The Face of Evil

When I was young, I had a running argument with my father. Dad was a simple, straightforward man with firm principles and unyielding values. He believed in hard work and straight talk. There were no shades of grey in Dad’s world. Right was right. Wrong was wrong. There was nothing in between.

To my young eyes, my father was a too rigid. I tried my best to make my case, telling him things were never that simple. Good and evil were antiquated concepts out of the Old Testament, untethered from the day-to-day reality of our modern lives. Like any budding lawyer, I knew there were always extenuating circumstances.

It took a while for me to realize I was wrong. I came to that understanding about the same time I realized I didn’t want to be a lawyer. Instead, I immersed myself in the well of goodness that is at the heart of American and surrounding myself with the best people I could find.

Forty years later, I know that is the best decision I ever made. The best thing about my life is the quality of my friends. I am truly blessed.

While I have encountered my share of bad actors along the way – and even investigated a few while I was working for the Senate – I have never seen the face of pure evil until now.

Until now, my experience with evil was always second hand, coming largely from conversations with friends mentors who had seen the face of evil up close. Two of these people, Viktor Frankl and Henri Landwirth, were among the most important men in my life.

Henri and Viktor were both survivors of the holocaust. Through the years, we talked extensively about their experiences in the concentration camps – virtually every time we were together. I pressed these conversations in large part because I was having such a hard time getting my head around the reality of horrors they experienced. How could people treat other people that way? Even now, it is difficult to believe human beings are capable of such atrocities.

Thanks to Mr. Putin that is no longer is in doubt. Now, for the first time in our lives many of us are confronted with the reality of evil on a massive scale. Now we see it. It is inescapable. Now we know. It is there before us in the all too vivid images on our television screens every moment of the day, every day of the week, every image more horrid, more heartbreaking that the last. We don’t want to see it, but we can’t look away.

Evil is no longer abstract, supernatural, and distant, divorced from our everyday lives. We now know evil has a human face. One man, for his own reasons or no reason at all, has unleashed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – conquest, war, famine, and death. The stain he leaves dishonors the Russian people and now permeates every segment of our existence.

For those who have been inclined to make excuses for President Putin in the past, let this be the end of that. The mask has been removed. We see him for what he is. If there was any doubt before, we now know there is a monster among us.

But that knowledge is not enough. We must understand where it leads. We must understand there is nothing this man will not do. The lives of other people mean nothing to him. He will not be dissuaded from continuing to crush civilian centers. He will not stop tearing lives apart and killing women and children.

We must understand such evil will not be restrained. It has no limits. Putin will not be deterred from using chemical weapons or even nuclear power by the universal condemnation it would bring. He is a pariah – in the world but not of the world. He could care less what we think.

The hard truth is that the only restraint on Putin is the knowledge that if he uses nuclear power, nuclear power will be used on him and targeted at him. Millions will perish, if it comes to that, but inescapably he knows he will be among them.

For Viktor Frankl, one of the benefits – if you can call it that – of living through the holocaust was the opportunity to prove his mentor, Sigmund Freud, wrong. Freud wrote and believed that under extreme stress and peril human beings would all revert to basic instincts.

“Freud was spared the concentration camps,” Viktor told me. “But those of us who were there saw diversity not uniformity. People revealed their true selves – the saints and the swine.”

Outgunned and outmanned, here is where the Ukrainian people have the advantage. People will admire their courage, dignity, and honor long after Putin has faded from the world stage.

We will remember the compassion of Ukraine’s neighbors.

We will remember the way a divided world has come together in response to Putin’s atrocities.

We will remember the way hundreds of thousands have responded to one man’s evil intent.

We will remember their love and kindness.

We will ever be reminded that even though evil has a human face, so do empathy, mercy, courage, and compassion.

The great overarching lesson in all this is that the worst of us reveals the best of us.