Here’s the thing about Donald Trump 2.0: The slapdash chaos of his first term has solidified into something more deliberate. He’s no longer just winging it like an insult comic. Now, he’s got a plan, and the theme is callousness.
Take, for example, the Venezuelan immigrants he sent to an El Salvador “detention center.” One of the “dangerous criminals” was a 31-year-old gay barber and makeup artist named Andry — with no indication of any gang affiliation or criminal activity.
Not exactly Pablo Escobar, but the point was never really about deporting violent criminals. The point was a warning to anyone who wants to come to America: Don’t come here. Or, if you’re already here, get out.
Or take Rumeysa Ozturk, the Turkish grad student at Tufts. One minute, she’s walking down the street; the next, masked agents are stuffing her into an unmarked SUV like she’s some cartel boss. She’s now in a Louisiana detention center, waiting to be deported. Her crime? Co-writing an op-ed critical of Israel.
It’s not my politics, but it’s also not a crime. At least, it didn’t used to be. Regardless, even if one believes she should be deported, Ozturk could have been peacefully detained in a more civilized manner. But then, you’ve got to break some eggs if you’re going to make an omelette, right? That’s what the current administration seems to think.
This philosophy isn’t limited to undocumented immigrants. A slightly less aggressive version of uncompassionate conservatism is creeping into other corners of domestic life. Call it Mean Bureaucracy — a form of governance where the red tape isn’t just frustrating, it’s sadistic.
Spearheading this effort is Elon Musk, the president’s cost-cutter who is completing his metamorphosis from socially awkward PayPal co-founder to full-fledged Ayn Rand villain. In a telling moment of honesty, Musk recently declared, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
That’s right. Our big problem isn’t poverty, inequality, the musical stylings of Nickelback, the fact an exterior panel glued on Tesla Cybertrucks can suddenly detach and go flying. No, the real problem, according to the world’s richest man, is that we care too much.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I think empathy’s gotten us pretty far. It’s literally why civilization exists. When societies stop valuing it, things go south fast. And when they start demonizing it, well, that’s when you get history books with really ugly chapters.
Economist F.A. Hayek — who, to be clear, was not exactly a bleeding-heart liberal — once observed that in especially corrupt regimes, “The worst get on top.” Translation: If you build a society that rewards sociopaths, don’t be surprised when sociopaths run the place. And boy, do they!
But even Hayek didn’t foresee a world in which our overlords have a collective level of emotional intelligence on par with a Roomba that’s wedged itself under the couch.
And now, their peculiar way of thinking (one that treats human beings like source code) is being turned into policy.
This has led to many unkind actions, including firing veterans and forcing an 87-year-old retiree, who has called a 1-800 number for decades, to deal with a broken chatbot just to access Social Security — all in the name of “efficiency.”
Is Musk even aware of this suffering? Does he see it as a bug or a feature? Hard to say.
If there’s a silver lining here (and it’s a thin one, like single-ply-toilet-paper thin), it’s that while Americans are famously tolerant of other people’s suffering, they have an extremely low tolerance for their own. And more and more Americans are feeling the pain.
Trump voters are starting to notice: When “small government” starts feeling less like “efficiency” and more like “a mugging in slow motion,” people get upset.
For now, I’m not directly affected. I’m not a refugee, or even a retiree. With the help of my wife, I (mostly) understand how to navigate the latest Kafkaesque user interface that stands between me and whatever basic services our family needs.
But I do know what it’s like to slam into a brick wall of bureaucratic indifference, and that’s all it takes to imagine the rest.
It’s called empathy. You remember empathy? Used to be a thing we valued.
And if history has taught us anything, it’s this: The moment a society decides to jettison empathy, that’s when the old poem kicks in. First they came for the gay barbers. Then they came for the computer-illiterate retirees. And then …
Because once you normalize cruelty, the hammer eventually swings for everyone. Even the ones who thought they were swinging it.
Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”
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