Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
Chauncey DeVega is by his own description an essayist and cultural critic. He has a blog (and a podcast) of his own. He is a staff writer for Salon magazine, and therefore also appears fairly regularly at Raw Story and AlterNet, as well as other sites which reference Salon. He is also a trusted community member of Daily Kos. I have come to expect powerful writing when I see his name, so when I saw it attached to the title Cruelty is Trump’s guiding principle — but Democrats can use it to defeat him, I was interested. Nameless and I have independently come to the conclusion that, for Republicans, Cruelty Is The Point (and maybe you have too.)
Interestingly, I was challenged on that point this week, by a Disqus user who replied to one of my comments at Raw Story with “Domination is the point. Cruelty is just a perk.” Well, maybe. It’s also possible that cruelty is the point and domination is just the means. I’m not sure the distinction greatly matters, or whether it is even possible to unravel – and it probably differs slightly from Republican to Republican anyway. What is clear is that Republican cruelty is a recognized fact.
DeVega’s article was in response to the threat to deport any non-citizen who is in the United States specifically as a recipient of health care. This category includes many children, and many of those with fatal diseases/conditions, who will quite literally die quickly if forced to leave the United States. For all that is wrong with our health care, it does include access to techniques, procedures, drugs, and just a lot of possibilities which are not available in other nations, and particularly not to the nations to which these children are likely to be deported. Removing then from United States healthcare thus means removing them from any health care at all, and they will quickly die.
Not every child (or adult) who is here to receive health care is here solely for the benefit of the patient, either. A substantial chunk of these patients are here because the doctors desperately want to be able to work with them, treat them, and learn through them, how better to treat the diseases/conditions from which they suffer, with the ultimate goal of saving many thousands of lives. That dream too is destroyed by the deportation process. So – why? Why do this?
Because of public outrage at the wanton cruelty of sending sick people — including many children — back to their home countries to die, USCIS announced a temporary pause in the deportations….
This should be no comfort for the people who are in the United States under the “deferred action” program. Moreover, the safe and reasonable assumption should be that the Trump regime will resume its efforts to deport immigrants receiving lifesaving medical care once the controversy and resulting public and media attention subsides. This is part of the Trump regime’s fascist strategy of creating controversy through its “shocking” and “surprising” assaults on democracy, the rule of law and human decency. Predictably, the public and news media react to the outrage of the day, week or month. In response, the administration then appears to back down.
Testing the limits of societal norms is one of the primary ways through which fascists and other authoritarians break a democracy and in so doing train the public into a state of constant distraction, exhaustion and learned helplessness. (emphasis mine)
As a sidebar here, cruelty to others, and notably to the sick and injured, is not a phenomenon limited to non-citizens, or children, or brown people. You may have missed the story that Fox News Ed Henry (and the fact that Fox employs an individual with enough human feeling to do this points up the tightness of the job market that he would choose to stay employed there) recently underwent surgery to donate part of his liver to his ailing sister.
Mr. Henry has recovered enough to be able to make an appearance on Fox and Friends to discuss the experience, but he still has an incision several inches long in his chest which has not healed. He came to the studio the night before his scheduled appearance to greet colleagues, including Hannity’s staff.
He said on the show the next morning, “You won’t believe what happened.”
One of Hannity’s staffers guessed exactly what their boss had done.
“One of them said, Kristin, she said, ‘He punched you,’” Henry said, as co-host Steve Doocy grinned and Ainsley Earhardt covered her mouth and smiled. “I said yeah, because Sean does that.”
“You’ve been Hannitized!” Doocy said.
Henry laughed, and admitted the punch nearly knocked him over.
I also find it noteworthy that it was not just Henry who laughed – the Fox and Friends hosts found the story amusing to the point of laughter.
But this blatant cruelty to people considered “lesser” – be they brown or just paid a little less – hurts far more people than just the immediate, obvious victims. Back to DeVega:
Donald Trump and his policies are literally making the American people sick. Mental health professionals and other researchers have shown that the Age of Trump is a public health crisis characterized by high rates of anxiety, sleep disorders, stress and a generalized sense of fear and worry, as well as the other negative health outcomes (heart attacks and strokes; an increase in interpersonal violence such as mass shootings) that accompany such a diminished state of well-being.
In July of this year the Washington Post reported that “a Gallup poll recently documented an increase of stress, anger and worry among all Americans, which match or top the highest levels since it began tracking these negative feelings in 2006. Those who disapprove of Trump’s performance were significantly more likely to experience each of those negative emotions, the survey found.”
DeVega goes on to discuss possible ways in which Democrats might stress the cruelty of Trump, his regime, and Republicans in general on order to maximize Democratic wins in government now and in 2020 (and for as long as we have to.) I consider that not only a legitimate strategy, but also a moral imperative (as does DeVega:)
Whoever the Democrats nominate to run in 2020, the party faces a great task. It must force a moral reckoning in America in order to defeat Donald Trump.
But I am not going to filter his specific strategy ideas through my own head here – because I firmly believe that everyone has his or her own style, and that something that works for one candidate may very well not work for another.
Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, please encourage anyone who is working any election in any capacity, from the actual candidates down to the lowliest envelope-stuffer (if such exist any more), to read Chauncey DeVega’s article, especially the part about how to use the deliberate, wanton cruelty to good effect, and learn from it what they need to succeed. It sounds easy, doesn’t it? But sometimes it’s harder to get people to read and think than it is to get them to arm and fire.
The Furies and I will be back.
