Cruelty as a Political Feature, Not a Bug
- Anja Sophia Crooks
- Aug 2
- 4 min read
By Eric Sondermann
As first published in Colorado Politics, the Denver Gazette, and Colorado Springs Gazette.
We’re proud to share this thoughtful and timely column — with permission — from Colorado political analyst and commentator Eric Sondermann. With clarity and candor, he examines the troubling rise of performative cruelty in American politics, not as a fringe phenomenon, but as a deliberate strategy.
By most standards and for most Americans, these are times of relative comfort. We live in air-conditioned homes, relax in front of enormous television screens, benefit from innovative medical technology, access obscure information in seconds, and travel across the country or the globe in mere hours, despite scheduling snafus and insufficient legroom.
Of course, that is the story for people of means and assets. Those on the lower rungs of the ladder experience far fewer niceties as part of a more precarious existence.
But whatever one’s economic circumstance and creature comforts, we find ourselves in a harsh period. Loneliness is on the rise, while connection is declining. What passes for political discourse continues to rot. Too many find identity and meaning, even something approaching religiosity, in online political battles.
Compromise is shunned while the distance between left and right grows ever wider. Popular entertainment glorifies obscene, coarse, and violent. Personal courtesy and kindness seem in short supply.
Social scientists can weigh in as to what is cause and what is effect. However, taking bitterness and acridity to new levels, we are still in the early months of administration, during which outright cruelty is part of the agenda and the appeal.
Put otherwise, for a sizeable chunk of the MAGA base and their champion, cruelty is a central feature, not a bug.
No issue illustrates the point quite like the President’s and sidekick Stephen Miller’s tactics of deportation. There is no argument from this quarter as to the need for border enforcement and the distinction between legal and illegal immigration.
That said, there is a right, just, even humane way of going about such business as opposed to the merciless path this administration most often chooses.
Barack Obama was no slouch when it came to deportation. In 2013 alone, he oversaw the removal of over 438,000 persons in the United States without proper authorization. However, he managed to do so without establishing a paramilitary force and without further villainizing these humans whose principal violation lay in seeking security and a better life.
Contrast that with Donald Trump’s approach. His recently enacted “big, beautiful bill” (such branding usually belies the ugliness hidden within) includes funding for an unprecedented increase in ICE agents and detention facilities.
As many as 10,000 new agents are slated to join the agency. A massive sum of $45 billion is allocated for the construction of new detention facilities. That will be on top of voluminous contracts with private prison companies.
The scope of all this far exceeds what it takes to rid ourselves of “violent criminals,” “MS-13 gang members” and “the worst of the worst,” all descriptions courtesy of our President.
Two images have come to define Trump’s campaign of deportation. One is that of agents in heavy armor and faces fully covered. Somehow, other law enforcement types can arrest America’s most hardened criminals with faces exposed and name badges prominently displayed. In troubling contrast, ICE is becoming an outsized, draconian, semi-anonymous police force operating by its own rules and relatively free of constraint.
The other epitome is the so-called Alligator Alcatraz, a new detention facility hurriedly constructed amidst the alligator and python infested waters of the Florida Everglades. With symbolism befitting a reality-show, everything about this camp attests to sadism, savagery and heartlessness.
But that grim dehumanization is hardly an afterthought or unintended consequence. Rather, it is the core point.
Trump’s MAGA base did not miss the memo. One ultra-loyalist on my social media posted, “Donald Trump is now sending migrants to a prison where alligators can eat them if they escape. Finally, a politician delivering what we voted for.”
I wonder if he pulled over to write that on his way to church on Sunday.
For sure, there are a sad few on the other political extreme who could also use a heart transplant. Including one leftie fool who responded to the devastating Texas floods earlier this month by posting, “My empathy for those in redneck reject states is zero.” His Volvo, no doubt, comes with a “coexist” bumper sticker.
Though in this era, one side shouts slogans while the other side makes policy.
Perhaps my bearing is as outmoded as my centrist orientation. But my view is that this ultimately could be Trump’s undoing. Most Americans, no matter their political stripe, are fundamentally decent, humane and compassionate.
Yes, they demand border security. Just as they want government efficiency. But it does not follow that they will countenance meanness, cruelty and brutality in bringing it about. To the contrary, they will find it all increasingly repellant.
We had better hope that my contention is correct. If not, America is in an even deeper ditch than we acknowledge.
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