How to battle evil

In the endless heartsick moments since Derek Chauvin first began pressing his knee into George Floyd’s neck, we have witnessed many faces of evil.

One truth Mr. Floyd’s incomprehensible killing makes newly clear is that evil is very, very stubborn.

Officer Chauvin had to have seen he was being filmed as he choked the life from Mr. Floyd, but he did not stop. He must have known of similar, recent police slayings of unarmed Americans, but he did not relent. Bystanders pleaded with him, but he showed no mercy. Evil unleashed is implacable.

Another truth demonstrated in the days since this senseless crime is that evil is shape-shifting and opportunistic. Much of the outrage sweeping the nation is authentic, constructive and cleansing; some, however, is cynical and clearly designed to achieve a goal quite different from justice.

A third truth is that when we stand by and do nothing in the face of evil, we become morally complicit. That’s why the officers who failed to intervene as Officer Chauvin took Mr. Floyd’s life now face murder charges. They didn’t choke anyone to death — but, in effect, they did.

The bystanders who cried out are the heroes here. They spoke truth to a corrupt power. But the evil no one stopped that day — and on too many similarly tragic days in recent years — demands that we ask, how widespread is this aggressive disregard for human rights in our culture and institutions?

I’d like to believe that the majority of police officers respect and obey the law themselves and are people of decent character and self-control. This is what the statistics demonstrate, and it’s what I’ve seen myself. Many of them, then, must be deeply angry at Derek Chauvin and his ilk for making their difficult jobs much harder.

Perhaps they realize there are other colleagues they should be worried about.

In one of the most powerful conversations I’ve heard recently, a radio talk show caller asserted — rightly, I think — that in any given police department, as in any workplace, colleagues know who the bad apples are.

The caller also noted that law enforcement agencies regularly decry the anti-snitching stance espoused in some African American communities. We’ve seen these anti-antisnitching billboards here in Pittsburgh. But if the police won’t call out their own, the caller asked, how can they demand that civilians do so?

He’s absolutely right. The failure of any institutional authority — or of its members — to confront moral rot within undermines their standing to confront it elsewhere. This failure to self-police also makes them complicit in the crimes those known bad actors may commit.

We either believe in the rule of law or we don’t. Just as this principle demands that law enforcement agencies hold their own accountable, it demands that justice-seeking citizens condemn those who are now committing crimes in response to Mr. Floyd’s killing.

Not the peaceful protesters, not the nonviolent demonstrators commemorating a life wrongly taken and demanding change: They are doing God’s work.

But some “protesters” are after anything but justice. They are committing grave assaults, destroying businesses in struggling communities, setting fire to others’ dreams and life savings. Political manipulators are providing pallets of bricks, facilitating violence and chanting any abuse they can think of to wear down and provoke uniformed peacekeepers.

Evil doesn’t overcome evil; it feeds itself and grows. These days, thanks to smartphones, the whole world can watch this sad truth in action.

At some point it doesn’t matter whether the bad actors are denizens of the far left or the far right bent on destroying the troubled “American experiment,” deeply flawed cops with authority issues or restless youths with diminished prospects and nothing to do. It all goes into a roiling, spreading spirit that consumes everything in its path.

The only thing that stops it is its spiritual opposite — love, peace, kindness — put into words and put into action. We have work to do.