"It has no greater purpose beyond LOOKING ruthless ... "
5/26/25
AverageSalt_Miner: “There’s something uniquely perverse about cruelty performed by people who will never experience the consequences of their own ideology. Unlike the Somali pirates or the Taliban—groups operating in extreme conditions, driven by survival, ideology, or desperation—the architects of modern American cruelty live in comfort. They do not suffer. They are not struggling for food or security. And yet, they choose cruelty, not as a necessity, but as a luxury.
“This is performative suffering, an aesthetic of toughness projected by people who have never known real hardship. It’s the lawmakers who gut welfare programs while vacationing in gated resorts. It’s the TV pundits who sneer at working-class struggles from air-conditioned studios. It’s bureaucrats who deny migrants soap and toothpaste—not out of logistical necessity, but because cruelty itself is a flex, a demonstration of power detached from material reality.
“It has no greater purpose beyond LOOKING ruthless. It is the political equivalent of posing in tactical gear without ever seeing combat, of calling for war from the safety of a country club. It is not the brutality of warriors or the desperation of insurgents. It is the decadence of empire—violence for the sake of self- image, cruelty as a luxury good.”