악의의 진부함, 다시 한번

The distinguishing feature of Cole Tomas Allen’s manifesto is its insipidity.

President Trump erupted in anger at the CBS journalist Norah O’Donnell after she read him excerpts from what is said to be a manifesto written by Cole Tomas Allen, the man charged with trying to kill Trump at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Some conservatives seem to think no good can be served from reading these words, but that’s a mistake: It’s always useful to be reminded, again, of the banality of evil.

The distinguishing feature of the manifesto is its insipidity. “I am a citizen of the United States,” Allen writes. “What my representatives do reflects on me.” Later, he justifies the possibility that he might harm the people in the ballroom “on the basis that most people chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist and traitor, and are thus complicit,” although he adds that “I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”

The manifesto lays out five objections to what he is about to attempt — starting with “As a Christian, you should turn the other cheek” — followed by his brief rebuttals. The impression is less of a person struggling with an anguished conscience than of someone not bright enough to come up with objections that would force anything but glib self-justification.

Finally, the author is at pains to convey the impression that he’s a nice guy with a sense of humor. He apologizes to everyone he deceived (“I apologize to my parents for saying I had an interview without specifying it was for ‘Most Wanted’”) and offers copious thanks to family, friends, colleagues and students. His final words are that he experiences “rage thinking about everything this administration has done,” followed by “Stay in school, kids.” He is — or so he thinks — Guy Fawkes by way of Sesame Street.

Is this even worth rebutting? It is, and not merely as a matter of simple politics. Allen seems to have drunk deeply from a liberal well in which defensible objections to administration policies mingle freely with the more lurid suspicions of the president that emerged from investigations into Russian collusion and the Epstein files. As the investigation into Allen unfolds, it will be interesting to learn from where he got his news. In another life, he might have made a living as a writer at The Daily Beast.

The degree to which facts have become hard to disentangle from conspiracy theories is one of the depressing hallmarks of the age. So is the relentless hyperbole about the president’s alleged destruction of democracy. But conservatives should be wary of pointing fingers here. Who is it, after all, who tried to delegitimize not one but two Democratic presidents, the first through preposterous claims about a fake birth certificate, the second through outrageous falsehoods about a stolen election?

Somewhat more interesting than the politics expressed is the philosophy, such as it is. That’s the philosophy of John Wilkes Booth, who shouted “Sic semper tyrannis” — thus always to tyrants — after he shot Abraham Lincoln. It’s the philosophy of Luigi Mangione, who is accused of assassinating the UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, and who, in a manifesto found with him, insisted that “parasites” like Thompson “simply had it coming.” It’s a philosophy that sometimes wins sympathy in this country — like from those who, citing Friedrich Engels, explain that identification with Mangione is an entirely normal reaction to the “social murder” being perpetrated by insurance companies.

In short, it’s the philosophy of people who believe that democracy is actually despotism, provided they don’t like its results; that the laws of such a democracy are an oppressive sham that must be actively resisted; that the way to bring about change isn’t through political participation and elections but rather through multiple homicides. On the right, this is called fascism. On the left, communism. They are functionally almost interchangeable.

And increasingly chic.

“Microlooting” — previously known as shoplifting — is now a thing, at least with one edgy New Yorker writer intent on sticking it to a grocery store. Hasan Piker, the fashionably dressed left-wing streamer, stayed at a five-star hotel in Havana in March so he could join hands with the regime’s dictatorial officials to denounce American iniquity. Rama Duwaji, now the first lady of New York, liked social media posts celebrating the pogroms of Oct. 7, 2023. Rape and murder haven’t been this cool since the Rolling Stones released “Gimme Shelter” in 1969.

All this is banal not only in its intellectual unoriginality (when will it occur to the Pikers of the world that the term “useful idiot” applies precisely to them?) but also in its moral and emotional shallowness. Wisdom begins in self-doubt, and self-doubt enjoins moral caution, most of all when it comes to irreversible deeds. Among the virtues of democracy is that it allows us to advance our beliefs tentatively. It permits us not only to change the things we don’t like, lawfully and peacefully, but also to change our minds should we see the error of our ways.

Cole Tomas Allen seems to have just known he was right, with a self-certainty that could countenance murder. Ditto for people like Mangione and their frighteningly numerous cheerleaders in elite quarters. A life in prison might, in time, sober up even the most determined criminals. What will sober up the others?

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Bret Stephens is an Opinion columnist for The Times, writing about foreign policy, domestic politics and cultural issues. Facebook