When Cruelty is the Point

The Atlantic published an essay by Adam Serwer October 3, 2018, which is most disturbing yet salient.  "The Cruelty Is the Point: President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear."

This essay lists incidents that I find very difficult to read. In the 30's black men chained to poles—whipped to death while white men grin proudly as though this was an accomplishment. "Their cruelty made them feel good, it made them feel proud, it made them feel happy. And it made them feel closer to one another."

A Mississippi crowd of Trump supporters cheered as the president mocked Christine Blasey Ford for reporting the attempted rape by Kavanaugh when she was a teenager. "Lock her up!" they shouted. The trial or at least a part of it was taped for mainstream viewing.

Ford, a psychology professor, reported the laughter of Kavanaugh and his friend Mark judge as "Indelible in the hippocampus ... that part of the brain that processes emotion and memory".

Adolescent male cruelty "is a bonding mechanism, a vehicle for intimacy through contempt." White men in lynching photos bonding through cruelty. These examples say—the white man has evolved to be part of the global family of cruelty and torture.  

You may be thinking that white women and black men are as capable of cruelty as white men. But what I find so chilling in the history of World War I and II is the branding of men's psyche in the camaraderie of violence and cruelty.  That something in the healthy brain has been erased so that men can serve the ruling elite through bonding by traumatizing rituals to "toughen him up" rendering him unable to interrogate his feelings without falling back into the trauma.

When we question this behaviour men may get defensive or applaud it by further abuse. Should women learn how to do this? I have seen women who are willing to display cruelty and violence for the sake of maintaining power over a group.

I have even felt that hardening in my own heart when it appeared it was required "to do the job." To lose that intelligence of empathy and sensitivity which informs my place in the group. 

What makes me most fearful for the future is how easily we can become monsters through unidentified trauma and fear. This is like a setting in the mind which makes me do something I thought I was incapable of doing.

This is why election day is not the only opportunity I have to protest against injustice, cruelty and stupidity. I am a member of the human family and have an obligation to take care of us by caring what happens to them. This is my political task between elections.

Why People Join Extremist Organizations

"People join extremists organisations for quite a number of reasons. Some - especially those locally recruited - mostly join for economic benefits." Mahdi Abdile is Finn Church Aid’s Regional Representative for East and Southern Africa. European Institute of Peace.

In countries where opportunities are scarce, weak governments and unprotected human rights, terrorism is an opportunity for destabilizing the status quo. Somalia, 27% joined al Shabab for economic reasons and 15% mentioned religious reasons. Once established 13% were forced to join.


Simon Cottee writes in The Atlantic "Since the 1980s, (the idea it is driven by individual pathology) has fallen into disrepute, and the scholarly consensus now holds that the roots of terrorism lie not in the individual, but in the wider circumstances in which terrorists live and act."

Noam Chomsky warns in an Alternet article, a false flag terror attack could be staged as Donald Trump supporters realize  he can't fulfill his promises.  

Between, inequality, despair and corruption, terrorism is a strategy for those who have power over the masses  to further alienate people from peaceful civil structures to centralize power, further the feelings of powerlessness and create new (or old) scapegoats.