The other day, Adrian Walker of the Boston Globe reported on Mike Slater, who survived four mission tours as a US Army infantryman in Iraq and Afghanistan. After suffering from PTSD and being rehabilitated by the VA, he began serving other veterinarians at the Veterans Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. Last month, in an appreciation from his country, Slater was notified via email that his work had been completed.
I look forward to hundreds of thousands of these stories. At USAID, people who have dedicated their careers to alleviating human illness and hunger have been fired by texting and are asked to clean their desks with two days of notification.
Soon there will be far more cruelty and suffering as the poor lose health compensation under the decline in Medicaid, with more families ceased to earn pay for fear of ice attacks breaking up and more migrant workers being arrested and deported.
It’s no surprise that Trump’s signature is cruel. After all, this is a celebrity. He became famous for the “You’ve been fired!” line. Trump has always identified with the winner. Those who suffer from Trump’s sick mind are losers.
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But it was reality television. This is the reality.
In reality TV terminology, the ultimate celebrity apprentice winner is Elon Musk. He is also comparable to Trump in the human damage he is doing.
Other Republican presidents are primarily on human suffering. Ronald Reagan knocked millions of poor people out of the welfare role and cut off many social programs that maintain a measure of dignity for low-income Americans.
But Reagan disguised the cruelty with his pure splendor and rationalisation of false policy that these cuts meant people were good by encouraging them to get a work ethic.
In contrast, Trump enjoys the cruelty. The joy of his pure cruelty was on display last Friday as he did his best to humiliate Volodimir Zelensky. The fact that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused enormous human suffering was nowhere on Trump’s radar. Trump’s final comment was “This is going to be a great TV.”
When he thinks of Gaza, Trump doesn’t see death, human displacement, and severed children. He sees underdeveloped real estate.
When someone crosses a Trump, they must not only be fired, they must disappear. In a post about True Society, Trump’s Joint Chief of Staff General Mark Millie, General Trump, deserves execution.
It’s not exactly news that Trump is a sociopath. The definition of sociopath is someone who lacks human compassion and the ability to regret. Trump goes beyond that and goes pure sadism.
However, most Americans are not sociopaths and are far fewer sadists. Most Americans are kind to their neighbors, support charity, and sympathetic identification of human suffering. So why is there a much greater protest against Trump’s joy at cruelty?
That’s a more complicated question than you would first see.
First of all, as the Nazi era showed, it is too easy to look away when the government is dependent on fear and suffering from others. To paraphrase the famous warning from Rev. Martin Niemerer, they came for immigration, but I am not immigrants. They fire civil servants, but I am not a civil servant.
Where is Christian? Jesus of Nazareth not only taught compassion, but he lived it. And he opposed the hypocrisy that was rampant among his then religious leaders. However, the religion established in his name was often a fortress of hypocrisy.
Trump is purely a deal. Religious leaders and their followers who support Trump based on his views on abortion are also purely a deal to ignore his solol lifestyle. Jesus wept.
There is also the issue of lack of responsiveness and solidarity. Politico interviewed Trump voters in southern Texas. One woman named Nelda Cruz was asked about Medicaid cuts. “I’m not qualified for Medicaid so I’m fine with me,” she said. “Now they’ll feel how I feel.”
Fearful, angry, divided people can suffer meanness. I want to believe America is better than that. Trump may still meet his downfall. But if the cause is not the price of the egg, but rather a massive dislike for Trump’s sadistic atrocities, it would be much more encouraging.
