A profound question for the ages that has challenged philosophers, theologians, and thinkers across cultures and throughout history is why evil exists. There are several perspectives on why evil exists. From a theological standpoint, many traditions grapple with the “problem of evil” – how to reconcile the existence of suffering with an all-powerful, all-knowing, and benevolent deity. Some propose that evil is the necessary consequence of free will, allowing humans to make moral choices. Others suggest evil serves as a contrast that helps us recognize and appreciate goodness. Philosophically, some argue that evil isn’t a thing in itself but rather the absence of good – similar to how darkness is the absence of light. Still others view evil as subjective, a label we apply to actions that cause harm or violate moral norms.
From a psychological perspective, behaviors we consider evil often stem from complex human conditions like trauma, fear, group dynamics, or even neurological differences. Studies like the the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram’s obedience studies suggest ordinary people can commit harmful acts under certain conditions. The Stanford Prison Experiment was a controversial psychological study conducted in 1971. The experiment aimed to investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a simulated prison environment. They recruited 24 male college students who were randomly assigned to be either “guards” or “prisoners” in a mock prison created in the basement of Stanford’s psychology building. The experiment was planned to last two weeks but was terminated after just six days due to how quickly the situation deteriorated. The “guards” were given uniforms, mirrored sunglasses, and batons, while “prisoners” wore uncomfortable smocks and were referred to by numbers instead of names. The guards quickly adopted authoritarian behaviors, subjecting prisoners to psychological torture, verbal abuse, and humiliation. Many prisoners experienced severe emotional distress, with some having breakdowns that required their removal from the study. Even the professor doing the experiment got carried away by the surreal situation. The experiment is often cited as a dramatic demonstration of how people can adapt to social roles and how powerful situational forces can be in shaping behavior. It suggested that ordinary people could commit cruel acts when placed in positions of power within a system that permits abuse. The psychology of power and authority is scary stuff.
The issue of evil came into my mind today due to a back-and-forth text exchange about Elon Musk. My wealthy friends love to love Elon for his accomplishments and probably now (secretly) for his power to say and do whatever he wants since he’s the richest man in the world by far. They challenge me by suggesting that I have gone off Elon due to his partnership with Trump and that I’m just a victim of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndtome). My response was that I have gone off Elon because I view him as partly weird and partly evil. I feel the weird part needs no explanation given his stage presence. The evil part is far harder to pin down and feels a bit like a cheap and easy insult intended to be impossible to disprove since it goes so deep into our personal psyche. Then I caught up on the tribulations of Abrego Garcia and his plight at the hands of the entire Trump administration (not really a Musk thing). It caused me to refocus away from Elon and his nastiness in the execution of DOGE slashing and hacking, which, as bad as it is, is more nasty than evil. The difference seems meaningful to me.
I spent 45 years on Wall Street and saw my share of greed and nastiness in many directions. But when I met Jimmy Cayne, the CEO of Bear Stearns, where I spent 4 years as head of BSAM and had to interact with Jimmy regularly, I got to see pure evil in action. There are bad kids who put cats in mailboxes or stamp on ant hills, but there are also kids who sit quietly and pull the wings off flies to see them suffer. I’m betting Jimmy grew up as part of a small group of the latter. The Abrego Garcia case has made me realize that people like Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller are in that same category.
Pity Abrego Garcia. Here’s a family man, hard-working union guy with an American wife and three kids. He gets wrongly swept up in an ICE raid and his legal alien status gets ignored in the anti-migrant zeal of the incoming administration’s desire to show deportation strength to the electorate. He gets summarily and without due process, trundled off to The Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador, the latest Trump version of Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib. Now that the world knows he’s there in error and even the Supreme Court, in an unusually strong 9-0 vote, has declared him as wrongly deported and detained, the Trump administration is doubling down on its mistake and refusing to return Abrego or cause El Salvador to release him.
Some will suggest that this is about the power of the Executive. Others will say it’s all about our out-of-control immigration system, but ultimately it’s about Abrego Garcia and his family. Admitting fault is hard for Trump. Stephen Miller seems prepared to lie through his teeth to power and convince Trump he isn’t at fault at all. It’s about the bigger picture and Abrego Garcia is just collateral damage. Not.
Milgram’s obedience studies were a series of social psychology experiments conducted at Yale in 1961. These experiments measured participants’ willingness to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. Milgram’s research was motivated by a desire to understand how ordinary people could participate in atrocities like the Holocaust. The results suggested that people are far more willing to obey authority than previously believed, even when doing so requires harming others. Evolutionary perspectives suggest that behaviors we now consider harmful may have once served survival functions in our evolutionary past, or might be side effects of traits that generally benefit survival. The only survival issue at stake here with this Abrego Garcia situation is the survival of Stephen Miller and the Trump public image.
And there we have my definition of pure evil. Anyone willing to inflict great harm on an individual and doing so knowingly wantonly and wholly without justification, is evil. The arrest and detention of Abrego Garcia was nasty, both in its motivation and execution. But once the reality of his situation is known and adjudicated, as it has been, to double down on harming him is pure evil. That makes Stephen Miller and now Donald Trump (who owns the final buck stop), assisted by Marco Rubio, Pam Bondi, Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele and J.D. Vance (all of whom were in the room where it happened), pure evil. Pray for Abrego Garcia and his family.
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