When I read about a case like Greene v. County of Sonoma et al., in which an elderly gay couple with all their paperwork — wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives — in order were forcibly separated by county and health care workers, humiliated, basically incarcerated, their joint property, estimated at half a million dollars, seized and sold, it brought back Hannah Arendt's famous phrase coined for Eichmann: "the banality of Evil".

The individuals involved in the alleged crimes felt sufficiently protected, both by public opinion and the legal system that they could, with apparent impunity humiliate and torture two elderly men, methodically isolating them, robbing them of their possessions, their dignity, and each other. 

According to the The New York Times the suit alleges that

At one point, as county officials moved through the couple’s home,... they commented on the “quality” and“desirability” of the furnishings. They also mocked Mr. Greene, he said,calling him a “crazy old man,” said he had “dementia” and was a lostcause, laughed at him, and told him to “shut up and go to your room.”

On another instance, Mr. Greene claimed that employees acting as thecounty’s Deputy Public Guardians rolled their eyes and said in hispresence, “you know how those gay boys are” and later expressed“displeasure at dealing with expressions of grief by a gay man who hadlost his long-time partner.”

The truly shocking thing is not that the laws fail to protect the vulnerable, it's that this lack of protections actually serves to empower individual men and women who knowingly perpetrate these inhumanities on the vulnerable.

I'm stuck wondering what sort of person would go to these lengths to rob others of their humanity, and what sort of a culture of inhumanity would let them.