Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: On MAGA cruelty, Taylor Swift, and gas station fried chicken

We begin today with Jill Filipovic writing for The New Statesman comparing Trump’s “art of cruelty” to the ineptness of Ron DeSantis.

In his essay “The Cruelty is the Point”, Adam Serwer recounted a trip to the Museum of African-American History in Washington DC, where he looked at photos of lynchings, and particularly at the faces of the white men in the crowd, smiling at their grotesque crimes. “Their cruelty made them feel good, it made them feel proud, it made them feel happy,” Serwer wrote. “And it made them feel closer to one another.” This is perhaps Trump’s highest skill: he draws sharp lines around “us” and an abhorrent, dangerous and vermin-like other, and then brings the in-group into his cruelty with him. It’s not Trump targeting vulnerable groups; it’s Trump pulling us together to defend the collective us, protect the tribe. Anyone who has spent time on a middle-school campus knows that there are bully leaders who attract a group of bully followers, and then there are the mean jerks no one likes. Trump is the former, and DeSantis more the latter. [...]

It’s also notable that while Republican voters have rejected DeSantis, few have objected to his politics of cruelty. They don’t seem to mind the attacks on LGBTQ people, or women, or educational institutions, or migrants. They just don’t really like him. Unlike Trump, DeSantis’s cruelty isn’t amusing. Even worse, there was little opportunity to join in. Trump voters want someone who directs them to action, even extreme chaos that teeters into violence, and who understands exactly what they mean when they say that the 6 January insurrection, which left several people dead and struck at the heart of American democracy, was “fun”.  

This desire for collective cruelty, and a sense that being in a group makes cruelty more entertaining and less the responsibility of any one individual, has roots in the darkest parts of humanity. Public executions persisted in England until the second half of the 19th century; in the US, public executions, lynchings, and mob violence aimed at racial minorities were long popular activities; today in some conservative, autocratic, often theocratic nations, public executions remain favoured spectator sports. As other societies have evolved, democratised, secularised and sought to impose human rights-affirming systems of justice, they have moved away from killing-as-spectacle. But the core desire – to make vengeance a communal pastime – has not died out, especially among those who embrace autocracy, conservative religiosity and traditionalism.  

Trump embodies that desire for retribution as sport. Ron DeSantis hit all the right notes on the punitive vengeance part of the equation. But he failed to make it feel like a party.  

I don’t think that there’s an “art” to saying every bigoted thing that you might be thinking but Filipovic is on to something about the necessity of a collective becoming “communal” in the process.