The Banality of Evil and Those Who Said No

In the Realm of the Banality of Evil, saying yes is always easy. The hard part is saying no, for reasons that have nothing to do with getting ahead.

The Epstein files have unleashed a flood tide of bleatings of innocence and accusations of guilt by association. This is just what we’d expect in the Realm of the Banality of Evil, a phrase made famous by Hannah Arendt, who described the “terrifyingly normal” participants in systems that normalize evil of the sort that “could not be traced to any partic…