Politics of Cruelty & Waste: Evidence and antidote

How cruelty became Republican policy

“Empathy is the weakness of the West”

Elon Musk

Empathy

Humans are wired for empathy. Empathy is the ability to feel another person’s emotional state. From mirror neurons that model others’ behavior, to primitive parts of our brain, we are mentally geared to feel for others. This feeling for others begins in infancy, and is universal across cultures. It stems from the fact that as children we are highly dependent on others for survival over long periods of time, longer than any other species. Said differently, we are highly dependent on others to learn about the world through modeling, symbols and experience. Our knowledge of the world and feelings for others are intrinsically social and implicitly intimate.

Cruelty

Cruelty, on the other hand, is learned. It’s like a second self, dormant until activated, that switches on the neural circuits enabling us to hurt others. These circuits are distributed throughout the brain, with no brain center for evil. Cruelty circuits are activated by messages and images—real or fake—that pitch survival, superiority and often excitement. Some individuals who appear normal get a high from hurting others.

The key to fomenting cruel behavior is to create messages or narratives that suppress feelings of empathy. The greater the motivational power of the message to appeal to fear or supremacy, the less likely we are to feel empathy for others, no matter the result of our actions. These actions can be direct or indirect. If a soldier, for example, receives orders to kill children, the rationale might be framed as fear (’the child will grow up to be a terrorist’) or as supremacy (’they’re all vermin anyway’), then the trigger is pulled. Indirectly, cutting off health benefits to cancer patients in need accelerates their deaths.

Politicians are experts in suppressing empathy. They often frame hurting people as a higher cause, or a response to danger or evil, or in some cases, national duty. Cruelty is most often rendered harmless in the service of a cause. President Donald Trump and Republicans have excelled at methods to promote cruelty, including:

Immigration

Here’s the pitch: “Millions of people are pouring over our borders. They are killers and rapists. Haitians are killing and eating dogs. The Democrats are letting it happen, and are too weak to do anything to stop it. These illegal aliens are evil and must be stopped.” The media jumps on board and highlights a single case history of an immigrant who commits a violent crime. Evil becomes a spectacle in spite of the reality of longitudinal data that has revealed that immigrants—legal or illegal– have lower crime rates than comparable groups of U.S. citizens.

The fearmongers expanded and weaponized ICE, a paramilitary organization with a budget of over $70 billion to round up illegals and “protect our borders.” Under ICE custody, 52 immigrants died in the first 500 days of the second Trump administration (Human Rights Watch), and dozens are missing or unaccounted for, including children. Two people who intervened to help victims were shot dead and others were given long prison terms for interference; children are often separated from their parents and lost in the system. The South Florida Detention Facility, nicknamed ‘Alligator Alcatraz’, which was built in a remote location next to an alligator swamp to house (imprison) “illegals,” was closed just under a year after it opened because it was too expensive to operate, and conditions were judged subhuman. Taxpayers advanced over $400 million to get the project moving with the total cost now estimated at $1.2 billion over its year in operation.

Then, in a cruel twist befitting Kafka’s imagination, President Trump, Republicans and the Supreme Court, stripped protected status from roughly 350,000 Haitians and 4,000 Syrians already living legally in the U.S. They also let border agents turn asylum seekers away before they even set foot on U.S. soil — closing off the legal path to asylum altogether for people arriving at the border. In other words, U.S. legal channels are useless for political or social safety. They honor no government commitment whatsoever.

Aid programs

Here’s the pitch: “We are wasting money on aid programs. USAID does not meet America First priorities, and is antithetical to U.S. values.” Rah, rah against foreigners taking U.S. money like they’re on welfare at home.

• USAID, which supplied necessary food and food supplements, maternity care, farm tools and inputs for 64 years, was eliminated by Elon Musk, Trump’s hatchet man. No studies were conducted, no transition period was specified, no concern for impact on recipients or countries. Mr. Musk, a former South African immigrant, had declared earlier that “empathy is the weakness of the West.” It’s to be avoided.
• The Lancet medical journal, based on forecasting models and projections, estimated that 14 million people and 4.5 million children under 5 will die for lack of USAID over the next five years. At the one year mark, mortality trackers indicated that approximately 750,000 people have died due to abrupt withdrawal of USAID.

This cruelty goes unaddressed as the $32 billion budget for USAID under President Biden was destroyed and replaced in budget and impact terms by Trump’s war against Iran which, according to economists, cost the U.S. economy an estimated $132 billion. The Trump administration might be accurately named the Party of Cruelty and Waste.

Health & Environment

Here’s the pitch: “The U.S. government is wasting money on health and human services including cancer research. Lots of useless programs. These declarations were made by non-medical specialists with zero training in medical or epidemiological studies. We must rein in federal spending or go broke.” That was the rally cry.

This has resulted in Trump and Republicans calling for the largest health care cuts in American history, slashing more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Medicaid currently covers one in three children diagnosed with cancer and the ACA tax credits help support 500,000 adults with cancer. Lifesaving cancer treatments have been delayed or canceled for lack of affordability.

• The Trump administration has cut roughly $2 billion from cancer research and terminated or suspended nearly 6,000 NIH grants outright — even after Trump’s proposed 40 percent cut to the NIH’s total budget was too extreme for Congress to pass. This has disrupted or ended 115 trials searching for a cure for cancer.
• Meanwhile, the administration has gutted environmental laws that regulate industries that pollute water, air and food, in spite of four decades of scientific evidence that environmental pollution and toxic chemicals increase rates of cancer. Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking work on environmental warnings, Silent Spring, published in 1962, has been systematically attacked. Goodbye to protections against cancer in cause and disease.

What to do

Empathy as an antidote to cruelty is growing as more progressive candidates are winning elections across the U.S. If you feel empathy for others, there are several things you can do or continue doing including:

• Work in mid-term elections, starting now, to vote Republicans out.
• Pick up the phone and call representatives and protest cruelty and promote care for people. Be specific on a particular issue that matters to you.
• Write letters to the editor that characterize Republicans as the Party of Cruelty, offer an alternative voice on a specific issue that’s important to you
• Join a street protest for a cause you believe in
• Help immigrant families and kids to ensure that they get a fair shake.

Whatever you do, express your empathy in behavior towards others.