Unmoved by Cruelty

As the new administration’s “flood the zone” strat­e­gy con­tin­ues, break­ing as much as it pos­si­bly can as quick­ly as it pos­si­bly can so as to over­whelm the oppo­si­tion, I am remind­ed of Ten­nessee Williams’ char­ac­ter Han­nah Jelkes in ‘The Night of the Igua­na,’ chan­nel­ing the poet Ter­ence, “Noth­ing human dis­gusts me … unless it’s cru­el, violent.”

What is par­tic­u­lar­ly notable at the moment is not the spe­cif­ic poli­cies and per­son­nel that are being elim­i­nat­ed or effec­tive­ly neutered, but that it is all so unmis­tak­ably moti­vat­ed by a sadis­tic or indif­fer­ent cru­el­ty. The only thing in this life that tru­ly moves me to disgust.

I‘ve encoun­tered hun­dreds of exam­ples of peo­ple describ­ing their “ick” online and feel­ing as if the only think icky about any of it is how eas­i­ly some peo­ple are dis­gust­ed by lit­tle more than the immutable vari­a­tion in our human­i­ty. How quick­ly we are dis­gust­ed by any­thing that does not mir­ror our own ego’s overde­vel­oped self-regard.

The gag reflex­es on dis­play are far too sen­si­tive and should prob­a­bly be exer­cised a bit more. If they react like this in a state of civ­i­liza­tion, can you imag­ine the flab­by things func­tion­ing in its absence?

But then, for all of the ick reacts in the world, how is it that so many peo­ple are entire­ly unmoved by cru­el­ty? The inten­tion­al, mali­cious caus­ing of suf­fer­ing when the reme­dies to it are right there, with­in reach… whether sadis­tic or indif­fer­ent, it is always this and only this that makes me doubt my uni­ver­sal­ism and pray that there is fire unend­ing in the eter­ni­ty of some abyss.