Cruelty is the Point: From Slaughterhouses to MAGA

Fair warning: This was written for those who already know our world is collapsing. If you don't want to know more, this is not for you.

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The Question That Started Everything

I've spent decades asking people a simple question: "Why do you eat animals?" The responses follow a predictable pattern—a cascade of justifications that crumble under gentle examination, eventually dissolving into something like, "I don't know. I just do."

More recently, I've noticed the same dynamic playing out in political conversations. "Why do you support MAGA?" leads to the same defensive scrambling, the same retreat into vague assertions, the same final refuge: "I don't know. I just do."

Unsurprisingly, when I follow up with either group—"Would you be open to more information?" or "Are you willing to reconsider given these facts?"—the response is swift and certain: "No!"

This isn't just ignorance or a difference of opinion. This is something else entirely.

The Reward System We Don't Talk About

There's a growing body of research that makes for uncomfortable reading. When scientists study everyday sadism—the casual enjoyment of others' suffering—they find something disturbing: sadists experience genuine neurochemical rewards when they cause pain. Their brains light up. They feel good.

We see this everywhere, but we've trained ourselves not to see it. The popularity of "fail" videos—that "hilarious" baseball to the groin. The gleeful satisfaction in "FAFO" culture. The way online spaces erupt in celebration when the "right" people get hurt. "Owned!"

The same reward system drives political cruelty. The laughter when immigrant children scream for their parents. The glee when "blue states" get hit by hurricanes. The dopamine hit of "owning the libs."

The phenomenon mirrors what I encountered in some graduate research where I found that learning about animal suffering actually decreased people's empathy toward animals—as if the knowledge of an animal's pain made the animal seem more deserving of their pain.

Show people evidence of political opponents suffering, and watch empathy disappear. I'm not necessarily saying your political opponents don't deserve comeuppance; I'm, for now, just pointing out the feelings you might share with others and the patterns we tend to follow.

We are, it seems, a species that has evolved not just the capacity for cruelty, but the appetite for it.

The Historical Blueprint

Our ancestors weren't shy about this capacity for cruelty. They built entire institutions around the systematic enjoyment of suffering. Gladiatorial games weren't aberrations—they were cultural centerpieces, social bonding activities where communities gathered to watch human and nonhuman beings die for entertainment.

Medieval torture was public theater. Witch burnings were town festivals. Public executions drew crowds like concerts. The same impulse drives modern political rallies where crowds cheer for mass deportations and the promise of opponents' suffering.

In the Elizabethan era, people hosted dinner parties where the entertainment was watching animals die in vacuum chambers—what they called "natural philosophy" but what we might recognize as sanctified sadism. Today we call it "policy" when we engineer the deaths of asylum seekers.

The guillotine, the gallows, the burning stake—these weren't just tools of justice but instruments of collective catharsis, allowing entire societies to participate in ritualized killing while maintaining their moral self-image. Just like family separation policies and voter suppression—systematic cruelty wrapped in legal language and the old Red, White and Blue.

We didn't abandon or satiate our appetite. We just got better at hiding it.

Modern Refinements

Today's stadium sports provide a socially acceptable outlet for our bloodlust. We've channeled the gladiatorial impulse into football and hockey, boxing and MMA. The crowds still roar for contact, for impact, for the moment when someone goes down hard. We seem to enjoy witnessing pain: rodeos that twist genitals to provoke otherwise gentle bulls, horse racing with crops and whips, bull and cock fighting, animal circuses. We humans love to hear the screams and celebrate the flow of blood.

The political arena offers similar entertainment. Campaign rallies where crowds chant "Lock 'em up!" and fantasize about opponents' imprisonment. The ensuing laughter while joking about their opponents getting raped in prison. The theatrical cruelty of confirmation hearings. The spectacle of debates designed not to inform but to humiliate.

We've developed sophisticated psychological technologies for enabling cruelty while maintaining plausible deniability. We don't eat "cows"—we eat "beef." We don't "kill" "pigs"—we "process" "pork." We don't "separate families"—we "enforce immigration law." We don't "deny healthcare"—we "promote personal responsibility."

The linguistic distancing is so complete that most people never make the connection between the policy and the pain. Research shows this isn't accidental. When people see processed meat versus whole animals, their empathy measurably decreases. When they hear about "deportation operations" instead of "destroying families," the same psychological distancing occurs.

