Stand on facts, challenge the fiction ....

I've spent too much time this morning reading various narratives inspired by yesterday's International Holocaust Memorial Day observances --- and by now am past the self-imposed morning deadline for blog posts.

So here's a piece of wisdom expressed by Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), best remembered casually perhaps because she coined the phrase "banality of evil" as part of the title of her 1963 book, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil."

Arendt, who had barely escaped Nazi Germany with her life, was commissioned by The New Yorker magazine in 1962 to cover the trial in Jerusalem of Adolph Eichmann, a principal architect of the Holocaust. Her reports appeared in The New Yorker, then were augmented for publication as a book.

This quote is from another of her works, "The Origins of Totalitarianism."

It's been a wild ride during the last few years as we've watched the truth of Arendt's conclusion play out among us in ways many thought was not possible.

The necessary response hasn't changed --- stand upon a foundation of facts yourself and challenge the fiction. Always.