The Visitors (Bread & Circuses)

Honestly, I was shocked when Hannah Arendt showed up.  I was getting to the end of that last essay, the one about the Undecideds.  After three weeks of wrestling with whether not there was anything there at all, I’d had a couple of good days where it was finally getting the lift I was looking for. 

The point of that piece is to articulate my complicated feelings about the reluctant Trump voters, along with those who, even at this late date, haven’t made up their minds.  I wanted to push back against the harsh and hateful rhetoric of so many of their opponents,¹ those so full of righteous rage who’ve judged them beyond redemption.  I was trying to understand my inability to make the same harsh judgment, that even though I believe they are making bad choices, empowering bad things, this does not make them bad people.  I described them as having little understanding of the actual powers of the Presidency, clinging to a nostalgic longing for what they remembered as the “peace and prosperity” of the Trump years.  I’d gotten to the point of imagining what might happen after the election, win or lose.  I still needed to do the final sentence-by-sentence work (what McPhee calls Draft #4), but despite the ambiguity of the last line, I thought it was basically all there.  I tried some different versions of the last line, confident I’d find the right words and rhythm.  And then Hannah Arendt showed up.  I was completely blind-sided.  The banality of evil.  Did not see that coming at all.  But when I reread what I’d done in the previous 2,800 words, it was clear that’s what I’d been leading up to all along.

I published the piece a couple of weeks ago, but Arendt hasn’t left.  In the essay, I said, “It’s hard for me to see people as evil.”  What is so terrifying about Arendt’s insight is that it doesn’t require people to be evil for them to do the things that unleash the most unspeakable evil.  That’s the banality of it – normal people just trying to get along, witlessly step by step convincing themselves that they’re not responsible for the horrors that, in actuality, would never happen without their hard work.

Arendt coined the phrase in her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, most of which appeared as a series of articles in the New Yorker in 1963.  I’ve been aware of the phrase and the general outline of the argument of the book for decades, but this nudged me to read those original magazine pieces.  It’s a deep dive into how something like the Holocaust can happen. The logistics, the planning, the legal machinations, the thousands of bureaucrats and petty officials who just needed to keep doing their jobs. Without them, the scale of the horror could never have been achieved.

Recently, the New York Times ran a piece reporting on Trump rallygoers’ responses to Trump’s most vengeful rhetoric.  Asked about his threats to go after his opponents, to call out the military, to execute drug dealers without due process, to violently deport millions of undocumented (although he’s long since quit making any distinction between those and the people here legally), many of them simply choose not to believe it.  They hear it, but they say it’s just part of his schtick, it’s entertainment, it’s just him riling up the media.  That’s what people don’t get about Trump, they say.  All of that over the top rhetoric is just for show.

They’ve forgotten, or, more likely were never aware of, how hard Trump tried to go after his enemies when he was President before, how he was thwarted by cabinet members and officials for whom those attempts went too far.  And they are either unaware of his determination to make sure there are only staunch loyalists around him this time and that those plans are already well laid, or they’ve dismissed the evidence as just more of the media’s lies.

And then there’s incidents like the truly bonkers exchange between Virginia Governor Youngkin and CNN journalist Jake Tapper.  Tapper asks him if he agrees with Trump about calling out the military to go after the “radical left”, the “enemy within”, and, specifically, former congressman Adam Schiff.  “That’s not what he’s saying,” says Youngkin, pleasantly smiling and unflappably polite.  Tapper presses, several times, reading and rereading the quotes.  Each time, Youngkin blithely denies that Trump is saying what he is saying, finally complaining about the media constantly making a big deal about “little bits of content.”

Juvenal, satirist of the decadence of Rome, stopped by my study as well, after the spectacle in Madison Square Garden.  Shakes his head, muttering, “...for the People … now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”  Has there ever been an American political figure who understood this so well?  Or who so loved providing it?

Trump’s grasped that he’s not going to persuade any new voters, so he’s not bothering with the sort of campaigning one might expect in a neck-and-neck race.  Answering questions is boring.  More fun to host a dance party.  The goal is to keep the anger and fear quotient high while basking in the adulation of the crowds.  It doesn’t matter what the vote tally proclaims.  He’s confident he’s got that covered. As long as he keeps the MAGA faithful convinced that there’s no way he can legitimately lose, he’s prepared for whatever happens.  I imagine he might be a little disappointed if he actually wins outright.  All those lawyers laying in wait, all those lawsuits teed up and ready to go, all those loyal politicians positioned to contest vote certification, all those adoring people eager to go out and do battle for him.  What will they do with their rage?

It's those Trump voters who aren’t hardcore that I mourn for when I think of Arendt and Eichmann.  Convincing themselves that he won’t do any of the terrible things the Democrats are complaining about, confident that with the magic of the presidency he will stop wars, reduce prices, end all the hostility, bring the country together again.  They’ve willed themselves to believe that Trump will make all the scariness go away.  How far will they be willing to go to cling to those beliefs?  When Stephen Miller cranks up his deportation machine, ripping families apart, inevitably snagging many legal immigrants in the nets, disrupting agriculture and the building trades, will they recoil?  Or will they just go along because that’s the easier thing to do?  As the incidence of hate crimes increases, as library collections are winnowed, as independent journalism is attacked, will they protest?  Not likely – they’ll lower their heads, do their jobs, thank Trump for bringing order and safety, willfully blinding themselves to the ugliness.  It’ll take a while for the health & safety regulations to be undone.  But when the epidemics of preventable diseases start, will they blame Trump and Kennedy?  Of course not.  When inflation ramps up following Trump’s tariffs and tax policies they’ll start to complain, but they’ll figure out ways to absolve Trump and continue to blame the “enemy within”.  They’ll look in their mirrors and reassure themselves that they’re still good people.

Eichmann’s defense was that he’d never killed anyone, didn’t hate anyone.  He just organized the trains.

1. The people on my side, who’ve proven they can be just as ugly as anybody else.