In quantity only, not quality. If someone orders you to do something you consider immoral and you still do it, you're just as much to blame.
See the Milgram experiment and the Nuremberg trials. The "just doing their job" excuse isn't good enough for passengers or for employees, they should do the right thing and quit/disobey.
You sure about that? I always got the impression the real problem in the camps, besides the fact they existed etc, was guards enjoying their immoral job and taking liberties. And that is indeed a whole step above.
There's no simple reason. Who's to say that the enjoyment wasn't a coping mechanism? Who's to say they didn't think it was necessary to protect their country? I don't think they woke up one day and thought "today I'm going to torture and murder me some Jews", there was a very gradual manipulation process that led them there.
Have you seen the video of US marines airbombing journalists (or civilians? I don't remember). They seem to enjoy it a whole lot... We, of course, know this is nothing like that, but are we sure? In both cases people were doing what they thought was necessary for the good of their country (of course, it's much easier to see how killing people is justified when you think they're about to shoot anti-aircraft missiles at you). It's very easy to demonise people in retrospect, and say "we would never do these things today", but the guards in concentration camps probably said the same thing for other atrocities of the past, while actually doing the same thing themselves.
This is just a lot of speculation on my part, but I find it hard to believe that an entire country just happened to consist of monsters who would enjoy killing people or endorsing that genocide. I'm just saying that these are probably the same principles at play, but we have the benefit of hindsight and should take steps to nip this erosion in the bud.
Of course, that's very hard to do, so we'll probably just shut up and take this too.
> I find it hard to believe that an entire country just happened to
> consist of monsters who would enjoy killing people or endorsing
> that genocide.
A couple of points:
1. The guards at the concentration camps were not 100% of population of Germany.
2. Did the general populus of Germany really know everything that was happening at the concentration camps? Did they know that Jews were being killed at stuck in mass graves or were they (the public) just told that they (the Jews) were being 'sent to camps' to 'keep them separated from the general population?'
Well, by that logic, TSA employees are not 100% of the population of the US either. I can't say how much they knew, but that makes it even worse, because the citizens of Germany were unwitting accomplices, whereas everyone knows what's going on in airports and still consents to it.*
People who win the lottery are generally not any happier six months later. Individuals seem to have a kind of equilibrium of happiness. I think it's reasonable that the guards would acclimate to a really crappy situation as well.
I mean, really, they we're just doing their jobs to pay their bills, etc. etc.
TSA is not a far step from that, btw.