The Banality of Evil

On the COVIDcrisis and the Limits of Empire

“Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”

― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

As the COVIDcrisis begins to sunset in the West, and the next set of manufactured then weaponized crises dawn in the East, we are left with the problem of trying to make sense of what we have experienced since 2019.

What has been done to us, and by whom?

Like the shackled group huddled together in Plato’s allegory of the cave, we observe, watch, and discuss the shadows on the wall. A rotating priesthood of endorsed sages tells us how to interpret the shadows, and we all nod and agree “oh yes, that must have been the person (or organization) responsible, now it all makes sense”. We hunger for simple explanations, thirst for a perpetrator.

Many are increasingly conscious of the profound evil which has been unleashed upon the world over the last three years under the guise of public health. As our social media and propaganda-crafted hive mind begins to experience the fury of victimhood, we reflexively seek to identify and focus on some organization or mastermind upon whom to pin blame. Blindfolded by ignorance, hearing vague shouted clues from a faceless crowd, we flail about seeking the perpetrator responsible for our fear, anguish and pain as if trapped in some nightmare game of “pin the tail on the donkey”.

The words of W.B Yeats, his immortal “Second Coming” penned following conclusion of the collective insanity called the “First World War”, seem closest to capturing our collective intersection of angst and ennui.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?  

What name for this twenty-first century rough beast?

What persons or organizations are responsible for planting the seed, rocking the cradle and attending the birth?

From all over the world, day after day, I am asked some version of this question. Essentially this was the question posed by Bret Weinstein at the end of the pivotal June 11, 2021 Dark Horse Podcast entitled “How to Save the World, in Three Easy Steps”. Unexpectedly put on the spot during the podcast, I reflexively attributed cause to development of emergent properties characteristic of complex systems. Ever since that moment, this question has bedeviled both Jill and I. Our book, “Lies my Government Told Me, and the Better Future Coming” is basically a chronicle of our journey in attempting to answer that simple question. A journey of both inward and outwardly-directed discovery and sense-making which may last the rest of our lives. Perhaps you are also traveling along this same road.

Along this path, we have all encountered a wide range of stereotypical cardboard cutout villains (Anthony Fauci, Alejandro Maryorkas, Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, Yuval Harari, Larry Fink, Tedros Ghebreyesus, etc.) as well as many who are unconsciously (or subconsciously?) recapitulating the heroes journey.

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

Joseph Campbell, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”

Many colleagues have chronicled the widespread, global, harmonized abuses of power.

The deployment of weapons-grade “fifth generation warfare” psy-ops, nudge and censorship technologies by western governments on their own citizens, rationalized as a necessary evil to advance public health objectives and insure uptake of vaccine products widely marketed as “safe and effective” which have proved to be neither.

The mask mandates which primarily served to demonstrate obedience to the overlords and their arbitrary and capricious mandates. The “flatten the curve” lockdowns which destroyed general employment, small businesses, families, farms, and overall mental health and wellbeing while facilitating the greatest upwards transfer of wealth in modern recorded history.

The six foot “social distancing” rules which became the worldwide norm without any scientific basis. Closure of Churches and other public gathering places.

The “Noble Lies” which degenerated into mundane political expediency. The obscenely criminal masking, school closures, vaccine mandates, student harassment and bullying which primarily served to appease the irrational fear of unionized “educators”, administrators and school boards. The gaslighting and algorithmic suppression of the voices of the vaccine damaged and dead. The prevention of family and friends from attending to the elderly and dying in hospitals and eldercare facilities. The explicitly illegal injection of unlicensed and inadequately tested medical products into military personnel.

Weaponized demonetisation and other forms of violence against any who dare question or protest authority. Vaccine passports, arbitrary and irrational travel restrictions and digital tracking apps. And the complete suppression of true informed consent coupled with enticed, compelled and finally forced violation of individual bodily autonomy. A form of medical rape.

Public servants sworn to uphold and protect the US Constitution who actively collude with industry to circumvent the Bill of Rights. All up and down the hierarchy of the modern administrative state, from POTUS down to school boards, the rule of law has been disregarded, seemingly in a game of “catch me if you can” enabled by a fragmented, cludgy, expensive and time consuming legal system staffed by politically appointed federal judges and supreme court justices. This system of high priests requiring an anything-but-fair interaction with the expensive anointed clerics of large law firms and high-powered lawyers who all too often hide behind byzantine conflict of interest rules that are readily manipulated and weaponized by large pharma and other corporatist interests.

“For when I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III 'to prove a villain.' Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all… He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing… It was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity—that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. And if this is 'banal' and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, this is still far from calling it commonplace… That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man—that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem.”

― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

The list goes on and on. Recognition, acknowledgement and discussion of all of which has been actively suppressed at each step along this path to hell by corporatized media and big tech in a massively capitalized “public-private partnership” (ergo fascism in a 21st century embodiment acting under the guise of corporatism). All rationalized as being for our own good.

But, on the positive side, we have also seen the rise of new media and citizen journalism, and in particular some amazing investigative journalism from the likes of Whitney Webb, Maryanne Demasi, Jeffrey Tucker and the whole crew at the Brownstone Institute, my own partner and co-author in this substack Dr. Jill Glasspool-Malone, and so many, many others.

To those who have not yet encountered her work, I also strongly recommend the work of Katherine Watt, who publishes her detailed, methodical citizen journalism under the Substack title “Bailiwick News”. If you are not yet familiar with her point of view, this video clip provides a good introduction. Her granular documentation of the stepwise legislative degradation of US civil liberties under the guise of biodefense preparedness is an amazing achievement, and the consequences of these actions are indisputable. However, just to make the point, I respectfully disagree with her interpretation of intent. More on that below.

