Cruelty is a curse of our species. Most of us have been subject to it on a personal level and have also been cruel to another with words or actions. In the years I spent volunteering at an animal rescue, I saw the results of awful acts of cruelty performed upon dogs. Whether its cause is a form of original sin, or evidence of our capacity for evil, or an animal substratum of our nature, all of us know it is real.
However, for millions of people in a country to come to believe that cruelty is socially acceptable and even necessary as an ethos and as government policy, they have to be led to do so. We have social inhibitions that give us pause and individual consciences, and our States have enacted laws that prohibit many forms of cruelty. *
People in groups have to be led to it. They have to be given permission to be afraid of and to hate a singular named enemy, and that permission has to come from the top. Someone has to say directly or through a commonly understood code that any group they have been taught to fear is open to assault.
That permission may stimulate a latent hostility toward a group and help rally that hostility into a consensus, but the permission from a leader is critical in removing inhibitions to action. Those millions have to be told again and again that a thoughtful, heartless brutality is now to be allowed as focused on whomever is designated as the enemy.
Trump has been building such a permission structure since he descended the elevator in 2015.
Listen to his own recent words:
“Illegal immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country.”
He spoke of “potential death & destruction” being visited upon the nation if he was convicted in New York.
“Sometimes revenge can be justified.”
“We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within.” *
Revenge, poison, death and destruction, vermin.
A former President, the potential next President, a cult leader who knows his power, in using language like this creates the cell of a tornado that runs through MAGA and makes violence against enemies – Democrats, judges, immigrants, etc. – acceptable and likely.
One hundred forty days until the election.
*Not all by a long shot. The meat processing industry is one place to look where cruelty is often simply a part of the process of slaughter.
*For a sampling of where Trump is getting this stuff: Adolf Hitler: “Should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?’”
