The Blurry Line Between Incompetence and Malice

Re: the meme here, senior energy analyst Glenn Doty writes:  I feel this to the core. “There is simply no possible way to become that ignorant except deliberately and maliciously.” This is the response to the people who suggest that I am wrong in assigning intent to the actions of republican supporters.

The first philosophy course I took in college was called “Reason in Practice.” It makes the point that because human beings choose their ends, unlike, e.g., lions, failure to apply reason is a vice. It’s wrong to call a lion “vicious” when they maul  a person because it acts out of instinct–but this doesn’t apply to people.

Case in point: Nazi Adolph Eichmann, who was, according to Wikipedia, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust—the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in Nazi terminology. He was tasked with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of Jews to extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe during World War II. He was captured 15 years later and subsequently found guilty of war crimes in a widely publicized trial in Jerusalem.

His defense was tantamount to “I wasn’t applying reason.”  That didn’t work; he was executed by hanging.