By Hal Brown
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| Click above to enlarge image |
The train of thought which led to me writing this began with reading this story in my daily mail from Yahoo News:
A Loud GOP Minority Pledges to Make Trouble on Ukraine Military Aid
Then I read
Examples of how the GOP is cruel went though my mind as I thought about their immigration policy and abortion bans. I thought about DeSantis and his war against what he calls woke, and how woke is really a synonym for having empathy for all, not merely some select, people.
I then thought about the phrase which has become a meme ever since The Atlantic writer Adam Serwer published his book of essays entitled The Cruelty is the Point: The Past, Present and Future of Trump's America. (You can read or listen to an interview with him here.)
It is just that so many people don't care about the hardships of others. It is that they actually relish knowing these "others" are suffering or, if they are policy shapers, making them suffer.
Thinking I might write something about this I did a web search of the phrase "the cruelty is the point" and scanned though a number of the articles (showing in illustration to this blog). I realized that I didn't have anything particularly original to add.
Suffice to say that if empathy was a human gene which could be measured in a DNA test the results would show many Americans would come up woefully lacking.
I wasn't up for writing about malignant narcissism which I've often addressed (here for example), or sadistic personality disorder for that matter...
What did occur to me to write about was how frequently I found myself using a font in blog illustrations which I don't see anybody else using, perhaps because it isn't in the standard lists of free fonts. The font is called butcherman and you have to search for it. I use BeFunky to add it to images I sometimes use in my blogs...
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| Click to enlarge and note the phrase Google uses. |
To me these letters represent those people who are literally or figuratively bleeding whether as a result on not being able to get an abortion, immigrants fleeing persecution, or in Ukraine where every day citizens know they may be killed.
I think of those who can look at the misfortune of others and not feel even a glimmer of empathy for them. The font is called butcherman, but these people are actually butcher men.
Addendum:
Just another example: 2024 Republican Hopefuls Rush To Defend Man Who Killed Jordan Neely
Then there's this:
A first-grade teacher who spoke out against a Wisconsin school district’s decision to ban “Rainbowland” by Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton from a spring concert is facing termination, USA Today reports.
and this:
The latest news is that Florida investigators want to interview some of Jenna Barber's fifth grade students. She dared to show a Disney film with a gay character and was suspended.