And then there is the amazing new media insurgency lead by the improbable “everyman” hero Joe Rogan. In both video and audio formats, the podcast is widely recognized by both external and internal analysts as the largest current threat to the information hegemony of corporatist media, its censorship/trade organization the “Trusted News Initiative”, and it’s public-private partnership relationships with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, national governments, the five eyes intelligence alliance , its transnational integrated financial backers Blackrock/State Street/Vanguard/Bank of America, and its corporate partners- particularly the pharmaceutical industry.

But after investing over a year of your life in trying to ferret out all of these rabbit holes, as Jill and I (and so many others) have, there always remains the big question. The one which Bret Weinstein posed seemingly ages ago.

• What and who is behind all of this?

• What name for the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem?

• Is this the hand of the World Economic Forum (WEF) acting on behalf of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) and the transnational funds which it services?

• Is this the CCP acting via its client the World Health Organization?

• Or does all of this stem from the hidden hand of a dying United States’ Empire, seeking to prolong imperial dominance of the Leviathan administrative state via its intelligence/biosecurity/national security public-private partnerships together with many captured surrogates, overseen by the Five Eyes alliance?

Despite suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune hurled at me by corporate media over the last three years, Jill and I have been able to avoid lashing out as well as (most) rhetorical excesses by keeping in mind the simple training, repeatedly beaten into my head by a leading qui tam law firm during my training to serve as an expert legal witness. Never speculate on someone else’s state of mind or intent. Stick to the observable documented facts, and interpret the meaning of those.

Like many of you, I have read the words of Yuval Harari, Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, and so many others in which they advocate for global population reduction. I am aware of the history of the BMGF in advancing vaccine candidates in Africa which appear to have been surreptitious form of birth control. I have witnessed the disease and death associated with the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein-based genetic “vaccines.” But absent clear documentation, I cannot conclude that these “vaccines” were intentionally crafted genetic weapons. Frankly, that would require a level of competence, foresight, and intelligence among those involved in developing these products which I just do not see evidence of. I know many of these people, and have watched their careers and publications, as well as those of their peers.

To be blunt, these people are just not that smart or all-knowing. They tend to be rather cocky technocrats with a profound sense of entitlement and often a broad streak of narcissism. And in some, that narcissism blends into sociopathy/psychopathy. But the level of comprehension and foresight to be able to predict the patterns of toxicology and pathology observed with these genetic “vaccines”? I see no evidence of that. And I do not see evidence that the US DoD has deployed an intentional kill box for both American citizens and warfighters alike.

No, what I see is most closely described by Hannah Arendt’s observations regarding the banality of evil. Any who have been paying attention to what has happened over the last three years cannot deny that there is evil in the world, and that we have clearly seen its face revealed during the COVIDcrisis.

But as I consider the evidence, I think we are observing more than just the mundane banality of evil. I think we are observing the consequences of the last gasps of Imperial Pax Americana play out in real time before our eyes. American imperialism is quite literally running out of gas, teetering on the edge, awaiting some push (from BRICS? From the CCP?) over the knife’s edge towards dollar-based fiat currency collapse and imperial decline such as the British empire saw during the 20th century.

Here is the thesis. The rise and fall of empires is not driven by failures of leaders, or the madness (or senility) of presidents, kings and emperors. The longevity and durability of empires are self limited by the accumulated weight and inefficiency of their own bureaucracies. And, in turn, these bureaucracies are the consequence of a million tiny cuts, each rationalized as being in the best interests of the empire and its citizens. The United States is dying under the weight of the administrative state, abetted by a lazy and corrupt two party political system which cares more for the preservation of its own privilege than for the Constitution and Nation-state that it ostensibly serves.

Read and consider the stepwise legislative and executive branch actions, so meticulously documented by Katherine Watt, which have empowered the modern security state/biopharmaceutical-defense complex. Each bill, each action, has been the vector sum of a myriad of political forces, lobbyists, think tank analyst and National Academy of Science inputs. I suggest that this provides a case study in how empire repeatedly eventually betrays its own ideals under the pressure of mundane, everyday decisions, each of which may seem justified in isolation at the time they are implemented, but which in aggregate develop an unstoppable momentum which grinds inexorably towards authoritarianism and overwhelming inefficiency.

According to Karl Popper (1902-1994), an Austrian-British scholar known for his total rejection of Plato as a philosophical ideal, Plato’s ideal republic was essentially a totalitarian state overseen by a benign, all-wise, all knowing dictator. In my experience, and in much of Christian teaching, mankind is deeply flawed. I very much doubt that a benign, all-wise, all knowing dictator has ever existed in human history. To my way of thinking, the minimalist, decentralized federal republic envisioned and codified in the Declaration of Independence, US Constitution and Bill of Rights is as close as mankind has been able to come to an ideal form of self governance. But it is groaning under the weight of accumulated years, legislative and administrative baggage.

As I see things, the real problem is that once enacted, political and legislative decisions are rarely re-evaluated, and instead each new wave of political activities layers upon the prior until the entire system cannot sustain the weight of the unexamined and unrevised sins of the past. No matter how noble the lie or the intentions, integrity, efficiency, and legitimacy dies a slow lingering death under the burden of past unacknowledged, unresolved and uncorrected legislative and bureaucratic mistakes.

The question in my mind is whether this trajectory can be altered by anything other than financial, political or military catastrophe, revolution, or all four.

Hope springs eternal.