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When Cruelty Becomes Sadism (Krugman) [1]
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Date: 2025-05-19
Paul Krugman outdid himself (as he does frequently) in this morning’s offering: Attack of the Sadistic Zombies, in which he tries to explain why the Republicans in Congress are deliberately making their constituents’ lives worse:
[T]his reconciliation bill — that is, legislation structured in such a way that it can’t be filibustered and may well pass with no Democratic votes — is different in both degree and kind from what we’ve seen before: Its cruelty is exceptional even by recent right-wing standards. Furthermore, the way that cruelty will be implemented is notable for its reliance on claims we know aren’t true and policies we know won’t work — what some of us call zombie ideas.
Side note for those misled by the title: “zombies” means using ideas known not to work; it has nothing to do with the undead in search of brains. (Republicans might be undead, but they clearly want nothing to do with brains.) For example:
The belief that many Americans receiving government support are malingering, that they could and should be working but are choosing to be lazy, is a classic zombie idea. That is, like the claim that cutting taxes on the rich will unleash an economic miracle, it’s a doctrine that should be long dead. It has, after all, been proved wrong by experience again and again.
Another side note: I’m reading a history of the French-English conflict in the Middle Ages; one point the author makes over and over is that the French kept losing because they refused to learn from experience. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same).
Krugman goes on:
As I see it, right-wingers’ rhetoric about the budget deficit is a lot like their rhetoric about antisemitism. It’s not something they actually care about. It’s just a club they can use to bash their opponents. But in that case, why the cruelty toward less-fortunate Americans? Well, as I see it the cruelty, as opposed to the dollars saved, is actually the point. Inflicting harm on the vulnerable isn’t something they do with regret, it’s something they do with a sense of satisfaction.
Here I think that Krugman, despite the title of his piece, has watered down his message. This is not just “a sense of satisfaction”; it is cruelty turned into sadism.
There is some difference between the two. One can be cruel out of carelessness, or even out of necessity — sometimes one has to hurt in order to heal. But when pointing out the cruel consequences of one’s cruelty becomes not a warning but an incentive, when indifference to cruelty becomes enjoyment of cruelty — taking (sometimes even sexual) joy in making another person suffer just because you can — at that point cruelty is sadism.
We saw this in Trump’s first term, when he ordered children separated from their parents at the border, did it so clumsily that they couldn’t be reunited, and continued to do it after he was warned of the consequences. But it’s not just Trump; it’s his whole party.
What Trump has done, both by example and by threat, is unleashed whatever inner sadist had been dormant in the Republican breast. How Trump Taught Everybody to Be Obnoxious and Cruel (2022):
Here is another part of Trump’s legacy: Other political actors are mimicking his instinct for casual savagery. It is now part of the everyday diet of American political life. . . . A more troubling possibility, however, might be that Trump is not the cause of the new crudeness and rudeness of contemporary politics — just an especially florid manifestation of much deeper trends. The paradox of modern technology, especially as harnessed by social media, is that it is especially proficient in unleashing primitive dimensions of human character. That suggests a renaissance of insult, indignation and conspiracy theory — the signatures of the politics of contempt — is going to be with us for a long time to come no matter what happens to Trump.
The Republicans in Congress aren’t merely taking money away from the poor and middle class in order to make the extraordinarily rich become incomprehensibly rich, though that’s part of their goal. But they are doing in a way that is designed to hurt Americans as much as they can get away with, cutting programs that cost little but that save lives and livelihoods. They did it at first because they believed the poor and the middle class, women and minorities, didn’t deserve federal help and largess. But that has led to become cruel to everyone, even their base who got them into power, because they can. They are pushing to see how they can go just for the pleasure of going there.
Why did the Budget Committee fail to move the budget bill the other night? Hageman Says GOP Budget Bill Voted Down Because It Didn’t Cut Spending Enough:
All the Democrats on the Budget Committee voted against the bill Friday, criticizing what they called extreme cuts to Medicaid and other social programs. They were joined in the vote by their ideological opposites — Republican Freedom Caucus members who said the spending cuts did not go far enough.
They did this even though GOP Cuts to Medicaid 'Will Kill People,' Advocate Warns and New Research Bolsters. That is what sadism looks like.
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