When they think about meat production, their brains literally strip animals of mental capacity—what scientists call "denial of mind." The same happens in politics: strip opponents of humanity, make their suffering acceptable, even enjoyable.

Perhaps most telling is our response to knowledge itself. Study after study confirms what I've seen in decades of advocacy: confronting people with evidence of suffering doesn't increase their compassion. It increases their contempt for the victims. Show someone footage from a slaughterhouse, and they're more likely to mock vegans than change their diet. Show them children in cages, and they're more likely to blame the parents than oppose the policy.

The Slaughterhouse Model

Some chilling research comes from studying communities around slaughterhouses. Workers in these facilities show elevated rates of depression, anxiety, and what researchers term "violence-supportive attitudes." But the effects don't stay contained.

Communities surrounding slaughterhouses have significantly higher rates of violent crime, sexual assault, and domestic violence. Scientists call this the "Sinclair effect"—the spillover from institutionalized violence into the broader social fabric.

The pattern shows clearly that systematic exposure to cruelty doesn't just normalize violence, it actively cultivates it. People who make their living inflicting suffering don't compartmentalize that capacity—they carry it home, into their relationships, into their communities. This is not limited to those working in slaughterhouses. This includes those working in political parties that, every day, endorse violent rhetoric and policies.

The neural pathways strengthened by daily acts of violence don't discriminate between species. Cruelty breeds cruelty. Those who live in these same violent communities consistently vote for more punitive political candidates—politicians who promise tougher sentences, harsher enforcement, more pain for designated enemies.

The institutionalized violence doesn't just spill into personal relationships; it shapes political preferences toward systematic cruelty. It invites the violence. Communities desensitized to daily violence become more comfortable with policies that inflict systematic violence. A political party that invites in and thrives by promoting violence—just like a "processing plant"—will see and has seen that attitude spill over into the surrounding community at large.

Political Weaponization

Which brings me to our current moment. We're witnessing the full flowering of cruelty as political strategy. The quiet part has been said out loud: the goal isn't policy outcomes but the satisfaction of watching opponents suffer.

"Owning the libs" isn't about governance—it's about the dopamine hit of inflicting pain. Watching children scream when separated from their immigrant parents becomes a source of laughter and glee as they transfer that pain onto anyone who cares. And if you care, you are to be ridiculed. No healthcare? Can't make rent? No veterans benefits? Tough shit. You should've worked harder, prayed harder (to the right god), been born whiter.

This isn't a bug in the system. It's the feature.

Political movements built around institutionalized cruelty attract and cultivate the same psychological profiles we see in slaughterhouse communities. The same desensitization, the same violence-supportive attitudes, the same spillover effects. We see it in the measurably higher rates of criminal charges among Republican politicians compared to their Democratic counterparts, the voting patterns that consistently oppose protections for victims, the systematic blocking of transparency around abuse.

We see it in policies deliberately designed to maximize suffering: family separation as deterrence strategy, celebrating when natural disasters hit "blue" areas, the gleeful anticipation of mass deportations. It should be obvious by now, but I'll say it again: the cruelty isn't accidental—it's the point.

Each act of political cruelty that gets rewarded with votes or applause makes the next act more likely, more extreme. The audience develops tolerance, requiring stronger doses to achieve the same satisfaction. What starts as "owning the libs" escalates to celebrating their deaths in disasters, then to actively engineering their suffering through policy.

Like all systematic cruelty, it creates feedback loops that amplify and perpetuate themselves. The real and rhetorical violence is escalating as bloodthirsty crowds inevitably need a stronger and stronger fix to feed their addiction.

The Collapse Context

We're approaching unprecedented social and ecological breakdown. Climate chaos, resource depletion, mass extinction, economic collapse—all the systems that have contained and channeled our sadistic impulses are failing simultaneously.

What happens when the carefully constructed outlets for violence—the sports, the entertainment, the political theater—can no longer satisfy our appetite for suffering? What happens when scarcity provides new justifications for cruelty?

The mechanisms we've explored—dehumanization, psychological distancing, systematic desensitization—won't disappear during collapse. They'll intensify. The same neural machinery that allows us to enjoy "fail" videos and vote against victim protections will find new targets, new justifications, new expressions.

We're not just facing ecological and social collapse. We're facing the unleashing of our most brutal impulses in a context where the usual constraints have dissolved.

The Fighting Trap

Faced with this escalating cycle of cruelty, the obvious response is to fight. To resist. To organize and mobilize and push back against the systems of cruelty with everything we have.

