Opinion: One man’s normal
On Wednesday, Jan. 20, Joe Biden became the 46th President of the United States. The inauguration ceremony was largely normal. Social media, and many newscasts, erupted in celebration, fawning over eloquent speeches and shows of good faith. Apparently, ‘America is back.’
I’m not certain if catharsis was something I expected from this week – or even this year – but I know that I don’t feel more reassured than I did in 2016, 2008 or 2001.
So, in hopes of reflecting on what the past four years – and the history that made them possible – mean for our future as a nation in a way that did not involve tweeting out a hollow exclamation of victory, I picked up my old copy of “Eichmann in Jerusalem – A Report on the Banality of Evil.”
When Adolf Hitler had begun to gain ground in German politics, many intellectuals fled the country. Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt was one of them, drawing on philosophic, political and social theory to contextualize contemporary issues in her work.
Later in her career, and long after World War II had come to a close, she traveled to Jerusalem in 1961 to cover a trial for The New Yorker. The defense, Adolf Eichmann, was a bureaucrat in the Nazi ranks, appointed as head of an SS division responsible for coordinating the forced deportation and genocide of Jewish people across Nazi-dominated Europe.
In her review of the proceedings, Arendt notes that Eichmann displayed no significant personal dislike for Jewish peoples he encountered. He expressed no grandiose disdain or vindication regarding his actions. If anything, he recounted feeling relieved that the decision to move forward with a genocide of Jewish peoples was out of his hands.
Eichmann’s primary defense was his distance from authority, and, as he expressed neither guilt nor hatred, it was frequently revisited that he was merely “doing his job.”
It was also significantly noted by Arendt that Eichmann, after being analyzed by six psychologists, displayed no signs of any mental illness. His behavior and mentality, noted by one psychologist, was “normal,” and his disposition toward family and friends “desirable.”
The last four years have brought many things to the fore for those of us that live or find solace in normalcy, one of these being a now seemingly heightened awareness for violence. Whereas, before, it was simply part of the news stream, now it becomes canonized.
In a normal America:
More than 200,000 people (37% of the homeless population) live unsheltered.
In a normal America:
One in three Black men, and one in six Latino men, are incarcerated in their lifetime in the U.S.
In a normal America:
Every 73 seconds someone is sexually assaulted in the United States. Only five out of every 1,000 perpetrators will be incarcerated.
In a normal America:
One in every four Indigenous people are experiencing food insecurity, paralleled by one in every nine Americans overall.
In a normal America:
Black women experience maternal mortality at a rate more than three times that of white women.
The most terrifying evils, the most vulgar and disquieting of acts, are those that are so mundane that they appear to us, on first encounter, as simply an extension of our ‘normal.’ And, usually, this is because they are.
The quiet subjugation our country practices, enacted with bureaucratic efficiency, renders us all Adolf Eichmann in some sense; unable to denounce our own self-deception and defensive of what little sense of belonging the American identity actually offers. All while we tout our adherence to duty or values, while we champion a sense of unity above all else.
If we choose now to ignore what our passivity has wrought, then we don’t get to watch this transfer of power and gloat about how we have a “normal” president now. We shouldn’t be praising a normal president.
Asking for a reinstatement of normal is synonymous with performing a factory reset of America. It assumes the issue was an anomaly, a glitch, a bug. But the same conditions that existed before Trump took office are the same conditions that allowed him to do so in the first place.
I am not struck by a sense of relief after Wednesday. I feel nothing resembling liberation or reprieve. In fact, my nerve is exactly where it was on Nov. 4, 2016 after I received a call from a friend struggling to come to terms with what, and who, we are.
If we only care about political news when the results seem harrowing or sensationalized, if we condition ourselves to tune in when it seems a political novelty has taken office, we give permission to our government to commit passive acts of violence as long as they do not deviate from banality.
As long as they are familiar.
Taelor is the opinion manager for the Statesman. She grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is an avid reader, drinks coffee religiously, and makes music sometimes.
taelor.candiloro@usu.edu