"A crucial rationale used early in the Nazi regime and one heard today was that, as Arendt puts it, “if you are confronted with two evils… it is your duty to opt for the lesser one, whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether.” Yet Arendt quickly notes the catastrophic morality of this position: “those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.” More insidiously, the “lesser evil” argument didn’t just provide external justification but was “one of the mechanisms built into the machinery of terror and criminality.” Authoritarian regimes deliberately employ this logic as a conditioning tool, implementing horrors incrementally, she argues. This kind of “psychological grooming” allowed ordinary citizens to participate in extraordinary evils while maintaining their self-conception as morally good—after all, they didn’t choose the worse evil—effectively dismantling their ethical resistance one compromise at a time."
Got that??
Lesser evilism is a systematic, deliberate, carefully calculated ASSAULT against our entire moral and ethical framework. It's a careful and relentless ratchet designed to convince you to take apart your own standards and gradually ease yourself into rationalizing and tolerating absolutely unbearable horrors that you never could have imagined putting up with not so long ago, becoming an apologist for the unforgivable. Defending oppressors that put you here. You are being psychologically groomed to serve monsters without even noticing it.
We have to DRAW THE LINE SOMEWHERE.
All around us, our neighbors and officials and families are deciding where they stand-- resistance, or collaboration. That's the choice. And the power of self-delusion means a terrifying number of these people aren't even LOOKING at which side they're picking.