But decades of advocacy have taught me that fighting systems of cruelty often results in the adoption of the same methods. Anger, dehumanization of opponents, tactical thinking that treats people as chess pieces. The adrenaline cycles of outrage can become addictive, creating their own feedback loops.

I've watched brilliant, compassionate activists burn out, break down, and sometimes mirror the very behaviors they opposed. The psychological costs are real: trauma responses, chronic stress, the gradual erosion of the very empathy that motivated the fight in the first place.

Fighting fire with fire often just creates more fire.

The Progressive Dilemma

What makes this particularly challenging for those of us on the progressive side is that we know we have to keep fighting the good fight. We feel it. It is a part of us. We can't just withdraw into personal practice while children are being caged, while healthcare is being denied, while the vulnerable are being systematically targeted. The progressive impulse to stand up for others—to protect immigrants, workers, the marginalized—is fundamentally moral and necessary.

The trap isn't in opposing fascism. The trap is in letting opposition turn us into the very thing we're fighting against.

I see it creeping in sometimes—the glee when a MAGA politician gets arrested, the satisfaction when red states suffer the consequences of their votes, the dehumanization that makes it easier to dismiss entire populations as irredeemably stupid or evil. It feels different because our targets seem to deserve it, because we're fighting for justice rather than dominance. But the neural pathways being strengthened, the psychological habits being formed—they're disturbingly similar.

The challenge isn't whether to fight—of course we keep fighting for justice, for protection, for basic human dignity. The challenge is how we fight without losing ourselves in the process.

Protection vs. Punishment

There's a crucial distinction we need to hold onto: the difference between protection and punishment, between resistance and revenge.

Standing between ICE agents and families isn't the same as cheering when your political opponents get hurt. Blocking harmful policies isn't the same as seeking retribution. Fighting for healthcare access isn't the same as celebrating when red states face disasters. Creating sanctuary cities isn't the same as hoping for suffering in hostile territories.

When we organize mutual aid networks, engage in civil disobedience, or build alternative systems of care, we're practicing protection-based resistance. When we work to stop harmful policies without needing to destroy the people implementing them, we're choosing strategic effectiveness over emotional satisfaction.

This isn't about being nice to fascists or both-sidesing our way out of moral clarity. It's about recognizing that movements fueled by righteous anger can accomplish important things quickly, but movements sustained by love and clear purpose tend to last longer and build more durable change. The civil rights movement's discipline around nonviolence wasn't weakness—it was strategic strength.

The Daily Choice in Activism

Even within necessary fights, we face moment-by-moment choices about how to resist. We can work to stop harmful policies while still seeing the people implementing them as humans making harmful choices rather than monsters deserving destruction. We can celebrate victories without celebrating suffering. We can oppose systems of oppression without adopting their methods.

This requires constant vigilance against our own psychological reward systems. When I feel that familiar satisfaction at seeing a political opponent stumble, I try to pause and ask: Am I enjoying this because it advances justice, or because it feeds my appetite for others' pain? When I share news about consequences facing people whose politics I despise, am I motivated by information-sharing or by the dopamine hit of watching enemies suffer?

These aren't easy questions, and I don't get them right all the time. But asking them helps me stay connected to the values that motivated my activism in the first place.

The Love Alternative

Which brings us back to love. Not peace-love-dove, although I'm cool with that. And not naive optimism or spiritual bypassing. I'm talking about clear-eyed compassion. Love that sees the full horror of what we've built and chooses kindness anyway. Love that understands the mechanisms of cruelty without being consumed by them. Love that knows it might just lose against violence, but keeps fighting against all odds.

This isn't passive. It doesn't just happen. It's fucking hard work. I know. It takes willpower and determination and energy that each of us has in dwindling supply. And I don't know anyone who hits the mark 100 percent of the time. But love, as a path, is the most radical resistance possible: the refusal to let cruelty make us cruel, knowledge to make us hopeless, or understanding to make us indifferent.

Where fighting activates our stress response systems, love activates our care response systems. Where fighting often isolates us in opposition, love connects us in solidarity. Where fighting can make us rigid and reactive, love keeps us flexible and responsive.

Most importantly, love is psychologically sustainable in ways that constant fighting isn't. It doesn't depend on winning to remain meaningful. It doesn't require the world to get better to remain worthwhile.

Love-based resistance is also strategic resistance. It builds stronger coalitions because people can sense when they're valued versus when they're being used. It avoids the burnout cycles that weaken movements because it's fueled by connection rather than adrenaline. It creates the kind of alternative vision that can outlast purely oppositional politics.

