How much proof do you need?
Celebrating cruelty against others is a common, unsettling, and all-too-human bonding mechanism, Adam Serwer argued in 2018. Whether it is telling ethnic jokes, or adolescent men demeaning women, or white crowds smiling before lynching victims, “community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.”
For the most extreme on the right, taking out their anxieties on people even like themselves serves a similar purpose. Cruelty is about dominance and dominance is about power. Ask former President George W. Bush, known for giving demeaning nicknames to his closest friends and advisers. Cruelty is addictive and addiction eventually bites.
Matthew Sitman argues that Margaret Thatcher’s famous formulation that “there is no such thing as society” only “individual men and women and families” was about more than casting blame on the less unfortunate for their fates. It was political inspiration for a movement dedicated to proving her right. Cruelly, if necessary.
“The belief that society doesn’t exist, or shouldn’t,” Sitman writes at Gawker online, “is a rejection of neighborliness and trust, a democratic civic culture, and the possibility of encountering those unlike yourself on equal ground.” Equality was never the point for some among us. Rejection of any mutual responsibility means with “stand your ground laws and laws that allow protesters to be run over with vehicles, reactionaries are empowered to patrol the public square with increasing impunity.” Reactionaries insist everyone go around strapped for the next opportunity to shoot it out with passersby.
National Journal considers that Republican reactionaries have no qualms about proving even to other conservatives who’s boss:
The House of Representatives held two major votes last week designed to protect existing rights enshrined by Supreme Court decisions, but that Justice Clarence Thomas targeted in his concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization: ensuring that states recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, and guaranteeing access to contraception across the country. Both bills were passed by “bipartisan” majorities, since some Republicans supported each. But the numbers show that in each case, elected Republicans are not representing their voters.
Forty-seven Republican representatives—22 percent of 211 members—voted in favor of protecting same-sex marriages even if the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision is ultimately overturned and some states stop issuing licenses for same-sex marriages. Polls show that around half of Republican voters support same-sex marriage.
Just eight House Republicans voted to protect contraception access—a paltry 4 percent of the caucus. The right to birth control is hardly controversial. The issue was settled in the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision. Gallup polling shows that 92 percent of Americans say contraception is morally acceptable. A PRRI survey shows that 77 percent of Republicans oppose laws restricting what types of birth control are available. Yet the vast majority of the Republican caucus voted against protecting access to this basic aspect of health care.
Age is only a modest factor in opposition to birth control (about 45% support among Republicans in the PRRI survey). House Republicans’ strategy is to align more with their party’s white evangelical wing (about a third of the party) than with the majority whose views a functioning democracy is designed to reflect.
Natalie Jackson predicts a backlash from within the party. She explains, “the long-term risks of this strategy might be devastating for the party if a supermajority conservative Supreme Court guts more rights that most Americans (and Republicans) support, and Republicans have refused to act to protect them. Same-sex couples might not be a large part of the Republican base, but women certainly are.”
Cruelty, dominance, alpha-dogness is unsustainable as a political project. The worry is that it is hard-wired, and the less pressure there is for acting, as Stiman writes, “as if we really did live in a society” with “obligations to each other, duties of care and concern,” the longer cruelty-as-policy can endure. Slavery persisted on these shores for a very long time.
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