OPINION | The Cruelty Is The Point: Republicans Seek Popularity With the Pain They Cause
Donald Trump has changed the culture for the worse
The depravity that Kristi Noem shot and killed her young puppy wasn’t dug up and shown the light of day by some investigative journalists.
No, South Dakota’s Republican governor happily and readily told that story herself, in her new book.
And, more recently, an adviser to Donald Trump’s campaign and related efforts made headlines for a loathsome video he himself posted on TikTok in which he readily boasts of giving homeless folks fake money with the express and stated goal of getting these vulnerable people arrested for trying to pass bad bills.
What’s going on here that MAGA Republicans like not only engage in all sorts of cruelty — but seek approval and popularity for that pain they cause?
These are things that once would have been condemned as beyond the pale and unacceptable in polite society.
But far-right figures like Noem and Trump lackey John McEntee actually boast about their nastiness like it’s a high virtue that will win approval from others.
To see why, you don’t have to look farther than MAGA’s leader and god-king, Donald Trump himself.
With his own boundless inhumanity and heartlessness, Trump’s become a perverse role model.
In his nearly decade on the national stage, the former president not only has widened the permission structure for brutality and mercilessness but at this point has succeeded in ingraining this embrace of depravity in a significant segment of society.
Every time Trump’s been racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and just plain selfish, somebody has seen that and said, “I can be like that.”
Not only has Trump not paid any real price for the pain he’s caused, he’s actually running essentially even in the country in his bid to return to the White House.
He’s single-handedly coarsened our culture and moved society for the worse.
While defeating him in November is necessary and at least would be a start to turning things around, that won’t be sufficient.
As will seeing Trump convicted and sentenced for the many crimes of which he stands accused.
The solution no longer is simply political or official.
Rather, it’s up to us who rightly recoil at this cruelty to make a change.
We got here by an inexorable breaking and bending of any manner of social norms.
We have to — every one of us — become just as loud and strong to just as inexorably re-be establish those norms and standards and make clear that those who want to continue flouting them just won’t be acceptable.
It won’t be easy or quick.
But it will be imperative if we don’t a society that prizes greed and cruelty.
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