In San Francisco we have a really nice literary magazine called Zyzzyva, named after the “final word in the dictionary.” I like the magazine quite a bit and have been reading it for several years.
In this quarter’s release, Zyzzyva included a story by Flavian Mark Lupinetti, a cardiac surgeon who lives in Oregon(?). The set up is thus: Adolf Eichmann is interviewed as a guest on Fresh Air, a daily radio current topics show. I’ll just quote a chunk of it, it speaks for itself.
Looking back, do you wish you had tried a different defense?
Such as? If there was one thing we did well in my department, it was keeping records. Made it hard to argue I was innocent. Maybe Himmler was right. Maybe if I’d had Johnnie Cochran on my legal team. That guy runs around the Underworld telling everyone he could have gotten them off – Nixon, Socrates, Ted Bundy. Well, water under the bridge. “Just following orders.” That’s my legacy.
So you didn’t find the “little Eichmann” metaphor offensive?
No. See, especially in America, there’s a little Eichmann in everybody. Some of you just cultivate him more than others.
That’s an interesting concept.
Isn’t it obvious? When you drop a bomb that kills five terrorists and a dozen civilians, and you sincerely feel good about minimizing the collateral damage – that’s the “little Eichmann” in you.
I hardly think –
The very term “collateral damage” is the little Eichmann in you.
And you think a lot of Americans have this little Eichmann in them?
Almost everyone, Terry. When you draw a distinction between torture and enhanced interrogation, that’s your little Eichmann parsing the words. When you have reservations about government agents listening to millions of phone calls, your little Eichmann comforts you that they’re doing it for your own good. When you pay your taxes to support the most powerful war machine in human history, that’s money in the pocket of your little Eichmann.
