Cruelty

Like many US citizens, I have found myself on a roller coaster of emotions, reactions, and immobilizations as a witness to the unfolding of the current status of US governance leadership (to be clear, all three branches). Like many I have had my moments of incredulousness and grief, terror and shame. Trying to organize my thoughts to post a blog, I found myself eventually able to identify one overriding concern that haunts me: the casual engagement in cruelty, and in some cases, the public enjoyment in it and celebration of it.

Cruelty is defined as callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain and suffering. Legally it is defined as behavior that causes physical or mental harm to another. It is ultimately a fairly ugly construct that describes one of the behaviors manifested by our darker human side. It has also been a behavior that I liked to think of as unacceptable in my country.  We, I opined to myself, are committed for the most part to kindness and do not approve of the cruel act.  We even reinforce this dictum with a reference to what we consider “Christian” beliefs.

For the last four, nearly five months I have watched that illusion dissipate in a cloud of systematic and deliberate cruelty. It has forced my hand, required me to reflect on the fact that part of me wants to be shocked and amazed at the emergence of this crisis in my country.  Another more honest part of me reflects on all the moments in my 82 years when I wondered if we would ever get honest as a country about own our roots, our origins, not only in their courage and vision but also in their extreme and systematic cruelty.

My country was founded on genocide and slavery.  I was not a direct participant in this founding but have most of my life struggled with the expectations of silence and denial of this genocide and slavery.  I have often been silent when I wondered if I should have spoken out.  I have also owned this history publicly, said these words out loud to audiences and student classes but have never figured out a way to create adequate arenas for such a declaration, for creating a constructive conversation.   I could not find productive ways of moving beyond the societal silence and denial. I often felt I merely created discomfort and avoidance.

It has seemed to me, most of my life, that we had a reckoning coming and we were avoiding it.

During the unfolding of my life, a series of extraordinary leaders and breakthrough outcomes fed a hope in me, convinced me we were actually moving toward that reckoning.  I don’t think I was the only one that thought this.  We clearly, as a nation, had not solved the embedded dilemmas in this history of genocide and slavery, and we had clearly not given up our attachment to cruelty, but it seemed we were taking small steps forward. Today, it looks like it was a figment of my imagination, that I was deceiving myself and the reality of my country has revealed itself.  Indeed, it appears the progress catalyzed a backlash, a refusal to accept these changes.

I am trying to deliberately engage in my own personal reckoning, in facing the true things that we need to learn to say out loud.  I believe our future depends on this reckoning.

So, to start my reckoning, I have begun to construct an initial list of “Honesties about US Cruelty” that seem to me to the things we are going to have to face if we want to get beyond this impasse of extreme cruelty we have recently created and accepted. I am recording them here as a checklist others can use to have their own moment of facing reality, their reckoning, and to see the challenges embedded in the work that lies ahead.  The “We” in my list is the US citizenry, all we humans who embrace the statements made here as a conviction or, alternately, because we are immobilized by fear, do not speak out about our disagreement with the statements.

1.     We harbor a silent, insistent, persistent longing to sustain white supremacy, particularly white male supremacy and achieving this requires the curtailment of rights for any who are not “supreme”. This overriding truth of white supremacy cannot be challenged and must prevail. It requires cruelty to establish this supremacy, and sometimes to demonstrate how it looks and feels. It definitely requires cruelty to sustain the supremacy.

2.     We believe many who live in this country are not equal to the challenge created by supreme white people, cannot manifest the superior traits of the white males who should and will control everything. These inadequate persons can be given menial jobs but must be closely supervised to ensure that they do not become parasites absorbing our national resources and wealth. Managing all these inferior persons sometimes requires the use of force, acts of cruelty. This may be the only way to ensure the necessary outcomes.

3.     We started this country using guns to ensure outcomes of dominance and control and have convinced ourselves that this is the preferred way to ensure safety, even if no other sovereign nation appears dependent on this illusory reassurance.  Guns are essential to sustain dominance through threat. If one is armed, cruelty can be used to achieve desired outcomes because resistance is subdued.

4.     We have thus discovered that our attachment to weapons enables us to enforce our world order; this can be done both through violence and the threat of violence. We associate the loss of guns with impotence.  To transcend impotence, we can manifest cruelty with our guns which frightens others and makes them more compliant.

5.     We believe all powerful women are dangerous and upset the world order; white women in particular must be confined and managed to prevent inappropriate initiatives and self-serving goals. Getting women to take out powerful women works and saves time. No matter who does the confining and managing, the most effective way of showing women that they are not powerful is to engage in cruel actions toward them that they cannot prevent.

6.     We value our women as incubators for the next generation; women who do not understand or embrace this role are of no value to the country and are hence disposable. The lives of the children they bear are more valuable to the country to expand our population than the incubators. Those who resist the role of incubators can be either disposed of or managed with focused cruelty.

7.     We realize that once a group is suppressed, it is essential that systematic practices are established and sustained to ensure continued compliance; force is essential. This requires interventions of cruelty. If force is unsuccessful, members of the group must be removed from our country, preferably using cruel tactics.

8.     We must ensure that our children learn these honesties in their youth and are given learning opportunities to internalize and practice their lessons.  Using sports, we can teach them how to use physical force to harm an opponent to win a game. In the classroom, we can teach them how to bully the smart kid to get help in passing exams. In all cases, we must model cruelty so they can emulate it.

9.     We embrace the philosophy that “Greed is Good” and believe that greater wealth is an indicator of a superior being destined to control outcomes (especially if “he” is a white male). As is self-evident, greed sometimes requires cruel interventions, negotiations, or enterprises.

10.  We believe that corporations are the ideal structure to control society, humans, wealth, government and the human enterprise in all its manifestations. These corporations make choices based on expanding profits and this is a good thing for our national wealth; those who do not embrace this truth are socialists. Some of the most essential actions corporations can take to ensure profitability involve being cruel.  This is merely the price of doing business.

11.  We believe that efficiency is more important than truth, that dominance is more valuable than character, that wealth is more significant than generosity. People can only successfully achieve efficiency, dominance and wealth if they are willing to be cruel to others to ensure these outcomes.

12.  We believe that there is something deeply damaged or disturbed about anyone who does not agree with these honesties.  Maybe they never learned to be comfortable being cruel.

As is perhaps obvious, this is merely a starter set, a tool for reflection and self-assessment.  If, reading it, you start to argue with the “Honesty” then you have a more challenging task before you.

I think reckoning is hard work and I am not holding my breath.  The one thing that does seem clear to me, however, is that the damages being achieved through massive initiatives of deliberate and systematic cruelty are going to make lying to myself, using denial or avoidance or silence, or running away from the truth options I can no longer chose.

Reckoning requires that I own the part of this cultural embrace of cruelty that shapes my reality and make clear decisions about what I will do about it. In the case of cruelty, telling the truth is the first and most powerful choice. Affirming kindness is dependent on that choice.

“No empire can outrun the repercussions of its aggression; the seeds of hostility always yield a harvest of reckoning.”

-Pierre Lagrenat-

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