Why Such Cruelty

Why is there such a tolerance for cruelty in our nation right now?  Under the guise of “downsizing government” and “getting the federal government out of our lives,” a series of measures from the current administration and from Congress seem to have an underlying message to deliver. We want people who have been receiving aid supported by U.S. tax dollars or who have been living in the United States without legal documentation to suffer.  We do not care that without such aid millions of lives will be put into great turmoil.  We do not care that our own economy will actually suffer harm by the way we are attacking the immigration issue.  We do not even care if it means the death of people who we do not know or are in a foreign land.  That disconnect between a theoretical motive for our decisions and the actual devastating consequences of such decisions is nothing other than cruelty.  And such cruelty always baffles me, along with the blinders so many of us put on, which allows such cruelty to become normalized, even seemingly justified.

At the heart of such cruelty, I believe, is a misguided view of the world.  There is a “zero sum” game approach, which divides the world into tribal identities, and approaches the sharing of resources via policies of trade, taxation, health care, education, climate, immigration as though every time we help someone who is “not us,” we are hurting ourselves, betraying our identity, being suckers, giving in to fraud and waste, or some such language.  The interdependence of the world and the reality that we have enough resources and the means to justly share those resources become obscured.  Public discourse is no longer based on an honest assessment of facts but is politicized by one’s ideology.  Lies can be told and if you tell them over and over they become the new “truth.”  The heart of politics—reasoned compromise—becomes anathema.  Generosity of heart and mind toward those who think differently than us is seen as weakness.  Ideals that push us toward universal values and concern for all humanity are thrown away. 

The late Pope Francis, right from the beginning of his pontificate, highlighted the principle that “reality is more important than ideas” (Evangelium Gaudium, #232).  He was trying to help us address precisely this disconnect between our ideas/policies, no matter if well-intentioned, and the moral responsibility of evaluating the actual, real consequences of our actions.  The old maxim “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” gets at the same idea in many ways, but Pope Francis assertion of that principle of “reality over ideas,” urges us to look at the concrete lives of those who are suffering the most, who are harmed by the current state of economic and social injustice, and who are most severely affected in a negative way by our overarching laws and policies. 

Yes, there is fraud and inefficiency in any government-mandated and sponsored social program. And where necessary that can be addressed. But to use it as an excuse to deny help to those who need it most is simply cruel. Recently the attempt to downsize the federal bureaucracy and purge it of waste and fraud led to a mandated review of all suspicious Social Security claims.  As reported in several news outlet that initiative has now been suspended, due to the backlog it was creating in doing the work of the SSA, but most especially because out of 110,000 claims looked at, less than 1% were flagged for review as suspicious and only 2 of those claims were serious enough to warrant full investigation. Of course, there can be much waste and fraud in this or other programs. But when one’s starting point is to take as fact an idea like “there is overwhelming waste and fraud in the SSA programs,” when in actual fact there is no such reality, the idea becomes an instrument for harming the lives of people, especially those with limited resources, who depend on that program.

More egregious still, in my view, was the stopping of funds to help food, medical, and educational programs in various impoverished areas of the world through USAID.  The amount involved—just under $4 billion a year—is a significant amount, looked at in isolation or more importantly viewed in terms of how many lives it helps save and how it improves the health of hundreds of thousands of children and families. But it is a drop in the bucket in terms of the overall budget.  Even if one wanted to just cynically ask the question of “But what we do we get out of it as a country?” it is money that enables the United States to leverage tremendous goodwill for other issues. And, in reality, not just ideally, it saves lives.  To cut that off without any analysis or nuancing of programs, acting as though the idea of “cutting waste and fraud” (again, where that has not been shown to exist in significant ways) is more important than the lives being affected by the sudden decision, with no plan to replace the funding in some other ways, is sheer cruelty.

Many other examples could be given, but for now, back to my header: Why such cruelty?  Is it due to an underlying racism against people of color? Or an ethnocentric fear that “our way of life” is becoming obsolete?  Cruelty involves a satisfaction in the results, a satisfaction in seeing people suffer. What does that gain the many people who accept that cruelty?  I feel better because I do not need such aid, and theoretically the few who have abused such aid are getting their due? I think such cruelty means that even if it can be shown beyond a reasonable doubt that a certain modest tax increase, properly administered, could result in access to basic health services, education, food, water and transportation for all who need that help, we would never see it come to fruition.  Why? Because there is a way in which, under the guise of “fairness,” too many of us actually are okay, maybe even think it is just and right, that “those others/that group/welfare people/foreigners/undocumented immigrants/etc.” suffer.  Too many of us are secretly happy that certain people or groups of people are “getting their comeuppance.” Too many of us, in a word, are cruel.

Leaving the issues on the level of the idea and not looking at the real consequences in the lives of people who are most affected and have the least ability to survive on their own resources allows us to pass legislation, accept presidential decisions, and be peacefully complicit with all sorts of real-life situations of cruelty, where that cruelty did not have to and should not happen.  I am not an economist or political partisan or public policy expert.  I am a deeply concerned citizen of the United States.  A baptized Christian, who wants to believe that most Christians will not betray the Gospel, if push comes to shove. An ordained priest, who still believes the power of the Eucharistic community to unite is greater than anything that tries to divide us.  But, folks, this has gotten very serious, very dangerous. The more we go down this road, the easier it becomes to accept more and more such cruelty and willful blindness. That is a reality I cannot fathom and about which I cannot be silent.