In response to a series of postings I’ve done about various acts of ethically challenged behavior on the part of various local politicos and their backers, I’ve been hit with the familiar, “You’re just attacking them out of mean-spirited partisanship!”
However there’s never any attempt to contest my factual allegations or dispute my characterization of various actions.
I thought of this when I saw that a bio-pic is showing about the German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt at The Tivoli in Westport. Arendt is most famous for her coverage of the 1960’s war crimes trial of Nazi Adolph Eichmann. She coined the phrase “banality of evil,” meaning that atrocities were more often perpetrated by bureaucratic mediocrities like Eichmann than by evil, master-mind, criminal geniuses.
Arendt should also be remembered for an insight in her “Origins of Totalitarianism.” She described how one of the greatest advantages of totalitarian regimes like Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive. That way if you’re a wrongdoer you don’t actually have to answer the specific allegations against you as long as you can ascribe some ulterior political motive to your accuser.
Thus Clay Blair, the moderate Republican chair of the Kansas Bioscience Authority, could ignore all the damning factual record on how he ran the KBA, by having his defenders say his accusers were just mean old Democrats. Tom Thornton, the rapscallion president of the KBA (hired by Blair!), blew off the charges against him, with his champions saying it was vengeful conservative Republicans allied with Sam Brownback who were persecuting their guy.
Why even bother to offer a defense when the press and the prosecutors will not go after a Democrat or a moderate Republican? Continue reading →
The Kansas City Chiefs had a really great weekend…
“We dominated the game in all aspects,” said a frustrated Peter Vermes after his team lost 1-0 to the visiting Philadelphia Union. “At the end of the day, we had a lot of chances around the goal. We had a lot of looks and a lot of opportunities, but zero goals, which is the biggest thing.”