Living Into the Nightmare

The hard truth is that we probably don't have the time or power to completely dismantle the architecture of human cruelty. The systems we've explored—the neurobiological reward circuits, the cultural institutions, the political weaponization—these have been millennia in the making. They're not going to be undone by a few years or decades of good intentions.

But that doesn't make us powerless. It just changes the question from "How do we fix this?" to "How do we live with integrity within this?" And more practically: "How do we keep fighting for what matters while building something better in the spaces we can control?"

The answer lies in creating pockets of humanity within the larger inhumanity. Spaces where cruelty doesn't define the culture, where suffering isn't entertainment, where the vulnerable are protected rather than exploited. Communities of resistance that don't require their members to sacrifice their humanity to participate.

These might be our families, our friend circles, our organizations, our movements. They might be the way we treat animals, the way we consume, the way we vote, the way we organize. They might be the stories we tell, the art we create, the love we offer, the fights we choose and how we fight them.

We can't change the trajectory of the larger system overnight. But we can refuse to be consumed by it. We can choose to be humane in an increasingly inhumane world. We can practice love as a form of resistance, compassion as a form of rebellion, protection as our primary mode of engagement.

The Daily Practice

This requires daily practice. Like any spiritual discipline or learning a musical instrument, it demands intention, attention, and repetition.

It means noticing when we feel that familiar satisfaction at someone else's pain and choosing to look deeper. It means catching ourselves in the psychological distancing that makes cruelty comfortable and choosing to stay present instead.

It means creating and protecting spaces for genuine connection. It means prioritizing relationships over ideologies, people over principles, love over being right. It means continuing to show up for the fights that matter while refusing to let those fights consume our capacity for joy, connection, and hope.

It means accepting that we can't save the world while refusing to let that knowledge paralyze us into inaction. It means holding both the horror and the beauty, the despair and the joy, the endings and the beginnings. Mostly the endings.

And it means recognizing that every act of protection, every moment of standing up for others, every choice to see opponents as misguided humans rather than irredeemable monsters contributes to something larger than individual salvation. It builds the cultural infrastructure for whatever comes next.

The Paradox of Knowing

There's a paradox in all of this. The more clearly we see the architecture of human cruelty, the more tempting it becomes to either despair completely or participate cynically. Why maintain compassion in a cruel world? Why choose love when hate seems so much more effective, even more rewarding?

But perhaps that's exactly why it matters. Perhaps the choice to remain humane in an inhumane system is the most important choice we can make. Perhaps the cultivation of love in the face of systematic cruelty is the only real resistance available to us.

Not because it will save the world—it won't. But because it might save us, in a way that matters. It might preserve something worth preserving, for as long as we can. It might help those who rely entirely on us for our compassionate choices. And it might create the foundation for whatever form of resistance and reconstruction becomes possible in the years ahead.

The Long View

I don't know what comes next. I don't know if the mechanisms of cruelty will ultimately consume everything, or if some new configuration of human possibility will emerge, crawling through the ashes... for a while. I don't know if love is strong enough to outlast hate, or if compassion can survive the coming storms. But I'd like to think that the last living, feeling being who breathes their last breath, our last breath, will at that moment be consumed with feelings of love, not hate.

What I do know is this: every moment we choose love over cruelty matters. Every time we protect the vulnerable rather than exploit them matters. Every instance of genuine connection in an increasingly disconnected world matters. Every act of resistance that emerges from love rather than hate, every fight we take on from a place of protection rather than punishment, every community we build that refuses to sacrifice humanity for effectiveness—all of it matters.

Not because these choices will change the outcome, but because they change us. They preserve our humanity even as larger systems of inhumanity accelerate around us. They create the kind of people and communities that can respond to crisis with creativity and care rather than just more violence.

The architecture of human cruelty may be ancient and systemic and seemingly immutable. But the choice to be cruel or kind remains, moment by moment, ours to make. The choice of how to fight for what matters, how to resist what threatens us, how to protect what we love—that choice remains ours.

In the end, that might be enough. It might be all we caring humans have.

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Our world is ending. We built the mechanisms of its destruction into the very foundations of our civilization. But we're still here, in this moment, with choices still to make.

Choose love. Choose compassion. Choose the kind of resistance that builds rather than just destroys.

It won't save the world. But it might save you. And it might just help you save others along the way.