first entered the Warsaw Ghetto, they knew they'd been through Hell, but they thought they'd come out the other side.

This is happening, America, to your brothers and sisters. Don't think it isn't because you can't understand it. Just make it stop.

[Greybnk48]

1. Absolutely right

People become befuddled because they try and try to come up with a rational reason for things like this, or an agenda, or something. But evil of this sort is not rational and you CANNOT figure it out rationally--that's why we can't prevent it or irradicate it, we can only fight it.

[DrDebug]

2. Indeed evil has its own agenda

People don't want to the possibility that there are people who prefer evil over good and that ironically those people can often be found in the highest circles, because power and evil are interconnected.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The closer a person is to absolute power, the more absolute corrupt (s)he has become and the more absolute evil (s)he has become.

Since power is a like a magnet it only allows power to be sucked in and doesn't allow for power to given away to others.

The easiest is when they do bad things somewhere very far away where there is a huge detachement between the orders of the leader and the suffering caused and that detachment is preferred.

Hitler was shouting to the soldiers to fight on in his bunker. He himself tried to distance himself from direct contact with the suffering which he himself caused. He made damn sure that he didn't directly order anything. He told his cronies long stories about his ultimate dream world and left it to them to figure out a way to make it reality.

That's why the New Orleans visit was staged and choreographed. The glorious leader didn't feel comfortable being close to suffering and wanted it staged to keep a much detachment from reality as possible.

The reason you can't understand Bush is because Bush is detached from the suffering caused by himself. His world is a fantasy world and he doesn't want to be confronted with reality, because then the evil in himself is mirrored back to himself and that's a confrontation which he doesn't like. So his life is a life of pleasure and leisure. Safely shielded away without having to look in the mirror and seeing how evil he has allowed himself to become.

[OneBlueSky]

3. evil has no inherent quality . . . evil is merely the absence of good . .

much as darkness is the absence of light . . .

[Eloriel]

4. NOMINATED -- this is an URGENT point, absolutely urgent

Your mention of the Warsaw Ghetto is chillingly apt, IMO. Folks, we're going to have to get our stuff together and resist. Some months ago ,amu DUers were saying to themselves and asking other DUers, "When do we know it's time to leave the country, if that's what we think we need to do?" I'm thinking to myself this morning that this is the time to start working on that with some seriousness IF that's your strategy (and I'm neither encouraging nor discouraging that -- I believe it's a personal decision).

What sent me 'round the bend was the news that the Super Dome's evacuation had stopped with about 2000 people still left in it. Now, on its own that doesn't seem like such a big deal. After all, perhaps they needed to wait for more buses. Or something. Except that NOTHING, none of the inadequacies that have gone on so far have been properly explained by normal failures or even incompetence. (And if you doubt that, you might want to look at some of the evidence I've been accumulating here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4588088&mesg_id=4588088

No, this was no doubtedly yet another intentional maneuver. Why? Well, let's look at it. We know that the reports of violence and civil disorder have been exaggerated. Why was that? I believe it was at least two-fold: (a)to help make the people of NO responsible for their own deaths (blame the vicitm), and (b) to give the administration an excuse for martial law. And I believe all THAT was done or planned in the wake of this natural disaster partly as a test case, as a lab experiment. So when I heard the news about the cessation of evacuation, almost instantly I got an image in my head of these poor people as lab rats, nothing more to this admin, just lab rats.

Here's something I hope everyone will read -- or re-read if they haven't read it before. It's a bit of an explanation of how the Germans could "allow" what happened in the 1930s:

They Thought They Were Free
http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html


The other thing coming to mind mind today is these quotes:

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and never will. -Frederick Douglass

And this remarkable off-the-cuff response from Harry Belafonte, upon being asked in a television interview how to survive political repression. I was so taken with it I had the presence of mind to jot it down after he said it:

Do not submit. In is extremely critical that repression be met head on and that it be resisted with every fiber in our being. There is absolutely no compromise that can be made with it. As a matter of fact, compromise is what oppression feeds on. Without compromise, it would be defeated. -- Harry Belafonte