Jay Kuo: The Cruelty Is The Point, But What's The Goal?

[Nevilledog]

https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/trump-administration-cruelty-goal

When I write about the latest horrific policy or action by the Trump administration, often a reader will comment, “The cruelty is the point.” We all sense, and in many ways accept, this as true. How could we not, given everything we have seen and experienced for years under Trump?

But there has always been something unsatisfactory and circular about this assessment. It asserts that Trump and his lackeys are cruel just to be cruel, presumably because that is their nature and they enjoy it.

That feels correct, but also incomplete.

Cruelty serves a number of other purposes beyond the sadism of those who inflict it. We’ve witnessed this wherever atrocities occur anywhere in the world. Soldiers not only kill enemy soldiers but systematically rape, torture, and execute innocent civilians. Vulnerable minorities, whether Jews in Nazi Germany or LGBTQs in Uganda, become targets for cruelty not only because they are easy targets and people are awful, but because the state has an agenda and the cruelty is a twisted part of it.

The United States is not somehow immune to this and never has been. Throughout our history, our government, acting through our military and our courts, has repeatedly inflicted intentional cruelty upon whole populations within our borders. This has led to the worst chapters of our nation’s story: Indigenous genocide, centuries of Black slavery, and the Japanese American internment.

*snip*