Being Cruel and Pretending You’re Not

Adam Serwer’s ‘The Cruelty is the Point’

Image by efes from Pixabay

In 2018, Adam Serwer wrote an essay in The Atlantic called “The Cruelty is the Point.” It explained Trumpism. The title carries the point. It was hugely popular, and in 2021, he released a good essay collection: The Cruelty is the Point.

The cruelty is indeed the point of MAGA, and I have my own ideas about how the cruelty is also the point of the anti-transgender movement.

Here’s the Basic Idea of Serwer’s Book

In 2015, many assumed “there was no way that Trump’s overt bigotry — his demonizing of Latino immigrants as violent criminals and Muslims as terrorists, his caustic misogyny toward any woman with the temerity to criticize him — would fly in a nation that had just elected a black president.”

But in November 2016, 60 million people voted for him.

Adam Serwer recalls:

“If you were part of, or related to, one of the groups Trump targeted so effectively, you woke up on November 9 with the knowledge that some, perhaps many, of your work colleagues, perhaps your friends and family members, chose a man who promised to use the violence of the state to keep people like you in your place.”